Otis and Sarah Frizzell at home. Sarah speaks about how she ditched the booze after trying to drink herself to death. Photo / Dean Purcell
This story was first published in June 2024.
Two years ago, a drunken Sarah Frizzell, wife of artist Otis Frizzell, hid a ‘dirty little secret’ that nearly led her to lose everything, including her marriage. In this exclusive interview, she tells Carolyne Meng-Yee why she fell into the booze trap and how she got out of it.
Sarah Frizzell was blind drunk and bleeding when she was admitted to Auckland Hospital’s emergency department in late December 2021.
Desperate to find the tequila her husband had hidden, she crawled underneath their house and shredded her knees on broken glass.
She found it, drank it all, and fell on top of the coffee table, cracking two of her ribs.
At her bedside, Otis gave her an ultimatum: “Quit drinking or I will leave you.”
It didn’t work. A few months later Sarah was back in A&E trying to drink herself to death.
“I’d had it – I didn’t want to live anymore and went on a three-day bender. It was devastating for Otis to see me like that. I remember feeling angry when he abandoned me and left me to die.
“I was ashamed and scared, then a moment of lucidity shook me to my senses. I decided I didn’t want to die and it was at that moment I knew I needed help.”
Eventually, alcohol consumed Sarah and Otis, who says he couldn’t handle it, and left.
“Alcohol had wrecked her. I thought I had let her down. She was taking pills with vodka to see if that would kill her. At one point she had a knife, she was like a stranger. I don’t know if she wanted to hurt me or hurt herself, I didn’t care anymore and thought she can f***ing kill herself. I was done.”
Two years later on a crisp autumnal morning, the scene is very different.
The loved-up couple greet us with warm hugs, welcoming us into their 1920s Californian bungalow in Auckland’s Western Springs with their two cats, Agatha and Atticus.
Otis, 53, who looks just like a younger version of his celebrated pop artist father Dick Frizzell, warns the photographer lumbered with camera gear not to trip over the boxes of tacos on the porch waiting to be delivered.
The first thing you see in the lounge is a Frizzell original: a gigantic red tomato that Otis’ parents, Dick and Judy, grew and Otis painted. On the other wall is BEHAVE – the first Weston Frizzell print – the collaborative identity of Otis and fellow artist Mike Weston. Otis says it’s a “piss-take on bulls*** politicians”.
Sarah, 42, is perched on the arm of a squishy sofa, dressed in a crisp white linen shirt, XOS heart-shaped earrings and rainbow-coloured leg warmers. She seems slight for a woman who is larger than life, and speaks with clarity about how her world turned blurry.
The award-winning former copywriter and art director, who co-owns The Lucky Taco food truck with her husband, told the Herald alcohol has been ingrained throughout her life – and going against the grain was challenging for her.
Plagued by anxiety, Sarah says she is nervous about sharing her demons. They date back to childhood when she grew up in Prescot, a small northwest town between Liverpool and Manchester.
Her mother, Jeanette Brown, was a legal secretary and her father, Phil Longworth, a factory worker.
“My dad liked to drink and gamble, which probably was the demise of their marriage. He is creative, a dreamer and Mum is a practical hard worker – so they clashed a lot. Dad likes living in the moment – I get that from him.”
On their last family holiday to Ibiza, when Sarah was 12, she was critically injured in a boating accident, smashing her face against a rock, losing consciousness – and all her front teeth.
“My tie-dyed swimsuit was covered in blood, and I needed reconstructive surgery. I didn’t get a proper bridge of teeth ‘til I was 18 – going to school with no teeth was f***ing awful. I was teased a lot.”
The accident left Sarah with crippling panic attacks and a fear of being alone in the dark.
Sarah graduated with a BA Hons in visual communications from the University of Edinburgh and secured her first job in an advertising agency.
At 21, Sarah’s hard-working, hard-partying, drinking life fell apart and she suffered a breakdown. She moved home where her mother and stepfather, Ron, took care of her.
“I was a zombie,” she says. “I was unable to function and lay on the couch for three weeks. I don’t know how I got out of that state.”
In the UK, Sarah met Viv – a Kiwi who became her close friend and flatmate. New Zealand was a country she wanted to visit, so she grabbed the chance when offered a job at DDB advertising agency in Auckland.
Sarah and Otis met on a blind date in 2007 set up by Otis’ older brother, Josh – a film and commercial director – and his wife, Janine.
Otis says he was drawn to Sarah’s beauty, wit and ambition.
“If she’s into something she goes all in. I’m an artist’s bum and she had a well-paid advertising job, so now there was a real breadwinner in the family. The Lucky Taco started when she left advertising. If people say, ‘you can’t do that’, she’s like, ‘I’ll show you’.”
Four years into their relationship, Otis proposed while they were holidaying in Samoa.
“It was so romantic; he had a ring designed for me. As the sun was setting, he got down on one knee and asked, ‘Baby, will you marry me’?”
They married in Te Awanga in Hawke’s Bay in front of family and friends from the UK and Scotland, and danced to Ladi6 and Tiki Taane.
They opened The Lucky Taco food truck after their honeymoon in Mexico and California. But while they worked tirelessly to build their business, Sarah’s stress and anxiety quietly escalated.
At first, booze took the edge off. Then gradually, she became reliant on it.
“I never thought I had a problem. When I first came of age to drink it was like a magic potion: a couple of drinks, my anxiety would disappear and I’d feel bubbly and feel like me again. But after a while, alcohol takes that away. On the outside everything seemed great, but I was desperately lonely and felt isolated on the inside. I hid it well.”
Growing up, alcohol was normalised, but Sarah’s relationship with it was fraught. As a student, she had worked in pubs and bars where alcohol flowed freely, and as a copywriter in ad agencies DDB, Colenso and Saatchi & Saatchi, she says she drank “like one of the boys”.
“You had to be tough, but I was delicate and fragile on the inside. You go along with it and get caught up in that culture. I knew it was becoming a problem, but I was kind of lying to myself.”
Being geographically distant from her family also took an emotional toll on Sarah. In a matter of months her mother had a heart attack and was diagnosed with a brain tumour – then Sarah’s maternal grandparents - Joan and Jim Taylor - died that same year.
Meanwhile, business was stressful and there were times the pair worried they were about to lose everything. “No wonder I took to the bottle!” Sarah says.
Sarah says going alcohol-free wasn’t something she ever considered until her life started seriously unravelling during the global pandemic in 2021.
Happy hour got earlier and earlier.
“Covid was a catalyst. It was a way to soothe myself and black everything out. Hangovers were non-existent - I’d surpassed that stage. I was desperately lonely on the inside, but I hid it well.”
Sarah and Otis were essential workers during lockdown, delivering taco kits around Auckland. Their day began at 5am – blitzing cabbage, packaging marinated chicken and tortillas – and finished with a well-deserved margarita at 2pm.
Drinking was a reward for working hard but as lockdown continued, boredom crept in. Otis says their “happy hour” started earlier and earlier.
“We were buggered after a long day and it was like ‘f*** it there’s nothing else to do’ so we’d have a couple of beers, a couple of margaritas and maybe a bottle of wine each every day. That’s like a low-level drinking problem but the slippery slope got really slippery.”
Post-lockdown they pared back the booze and went sober for a month.
“We did that quite easily. The weird thing was, after that, we’d reward ourselves for not drinking by drinking and getting pissed. We danced around the problem by drinking less, then drinking more, having a month off then we’d get back into bad habits,” Otis says.
Over time he noticed Sarah was drinking at a different pace from him and he’d find her “pissed” after two beers. He also became suspicious when she started chewing gum and regularly brushing her teeth.
“I’d think, ‘she can’t be pissed after two drinks, and she’s never chewed gum before’.
“I sensed something was eating away at her and anyone who has dealt with someone in the throngs of alcoholism realises it starts with strange reasons to pick a fight. I thought ‘this is not like her at all, this is a weird version of the girl I love, my wife.’ I thought ‘f*** it I’m over this bulls***’ so I would drink more, and we were feeding into each other’s s***.”
At the height of her addiction Sarah says she squirrelled away bottles of spirits around the house.
“I had a bottle near the laundry, vodka was in the office, it was an ingredient for the hot sauce, it was cheap and nasty, but I’d give that a go because nothing mattered. I’d hide them, forget where, find them, and wonder why they were there,” Sarah says.
While Otis watched television, Sarah would swig tequila from a bottle she’d hidden in the bedroom.
“I’d hear a clunk in the room then find her asleep with half-a bottle of vodka,” says Otis. “Every time I pulled her up about it, she would get angry and defensive.”
Out of their depth, the couple started looking for professional help.
“The first place smelled of mince, had tatty couches and weird god pictures on the wall. That scared Sarah sober for a bit. We got rid of alcohol in the house for two months but it didn’t last,” says Otis.
Sarah’s lowest point, was also Otis’ tipping point. He didn’t know who to turn to, or where to go for help.
“I was so f***ing lost. You get sucked up in the tornado of s***. Sarah was so broken, and I didn’t talk to my mates about it. Not through shame, but because I thought I was smart enough to figure it out by myself but you’re not. You can’t force someone to get help.”
Eventually Otis told his parents, who paid for Sarah to stay at Phoenix Foundation, a private drug and alcohol rehab centre in West Harbour.
“It was surreal like – is this really happening? We are white, middle class, this doesn’t happen to people like us – we are far too normal and straight. I was lucky Mum and Dad had the cash to pay for rehab. I thought, ‘imagine if you were a single mum and alcohol got its claws into you’.”
Sarah clicked with the founder, Jess Jones, who she now considers “family”. At rehab, Sarah had therapy and counselling, slept a lot, walked and watched horror movies with Jess. She also finished writing The Lucky Taco Cookbook, which she co-authored with Otis.
“The most important thing for me was to be seen and understood, not judged,” says Sarah. “I think that’s why people are too afraid to ask for help – it’s all fear-based. Jess saw me.”
The last time Sarah craved a shot of tequila was her first year sober.
“The book launch was really challenging but I got through it. A friend sent me photos later and it was nice to relive the night with clarity. I looked at my face and I was genuinely smiling. I was proud of that person I saw; I was proud of her that night – without taking anything. I was proud of me.”
Sarah has recently celebrated her second “soberversary”– the “new” Sarah loves yoga, running and baking. She confesses to having Fomo occasionally when she’s out but doesn’t miss the “hangxiety” of being hungover and anxious.
“You grieve a version of you that no longer exists,” she says “and it can get quite lonely but no lonelier than when alcohol had a hold. I am grateful I went through such a s*** time and hit rock bottom – to be able to have what I have now.”
Sarah has learned to forgive herself and apologised to the family and friends she has hurt. “As hard as it is for the person suffering alcohol abuse, it’s equally hard for the person that loves them.”
As Otis leaves for work he kisses Sarah and says, “I love you”.
“Otis is the person I hurt the most and for that, I am truly sorry, he knows that. He is my best friend and soul mate. We love each other and luckily, we got through it.”
In early May, Sarah and Otis went to Melbourne. The invitation came from American singer/songwriter Melissa Etheridge, whom Otis met when he was her tour driver in Auckland 20 years ago.
They went to Melbourne Zoo; Sarah hadn’t seen a snake before.
In front of the reptile enclosure Linda, Melissa’s wife, noticed a snake had shed its skin. She linked arms with Sarah and said, “This is symbolic for you right now. You’re sparkling, you are shedding everything from the past and finding out who you really are.”
Carolyne Meng-Yee is an Auckland-based investigative journalist. She worked for the Herald on Sunday in 2007-2011 and rejoined the Herald in 2016. She was previously a commissioner at TVNZ and an award-winning current affairs producer for 60 Minutes, 20/20 and Sunday.
'You don’t want to be doom and gloom your whole life. That's just a miserable way to live'