When alcohol addiction became part of my life
“The surgeon saw me and he basically said, if you don't stop drinking, you are going to die and I'm not going to do any surgery on you.
It was a wake-up call to think, do you know what, you actually need to get some help now.”
It started probably when I was 15 - around 26 years ago. I left school a year early with no GCSEs and went to college, where I met a group of people that I just seemed to fit in with. They were older, and they used to go to the pub in breaks or after college and I just tagged along and started drinking with them.
I ended up getting married quite young, but we split up and my daughter was taken away from me. When that happened, I started drinking to excess.
Although throughout my life it did calm down a bit, it was always there. At worst, I was at my brother's wedding. I had drunk so much that I sat outside against a wall and fell asleep for around half an hour. When I woke up, I went back inside to start drinking again. I lost count at 20 pints.
How grief and isolation fuelled my alcohol dependence
In 2023 I lost my dad, which had a real impact on my mental health - I just started drinking more and more. I ended up leaving my second wife and moved into a house share on my own.
There was nobody to supervise me, so it just increased and increased to the point where I'd wake up on a morning and have four pints of cider, go back to bed for a couple of hours, and then I'd wake up again and I'd drink another 12 litres of cider on a night. Go back to bed, rinse repeat every day until the morning that I woke up with bright yellow eyes and ended up hospitalised and told that I had decompensated cirrhosis of the liver.
Being a functioning alcoholic and losing control
I guess looking back, I was a functioning alcoholic. I'd drink on a night, I'd wake up the next morning and just go to work as normal. It never impacted my work until I started a new job in a call centre, and I noticed that I was waking up and I couldn't go to work without a few drinks in me. I needed it just to face life at that point.
I ended up losing my job because I'd had so many days off with poor mental health. I'd wake up in the morning and I just couldn't face it. So, I'd phone in sick and then I'd just pick up a drink. That was probably the beginning of the end really.
When I lost my job, I had a thousand pound overdraft and I had a credit card. I just run myself into major, major debt, which I'm still paying off now. And I was just drinking the cheapest thing I could find.
A life-threatening liver disease diagnosis
When I ended up hospitalised, the hospital brought somebody in from SDAS to talk to me.
I'd like to say that was when it all got better, but at the point it didn't because 14 days in hospital, being told I was going to die and they weren't going to do anything to save my liver, I got out of the hospital and just picked up a drink again until one day something snapped inside me and just said enough is enough now.
That thing was I woke up with a hangover. That was something abnormal to me because I don't think I'd ever been sober enough to actually have a hangover in the last sort of three or four years. And yeah, that sort of hit me and it was like, right, this is it. That was sort of the start when it sort of clicked.
Starting recovery and overcoming relapse
I ended up abstinent for 40 days. had a relapse. But since that day I haven't looked back.
The support I got from SDAS was more personal than I expected it to be. It was people that really seemed to care. I felt listened to and I felt cared about for probably the first time in two years. I felt like somebody actually believed in me. And that made it, for me - it was more than just doing it for myself. It was like people believed in you - so you need to do it for them now as well.
You're not on your own anymore.
How addiction support services saved my life
I honestly believe that if SDAS wasn't here, I would now be dead. I used to wake up and think if I hadn't woken up, I'm in a room on my own where nobody ever sees me. They wouldn't have found me until they noticed the smell. I think I'd have just died in a room on my own. I genuinely believe that.
I'm 41.
Nobody thought I'd make 40.
Finding purpose through recovery
Two things that have sort of stuck with me since I started recovery. One is my key worker saying, one day I want you to be my boss. I can see you being my boss here.
The other thing is being told you're going to die and having not really achieved much in life, I don't want to leave without having helped people. And you know, you kind of want to go out with people saying you were all right. So yeah, I can see me 20, 30 years still being around trying to help people.
It's a legacy and it's also I don't want people to feel like I felt, if I can stop people feeling any kind of sadness, I'll do everything I can to do it. I became a big advocate for suicide awareness. And I've been through it myself multiple times. So, if I can carry that into helping people with addiction as well, because I know a lot of time it goes hand in hand, then I'll do it and just spend my life trying to help as many people as I can now.
Life after alcohol: Health, wellbeing and recovery
I feel free now, and much better in myself. Health-wise, I still want to get fitter - I’m frustrated my beer belly hasn’t gone, though I haven’t really tackled it yet. My next step in recovery is focusing on weight loss and exercise, and I finally feel ready for that.
Drinking had become part of my identity - I didn’t feel like myself around others without it. I was afraid of who I might be without alcohol, and I used it to numb emotional pain.
Mentally, I do feel better. I've got a lot of underlying mental health problems, but I'm now able to tackle those because I'm alcohol free, and people are now more inclined to help. So, I’m on the right path.
My Independence Day
I was actually released from hospital on the 4th of July, my Independence Day.