‘I Could Drink Hard Liquor in Class 6’ Annitah Raey’s Battle with Alcoholism

Former Radio Jambo host Annitah Raey has shared a harrowing account of her decades-long battle with alcohol addiction, revealing how early exposure and personal crisis led her to consume up to 30 drinks in a single sitting. 

Now in recovery for three years, she is speaking out to warn parents and young people about the dangers of normalising alcohol. In a social media testimony, Raey disclosed that she started drinking at a very young age, largely because her father owned a bar and she had easy access to alcohol. She admitted that for years, she did not even classify alcohol as a drug.

“I started drinking when I was young, and I actually didn’t know alcohol is a drug that’s the truth. I thought alcohol is something people do for leisure,” Raey said.

She cautioned parents about the consequences of drinking in front of their children, noting that children will naturally want to experiment when they see adults appearing happy, relaxed, or more generous under the influence. “You look happy when you’re high. Maybe you’re easy to give money when you’re high. So they want to drink,” she warned.

By the time she was in primary school, Raey had already brought alcohol to school. In high school, she continued drinking heavily. She recalled that no adult ever called her out or confronted her about her drinking habits. “Nobody ever called me out and said I need to stop drinking this. I don’t know why people assume that I’ll figure it out anyway.”

Her drinking escalated into marriage, where her ex-husband told her plainly, “You drink too much, you know that, right?” While she tried to moderate, the collapse of her marriage drove her straight back to the bottle.b“When the marriage hit the rocks, the bottle was the solution,” she said.

At the peak of her addiction, Raey described consuming a bottle of whiskey, followed by another bottle of whiskey, chased with Jägermeister shots, and anywhere from 24 to 30 Heineken beers in a single sitting. She became a benchmark among drinking circles. “People used to use me as the benchmark. If you drink with that girl, you’re a hard hitter, my guy,” she recalled.

The turning point came when she began drinking alone silently and religiously every day. She could not sleep if she was not intoxicated. She could not function at events without taking several shots first. By 2018 and 2019, she realised she could not stop, even when she wanted to. “When I try to stop, I’m so bad, I can’t talk, I’m fidgety, I’m shaky. I get nightmares. People chasing you, crazy nightmares. If you’ve had good alcohol, you know what I’m talking about.”

She admitted that even now, three years into recovery, she is not immune to temptation. The smell of whiskey, she said, “makes me want to throw a party.” She avoids specific triggers and does not claim to be strong on her own. “I’m not strong, guys. I tell people I’m really, really not that strong. So it’s work in progress. It’s work in progress.”

She credits God for taking away her desire to drink and for sustaining her recovery. “I used to be one of those chicks who’d say, ‘I’ll never quit alcohol. I would rather die. I’ll never date a man who doesn’t drink.’ Lo and behold, I cannot date a man who drinks. But who is like the Lord?”