Patricia Heaton can pinpoint the moment she decided to stop drinking alcohol for good three years ago.

The “Everybody Loves Raymond” star spoke with Elizabeth Vargas on the “Heart of the Matter” podcast about why she chose sobriety after her drinking had been gradually increasing, and the embarrassing scene with her family that cemented her decision.

Heaton, 63, was in Nashville visiting with three of her four sons, who are all in their 20s, when she said she bought a couple 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 said. “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.

“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.”

The verbal flub 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,” she continued. “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.'”

Before that moment, Heaton had already seen herself potentially becoming an alcoholic “down the road.” A day earlier, she already had been seriously thinking about quitting.

“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 said.

“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.”