Alcohol Was The Only Thing That Quieted My Anxiety — So I Drank Until I Blacked Out

Rise Above with Kevin Lanning · Sep 20, 2026 · 1h 15m

From the outside, Zac Spowart had every reason to be fine — loving parents, a disciplined home, good grades, a heart-surgeon father. But from around 13, he was being crushed by an anxiety so severe he was physically sick, throwing up before school with no idea why. Then he found alcohol, and for the first time the chaos in his head went quiet. That relief became the problem.

Zac is honest that his isn't a story of a traumatic childhood — it's proof that addiction doesn't discriminate, and that what's happening inside someone's head can be enough. Through high school and college he chased that…