“For as long as I can remember, I have had the urge to continue drinking once I started. Not having an off switch. Feeling a compulsion to be the last to leave, to not miss out on any and every moment of drinking once I’d started.

I’d finish work early afternoon, then go straight to the pub. Maybe that’s not too unusual, but I wouldn’t leave till close. Every. Single. Day. This urge to ‘cram’ things in life is a trait which I’ve never understood. In fact, until recently I had not tried.

When I got into my early 30s, I stopped smoking and started running. I read Allen Carr’s ‘Easy Way to Stop Smoking’ book and it was exciting. I was losing weight and feeling positive.

So I read his book on controlling alcohol. I stopped drinking, became ultra fit and lost around 7 stone. I was running marathons and triathlons. I had new positive obsessions. Then I got complacent. I had ‘one day on it’.

Over the next few years I kidded myself, moderating. In fact, I did pretty well at it. But I had a strict fitness routine that I was into.

So the drinking was always there; it just had a stronger nemesis in fitness. Then it got worse. The drinking increased and the fitness lapsed. I was desperate to go into rehab.

After rehab, I stopped drinking for 6 months. Got in great shape again…then I had another day on it. I knew it was an error. I knew I shouldn’t. But I’d made a promise to friends to go to an event.

My friends even said to me I didn’t have to, but I convinced them. That was the start of the slipperiest slope.

From that moment, in my mind, I was ‘always stopping soon’. So that gave me the excuse in my head to blindly go for it. I’d tried the moderating for years. The time limits in the pub. The being home by 6 pm. It felt like hell.

When COVID hit, I crossed the boundary of drinking at home. I’d never done it. I always came home smashed from the pub but not continued. Now I was doing both. Sitting up till 7 am just drinking. Astonishing. My poor wife.

The final straw came when I took an overdose of pills. Whatever I could find. I remember very little. I woke up in the hospital over a day later. But I was alive.

It was too much now. For my wife. I could see it was too much. That was the ledge I had to fall off to say ‘Never again’.

Sobriety is tough at times. Getting through 1 day, 3 days, 7 days… all milestones which change our body and mind. But it does get easier.

Sobriety can give you that freedom.

Sure, life is not always a bed of roses in a colorful garden, but at least it gives you the opportunity to pop out on a Saturday afternoon to go shopping for seeds to plant. Not to mention the energy to plant them and tend to the garden!

Quite simply, I’m alive because I don’t drink. For so many of us, sobriety is the only choice.

Every one of us has our own different reasons to be sober, but we are all in the same boat! Some with different oars and paddling techniques and whatever else we use to propel ourselves along. Being sober allows us to live our lives not trapped in that boat, but free to swim and jump and run around on dry land! Alcohol holds us back. Being sober can only propel us forward, to wherever we want to go!"