Mary Alice Stephens was living her dream.
The middle-class mother had a loving husband, two adorable children and a charming home in an upscale Bay Area, California, neighborhood.
She worked as a writer and producer for TV networks, including HGTV and National Geographic, and was known as the life of every party.
‘Fun Mary’ was her nickname, but it was a disguise that hid a secret: a debilitating 30-year battle with alcohol abuse.
It was an addiction that threatened to unravel her idyllic suburban life.
From Bacardi and Cokes in high school to cheap college kegs and wine-soaked dinner parties, Stephens described alcohol as her ‘best friend’.
It helped her cope with social anxiety, and she called it a ‘powerful’ crutch in her new memoir, Uncorked: A Memoir of Letting Go and Starting Over.
The one day, at a friend’s pool party, Stephens was drinking her favorite Chardonnay on a raft in the pool when her five-year-old son Jake, who could not swim yet, was paddling nearby on a swimming noodle.
Mary Alice Stephens (pictured) is 14 years sober after realizing she had a destructive relationship with alcohol
Stephens (center) at 23 years old in the hospital surrounded by nurses when she was placed in a body cast
Then, in a chilling moment of warped reality, she heard herself utter words that would haunt her forever: ‘Jake, don’t you slip off that noodle and make Mama have to put her wine down to save you!’
As soon as she said it, she thought, ‘What kind of mom says that to her kid?’
A wave of shame washed over her as she contemplated whether she would have even noticed if Jake slipped off the noodle.
This wasn’t the first time her drinking had jeopardized her child’s life.
She recalled a terrifying incident where she drove while buzzed with an infant, Jake in the car, only to discover, on the Golden Gate Bridge of all places, that she had never buckled his car-seat harness.
‘When I was single, my drinking only harmed me… But now, with kids and a husband, the stakes were way too high,’ she said.
Stephens realized she had to quit drinking before she lost everything.
Mary Alice Stephens pictured with her two children at around one month sober
Stephens is grinning in a family photo taken in the 1970s. She has short hair and is wearing a white t-shirt and navy shorts (l-r bottom row) and describes it as her ‘tomboy’ days
Stephens (l-r) dressed in green skirt, cream blazer standing next to the groom and her family
Alcohol first came into her life when she was 16 years old.
Then, age 23, came a moment that many would have seen as a turning point, but Stephens was in denial.
She was in Ireland on a scholarship studying playwriting and Irish literature at the time. She and two boys were trying to get into a party at Trinity College Dublin, but were unable to get past campus security. They decided to go another way.
The boys, she recalled, knew how to slip through the stone wall surrounding the building, which dates back to 1592, but Stephens, already three drinks in, wasn’t paying attention and lost sight of them.
‘I assumed they had jumped over, and then I was like, «What am I thinking? I can jump over a wall. I was a gymnast in high school».’
She scaled the two-story wall in her dress and shoes. Things were going well until they weren’t.
‘I fell. The boy’s heard me scream, then I passed out and came to from the sounds of my own screaming,’ she recalled. ‘I crushed my right heel, I broke my back in three places.’
She compressed her L1 vertebra, fractured her L2 and fractured her coccyx – the last bone at the base of the spine.
The doctors told her that if the bone chips became embedded in her spinal canal, she could end up paralyzed.
After three weeks, she was put in a full-body cast. Not only was she reeling in pain, but Stephens was unable to drink, meet boys, have fun, and was overall pretty miserable.
‘I kept on thinking, «I’ve got to get out of here – I’m a young, single girl,» so I convinced the doctor who put the body cast on me to put some extra material around the boobs so I would have a little bit of a figure.
‘I was supposed to wear that for six months, but I was 23, and said to myself, ‘I can’t look like the Michelin man.»
With the help of her cousin, who worked as a public health nurse, she got permission to leave the hospital for two hours – but she never returned.
Stephens managed to convince the doctor to remove the cast, and once she was wearing a back brace and crutches, she went hitchhiking with a friend who was visiting.
She relished in her role as ‘Fun Mary’ during work and social events.
Mary broke her back after attempting to climb a two-story wall while drunk. This photo was taken in November 2022 – 34 years after she fell
Mary walking on crutches at Muckross House in February 1989
Despite the serious injuries she suffered, Mary used crutches to get around. She is pictured at Blarney Castle in 1989
Mary smiling and having fun while in Dublin as one one of her crutches hang off her arm
As the life of the party, Stephens was always ready to whip up her signature Bloody Mary cocktails upon request and always had her favorite La Crema Chardonnay on hand, a dry white medium-bodied wine grown in California’s Sonoma Valley.
There were times she would black out and sometimes vomit, but said she never thought about quitting drinking.
Stephens knew it was her ‘Achilles heel’ and believed she would ‘figure out how to get a handle on it’ eventually.
But alcohol continued to get in the way, and controlling the chaos was becoming more challenging.
‘My relationship with my husband was really being tested. It was to the point where I was really hiding my hangovers from him and hiding my blackouts.
‘I was starting to see the writing on the wall. It was causing chaos in my marriage, and I was super nervous about the safety of my kids.’
Stephens said her first marriage ‘blew up in flames’, but her second – ‘the good one’ – is the one that has lasted.
At 45, she decided it was time to leave ‘Fun Mary’ behind and start her journey to become ‘Sober Mary’.
Mary on set as a producer on a celebrity skin care commercial
The author doing a reading at a bookstore
She described her first week alcohol free as ‘absolute torture’.
It was August, the peak of white wine season, and everyone she knew was having a party.
‘I had five parties lined up that week, I was like, ‘What have I done?’ I didn’t have any coping skills yet. It was laughable how hard it was for me; I was so self-conscious.’
On top of the internal struggle she was already facing, her friends had no idea.
When Stephens arrived at her third party of the week, about a 90-minute drive from her home, she recalled her friend’s enthusiastic greeting.
‘You made it! Look what I got just for you.’
Her friend held out a bottle of La Crema.
‘It was like wine porn. I was looking at it, as drips of water were coming off the bottle from the cooler. She was waving it around in slow motion as I was licking my lips.
Stephens remembered being stuck in her thoughts in that moment.
‘It was a full house. Everybody was around,’ she said.
Stephens quietly told the host, ‘I can’t.’
Only one week into her new life, she was honest with herself, unsure at the time if she could actually become the ‘Sober Mary’ she hoped to be.
She told her friend she had a bladder infection and couldn’t drink at the moment.
With only adult beverages and kids’ drinks being served, her friend handed her a juice box in a moment Stephens will never forget.
‘I literally had to walk around the party holding a Juicy Juice box feeling like an idiot.’
It wasn’t until she entered Alcoholics Anonymous, got the help and support she needed, and found the community she craved that she started to become a better mother, wife, and friend.
Stephens celebrated 14 years of sobriety on Aug. 8, the same day her book launched
‘I realized how I was living a half-life before,’ she said. ‘I was chasing this high all the time. There’s so much more to the world besides alcohol, and I would not have believed that before.’
‘I thought drinking made me a fun mom, but it’s not true.’
Stephens shared a message to others who may be struggling: ‘I think the alcohol industry has us believing we need a glass of wine to relax, champagne to celebrate. We don’t.
‘I get that parenting could be lonely and stressful, and that glass of wine takes the edge off and relieves the monotony. Now more than ever, there are so many ways to explore sobriety.’
Rather than spending her time waiting for the next drink, Stephens is taking up some new hobbies.
Now that her book is complete, her next adventure is watercolor painting.
And, in just a slight pivot from the Juicy Juice, Stephens’ new favorite drink is a cranberry juice on the rocks with a twist of lime – in a big wine glass, of course.
