Hangxiety - with Millie GoochHangxiety - with Millie Gooch
Sober Awkward
How Booze Borrows Happiness From Tomorrow...
49:32•18 Oct 2026
Breaking the Vicious Cycle of Hangxiety with Millie Gooch
Episode Overview
- Hangxiety can feel like intense dread, paranoia and physical discomfort even when nothing ‘terrible’ happened the night before.
- Blackouts and missing memories often trigger spirals of shame and fear, making people assume the worst about their behaviour.
- Alcohol frequently masquerades as stress relief while actually amplifying anxiety and keeping people trapped in a repeating cycle.
- Understanding factors like ADHD and how the brain’s reward system works can reduce self-blame and clarify why moderation is so hard.
- Finding sober peers or community makes early sobriety less lonely and offers practical support for social situations without alcohol.
“So many of us believe that alcohol is calming us down, when all along, it's quietly fueling the very thing we're trying to escape.”
You’ll hear Victoria share how an ecstasy overdose in her twenties left her terrified of her own body and stuck in years of panic, only realising later that alcohol was pouring petrol on the fire: "So many of us believe that alcohol is calming us down, when all along, it's quietly fueling the very thing we're trying to escape." Millie, founder of Sober Girl Society and author of Hangxiety, describes waking up after blackout nights, missing belongings and hours of memories, and the spiral from "what happened?" to "I bet everyone hates me".
What emotional and inspiring tales of recovery are out there? This chat between Victoria Vanstone and Millie Gooch is a straight-talking look at "hangxiety" – that gut-churning mix of hangover and anxiety that so many people quietly endure. Together they talk through the physical and mental side of hangxiety – racing hearts, tight chests, doom-laden thoughts at 7am – and how shame and self-blame keep people stuck.
Millie explains how learning about the brain, and later about her ADHD, helped her see why her reward-seeking mind latched onto alcohol and why moderation never quite worked. That knowledge gave her more compassion: her brain isn’t broken, it just isn’t built for boozy coping strategies. This episode is aimed at anyone who’s ever sworn "I’m never drinking again" while clutching a kebab in their top pocket, and then repeated the cycle the next weekend.
It mixes humour with honesty, touching on university drinking culture, blackouts, self-harm risks, and the loneliness of being the one who quits when everyone else carries on. If you’ve been waking up with that monster of dread sitting at the end of the bed, filing its nails and waiting for you, this conversation might be the nudge to ask: what is my anxiety trying to tell me, and what would life look like without hangxiety running the show?
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