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Everybody Loves Raymond star Patricia Heaton recently spoke with Elizabeth Vargas on the "Heart of the Matter" podcast about her sobriety. Her drinking had been gradually increasing, which ultimately led to an "embarrassing" incident with her grown-up sons and, eventually, led her to choose sobriety. Heaton was in Nashville visiting three of her four sons, who were all in their 20s. She brought a couple of bottles of wine for the gathering. "We drank while we were making dinner. We drank while we were eating dinner. We drank while we cleaned up. And then we were drinking while we were all playing this board game," she explains. Patricia Heaton gets open and honest about her sobriety EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND, Patricia Heaton, (Season 1, 1996), 1996-2005. © CBS / Courtesy: Everett Collection "There were like 10 of us there: three of my sons, and then their friends. And I was just filling my glass with red wine throughout the five or six hours that we were together. I don’t know how many glasses it was, and I felt completely sober and fine." RELATED: CBS Wanted ‘Hotter’ Actress To Play Wife On ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ "I was making a joke to the table, and I started saying, 'You know, in our family it’s a tradition…' And I could not pronounce the word 'tradition.' And I tried three times, and I couldn’t say the word. And I can’t even mispronounce it for you the way that I was mispronouncing it. I can’t remember." She felt like her brain was just wasting away 13 January 2019 - Santa Monica, California - Patricia Heaton. The 24th Annual Critics' Choice Awards held at Barker Hangar. Photo Credit: Birdie Thompson/AdMedia It was this verbal mess-up that caused her to rethink her relationship with alcohol. "And my son at the end of the table says, 'Oh great, mom. You can’t even talk.' And I was so humiliated in front of my sons, and their friends... And God knows that that’s all it takes for me — for that kind of sense of their mom looking drunk in front of them." "But also, I thought, 'I feel fine. What is happening in my brain? What is the alcohol doing to my brain where the synapses are misfiring to the point where I can’t say this word? And I’m trying to say it and I can’t say it.' It’s almost like having a stroke or something. And it shook me up. And I thought, 'That’s it. That’s it.'" That's truly when Patricia Heaton decided her sobriety was more important than a glass of wine. She truly felt like she was drinking too much, even before that incident LOS ANGELES - SEP 15: Patricia Heaton at the 2018 Television Industry Advocacy Awards at the Sofitel Los Angeles on September 15, 2018 in Beverly Hills, CA / Carrie Nelson/ImageCollect Even before that moment, Heaton admits that she saw herself potentially becoming an alcoholic "down the road." And even so, a day earlier, she had already been toying with the idea of quitting drinking. "And there were a couple factors. Like my boys are in their 20s, it’s going to be at least probably 10 years before there’s a possibility of grandchildren, God willing," she says. "That would make me around 73. So, I just thought, I need to have my brain ... It’s going anyway, I don’t want to add to it with the alcohol. So, I need to have my brain clean so I can be present if, God willing, I should get grandchildren in my 70s. And I also just felt like I am just drinking too much." She's been three years sober EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND, (from left): Patricia Heaton, Ray Romano (with Sawyer/Sullivan Sweeten), (Season 3), 1996-2005. © CBS / Courtesy: Everett Collection Drinking had become a pretty normal occurrence. She found herself automatically grabbing a drink when it was 5 pm and there wasn't anything going on the next day. It was beginning to become a regular thing when out to eat as well.\ "And so, I really started looking forward to drinking, and thinking about it in a way that I hadn’t before, when everything else was taken away. If we went out to dinner, I would have two cocktails before the meal, and then at least two glasses of wine, and then maybe an aperitif. And if I was with really good friends that I knew well, I would have three cocktails before dinner." The first day she decided to never drink again, she was actually out to breakfast with one of her sober friends. "And I happened to be having breakfast the next day with one of these sober friends. And I said, 'Well, you’re the first person I’m telling this to, but I’m … this is my first day of never drinking again,'" she said. "And she was so shocked. She said, 'What happened? I was just at lunch with you when you were downing prosecco.' I told her the incident, and we both kind of laughed, and she told me all these of her own stories. And that’s three years ago July."