The rise and fall of alcohol addiction with Evaun Mawyer

Evaun Mawyer was once on top of the world and living a lavish lifestyle until alcohol addiction tore it all down.

On the latest episode of ‘Project Recovery,’ Evaun details her journey from experimenting with alcohol as a child, to losing her husband and home due to her alcohol addiction.

Stealing alcohol at five-years-old

In the podcast, Evaun describes what life was like growing up in a Latina family and how alcohol was a key component to kickstarting her addiction.

“I come from a Latina family, so every weekend was a party,” Evaun explained. “Anything we did, it was a party, there was drinking, there was alcohol.”

Evaun remembers going around and drinking leftover alcoholic beverages at the age of five.

“I wanted to know why they were drinking and what it tasted like,” she added. “I hated the taste but yet, something about it just kept me going back.”

She recalled a time when her parents and her grandfather went camping but left a bottle of vodka while the adults were away on a hike.

“I drank all of the vodka and filled the bottle with water,” Evaun said. “When my mom got back, I’m sure she knew what was wrong with me because I was passed out but she kept smacking me.”

Her curiosity for drinking alcohol at an incredibly young age led her to black out for the first time.

Surrounded by alcohol and marijuana

Evaun remembers growing up in a household where she considered her parents to be incredibly strict, which led to her revolting and skipping school to get drunk and smoke marijuana.

“My parents were overly strict…I needed to be with these people…I’d sluff school. So we’d go partying in the day,” Evaun explained.

She explains how she would party all day and attempt to sober up before her parents got home.

Unfortunately, her parents were also using marijuana and drinking alcohol, so she was always surrounded by substance abuse which led to her own addiction.

Blacked out with addiction

Evaun described how she got married at the age of seventeen which led to her first sobriety from alcohol until 2007.

She explains how stress from trying to sell her home and being diagnosed with Fibromyalgia caused her to pick up the bottle once again.

“As I was drinking, I noticed the pain would go away,” she described. “I had this mentality that, I’m going to drink, it’s going to take the edge off.”

The moment Evaun started drinking again, she realized that her addiction had come back, this time, with a vengeance.

“My husband came home after working out of town…and I said, ‘You know what, I need you to leave,'” she said. “I wanted to run-and-gun and I didn’t want to come home and feel guilty about it when he was sitting there with a sad face.”

Her husband did just that — he left.

Evaun’s path to recovery

Now, Evaun has realized that her priority is for herself and being alone is the first step to getting her health back.

“I just want to be healthy. Just to get my head straight for the first time in all of these years because looking back, I had some traumatic experiences,” Evaun described.

She now volunteers with women in crisis by sponsoring them and helping them progress through a twelve-step program.

Evaun was quick to point out that while some former addicts might even become addicted to their programs, she isn’t letting those type of behaviors affect her any longer.

“Some people, that’s what they live for. They have to go to every single [meeting],” she said. “I don’t let myself fall into any kind of addiction anymore.”

To hear more from Casey Scott and Dr. Matt, you can listen below or subscribe to the ‘Project Recovery’ podcast on Apple Podcasts or on the KSL Newsradio app.