Melissa Doyle thought her friend had the perfect life. Then she posted an open letter on Facebook.

The following is an excerpt from 15 Seconds to Brave written by Melissa Doyle, where she shares the stories of some of the most resilient people she has ever met.

I had no idea my friend was a raging alcoholic. No one did. In fact Juli Ogilvy’s life had always looked like a particularly sunny place to me. Married to a world-class golfer, she had an access-all-areas pass to every privilege the A-list had to offer: year-round travel, first-class seats, red-carpet events, five-star hotels and the opportunity to rub shoulders with the rich, powerful and famous. It never entered my head that hers could be a lonely world of pain and self-destruction.

We first met at a golf tournament in Coolum, Queensland, in December 2006. At the time my husband, John, was working for the Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) and her husband, Geoff Ogilvy, was one of the event’s star attractions. The tournament was one of the few on the calendar where players mixed business and pleasure – most of them brought their wives and children. We’d gather in the evening sun after play had finished for woodfired pizzas as the kids ran amok.

I found Juli to be fabulous company: intelligent, warm and funny. Her bubbly personality glistened from behind a set of dazzling blue eyes and a beautiful smile. She seemed to be ‘living the dream’.

Fast forward to 2010 and Juli had three babies under the age of four. The demands of domestic life had yanked her off the glamorous merry-go-round of the PGA Tour and now a more mundane and isolated existence was underway – for her at least. While Juli slogged it out at home, exhausted and knee-deep in nappies, Geoff continued to strut the world stage they used to dance upon together.

Feeling increasingly ostracised and resentful, Juli looked around for a distraction, which slowly morphed into a chemical ritual as she tried to flatten waves of emotional pain that welled up inside her. It started with a glass of wine and could easily have ended in her death.

For years the world around her continued to turn, oblivious to the silent crisis unfolding in Juli’s life. Then, in October 2017, she finally sent up a distress flare. I was absently thumbing through my social media feed when I saw it – her open letter to the universe. 

‘I am an alcoholic...’ it began.

Those four words stopped me in my tracks. They made me cry for Juli but they made me so proud of her, too. I told her I’d be honoured if she one day allowed me to share her story.

It was eight minutes to midnight on Sunday 30 April 2017 when Juli teetered on the brink of a life-altering moment. She’d collapsed into bed having drunk a bottle of wine, a bottle of champagne and an entire bottle of vodka, with only her demons for company. Even by her steadily dropping standards it was an appalling amount. As the room spun out of control Juli pulled out her phone and managed to snap a photo of her bedside alarm clock – showing 11.52 pm – and wondered whether she’d drink on the plane the next morning.

‘This will be your last drink ever,’ she promised herself as the deviant thought entered her head.

‘No!’ her demons snapped. ‘Who cares if you show up drunk? You’re already a drunk!’

The morning would bring the first of May – the date Juli had chosen to begin her recovery. She’d booked herself on a flight from her home in Phoenix, Arizona, to stay with her mother in Texas to dry out. By the time the alarm tore her from inebriated sleep, a fundamental shift had occurred. There would be no drinking on the plane.

‘I woke up that morning knowing I had to change my life,’ Juli tells me. ‘Something in me just said, “Girl, you’ve got to save yourself. You’ve just got to.”’

Image: Penguin Books Australia.

15 Seconds of Brave is available for purchase here.

Feature Image: Nick Leary/Supplied.

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