After Hours with Jimmy Thistle

Episode 52 | Alicia Butler — 173 Days Sober, a Viral Day One & Why ‘You Don’t Have a Problem’ Are the Most Dangerous Words in Recovery

In this warm, funny and deeply honest episode, Jimmy sits down with Alicia Butler — the woman whose raw, tearful Day One Instagram video went viral and has been inspiring people to get sober ever since — for a conversation about grey area drinking, gym culture, champagne budgets and the slow creep of something that nearly cost her everything.

Alicia grew up in Darlington, County Durham — a good childhood, loving family, no obvious trauma. Her uncle was an alcoholic, and she wonders now about addictive genetics, but at the time she just thought she liked champagne. What began as an after-work culture in London — where even people who lived an hour away never went home, they just stayed in the pub — slowly became a bottle of wine a night at home. Then two bottles. Then champagne instead, because she preferred it. Then Aldi started selling Prosecco for £9.99 a bottle, and that was that.

The creeping nature of Alicia’s drinking is what makes her story so relatable. She was still going to the gym. Still working. Still functioning. Her nutritionist kept telling her to cut down on alcohol and she kept refusing — so instead she worked out a calorie budget that excluded food so she could keep her bottle of wine a night. She’d hide bottles in the boot of her car at parties so nobody else could drink them. She’d sometimes finish the last inch of last night’s bottle in the morning. And still, somewhere in her head, she didn’t think she had a problem.

Then she went to an alcohol support group. She told them she was drinking a bottle of wine a night, sometimes two. They laughed. “That’s nothing,” they said. “You don’t have a problem.” She walked out thinking she had a green light.

The piece of paper she found during a clear-out said it all: written in 2017, it was a mood board with a list of goals, and at the top: Avoid booze. She’d known for seven years. Her mum had asked her to stop drinking on her deathbed fourteen years ago. She still couldn’t manage two days.

The suicidal episodes — leaving the house with a knife, lying by the canal, smashing a picture frame over her husband’s head — she hadn’t connected to the alcohol. It was just her emotions. Just her anxiety. Just a bad night. Until she did.

What finally worked was Instagram. Day One. She sat in her bedroom, pressed record, cried, and uploaded it. It went viral. Suddenly there were thousands of people saying me too. She couldn’t go back — not just because she didn’t want to, but because she’d told everyone, and the accountability was the lock on the door.

Now approaching 200 days sober, Alicia is a different person: sleeping well, managing stress, driving herself home from parties at midnight with a cup of tea in mind, and posting every day for the people who are still on Day One wondering if it’s worth it.

Find Alicia on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/champagnetochange

David Nutt - Drink:

https://amzn.to/3PMPfEi

Louisa Evans - Becoming A Sober Rebel:

https://amzn.to/4wYkDAd

My Instagram is:

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And you can find all my other links at:

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Buy me a coffee…

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Alcohol Explained - William Porter

https://a.co/d/0854fIb6

This Naked Mind - Annie Grace

https://a.co/d/0gy6mT9Z

A Million Little Pieces - James Frey

https://a.co/d/0jdcIjGb

Donate:

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Enjoyed After Hours? Follow, review and share the podcast!

Instagram: @thesoberthistle

Coaching: https://thistlefreedomcoaching.com

Support: https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Books:

Alcohol Explained: https://amzn.to/4uMmkyB

This Naked Mind: https://amzn.to/4eC6L6z

A Million Little Pieces: https://amzn.to/44jOV3i

Donate:

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 51 | Jimmy Thistle — The Host’s Full Story: From Vodka at Dawn to 5 Years Sober on the Isle of Man

After 50 episodes of interviewing others, Jimmy Thistle finally sits in the guest chair — interviewed by his wife Jen — and tells his full story for the first time on his own podcast.

Jimmy grew up in Eaglesham, a village outside Glasgow, in a mostly happy childhood with an older brother, a mum who worked hard, and a dad who left when he was six. No major trauma. No clear reason. Just a 14-year-old who had his first proper drink with his brother one night and loved it immediately — the confidence, the escapism, the feeling. From there it was Diamond White in the woods, vodka and iron bru, and a creeping realisation that while his friends had an off switch, he simply didn’t.

Through Aberdeen, London, Cambridge, York and the Isle of Man, Jimmy’s story is a masterclass in what the recovery community calls geographicals — the belief that moving somewhere new will fix what follows you everywhere. Bar work, bank jobs, photography, sales roles. A DUI. A photography course where he got triple distinction. A pub he took over near Sheffield that ended with the police, a friend crashing his car, the owners taking his laptop as collateral, and him driving home without a back windscreen. A codependent relationship where they were both drinking a bottle of whiskey each per night. A spontaneous midnight drive to Stansted, a drunk flight to Mallorca, a mugging that cost him his laptop and camera, and a rescue by his brother.

The final stretch was the darkest. Drinking vodka before he’d opened his eyes in the morning. Sitting under the Humber Bridge in his car, telling his partner he was going to work. Losing job after job. An intervention by his family. Twenty-eight days in rehab — three days before COVID lockdown. Fifty-five days sober. Then back on it with a vengeance. His friend locked him in the house and he found a hidden door behind a bookcase. He bought alcohol-free beer as a cover story in case someone knocked. His mum measured 40ml of vodka eight times a day on doctor’s orders while he slipped out between doses to top up from the shop.

Finally, a hospital detox on the Isle of Man with Librium. Then 100 meetings in 100 days. Then a cottage in the hills, a gardening business, a photography revival, a podcast, peer mentoring, sober coaching training — and Jen.

This is Jimmy’s story. And now, nearly six years on, he’s never felt more certain of one thing: he’s done.

My Instagram is:

https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmy

And you can find all my other links at:

https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle

Buy me a coffee…

https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Alcohol Explained - William Porter

https://a.co/d/0854fIb6

This Naked Mind - Annie Grace

https://a.co/d/0gy6mT9Z

A Million Little Pieces - James Frey

https://a.co/d/0jdcIjGb

Donate:

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https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/

Enjoyed After Hours? Follow, review and share the podcast!

Instagram: @thesoberthistle

Coaching: https://thistlefreedomcoaching.com

Support: https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Books:

Alcohol Explained: https://amzn.to/4uMmkyB

This Naked Mind: https://amzn.to/4eC6L6z

A Million Little Pieces: https://amzn.to/44jOV3i

Donate:

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https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/

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Even more amazing and incredible guests coming your way in 2026!

From heartbreaking stories to triumphs and hope, you wont want to miss out!

Get ready on New Year's Day 2026 for the first episode drop!

Support the show

My Instagram is:
https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmy

And you can find all my other links at:
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Buy me a coffee…
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Alcohol Explained - William Porter

https://a.co/d/0854fIb6

This Naked Mind - Annie Grace

https://a.co/d/0gy6mT9Z

A Million Little Pieces - James Frey

https://a.co/d/0jdcIjGb

Donate:

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https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/

Enjoyed After Hours? Follow, review and share the podcast!

Instagram: @thesoberthistle

Coaching: https://thistlefreedomcoaching.com

Support: https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Books:

Alcohol Explained: https://amzn.to/4uMmkyB

This Naked Mind: https://amzn.to/4eC6L6z

A Million Little Pieces: https://amzn.to/44jOV3i

Donate:

https://motiv8.im/donate/

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Episode 50 | Will Gordon — Two Transplants, a Perforated Stomach & a 4% Survival Rate: The Season Finale That Will Stay With You

In this staggering, life-affirming season finale, Jimmy sits down with Will Gordon — host of the Will Power Podcast, former teacher, liver and kidney transplant recipient, and one of the most remarkable recovery stories in the English-speaking world.

Will grew up the youngest of four brothers in a high-achieving Irish Catholic family near Boston, Massachusetts. His father was a Hall of Fame hockey coach whose name carried serious weight in the community. Expectations were sky-high, failure was not an option, and Will — who secretly wanted to do stand-up comedy and be in plays — became a teacher instead, because that’s what Gordons did. He taught for 14 years.

It was teaching that broke him. Not the good teaching — the Montessori years he loved, the alternative high school kids who had reasons for being difficult. It was a Catholic middle school in the north end of Boston, crammed with behaviour kids, no staff rotation, no structure. By 2018 Will was racing to his car at 2:30pm every afternoon to chug straight vodka from a sports bottle just to stop the withdrawal shakes — not to get drunk, just to function. By the time COVID hit and he was teaching remotely from home, the drinking start time crept earlier and earlier until it was 11am.

His wife noticed first. In 2020, she took one look at his yellowing skin and eyes and made him see a doctor. Hepatitis of the liver. He was 32. The doctor told him: “You are either going to be back here or in a grave.” He got sober for 125 days — white-knuckling it, no support, no programme. Then a radio ad for pink lemonade vodka. A huge fight with his wife about money. A bottle hidden in a pile of clean laundry for four days. And then one day he opened it, and the second the alcohol touched his tongue he knew he’d just erased 125 days. He kept going.

By 2022 he had ballooned to 265 pounds — almost entirely from ascites, the fluid build-up caused by a failing liver. His skin was paper-yellow. His eyes were dark yellow. His feet were so swollen he needed specialist wide-fit shoes. He was filling giant 1.75-litre vodka handles into pre-prepared Gatorade bottles, hiding them around the apartment, behind cereal boxes, in his car. His wife had learned to smell every water bottle in the house. He was leaving for “work” every morning, driving 50 feet around the corner, parking on a side street, drinking alone until he passed out in the back seat, then driving back to the parking spot nine hours later.

Easter 2022. His wife took one look at him and drove him to hospital. His bilirubin was 32 — it should be 1. His MELD score was 40 out of 40 — the maximum. He was told he had two weeks to live. The hospital refused to transplant him: policy required six months of sobriety, and he was at four. Hospice was brought into the room. His father — who had never looked at Will with anything but expectation — couldn’t look at him at all.

Then a doctor who had told him there was nothing she could do made one call to a former colleague. At 6am the next morning, Will’s phone rang. He went in. He made his case — openly, honestly, weeping,

My Instagram is:

https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmy

And you can find all my other links at:

https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle

Buy me a coffee…

https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Alcohol Explained - William Porter

https://a.co/d/0854fIb6

This Naked Mind - Annie Grace

https://a.co/d/0gy6mT9Z

A Million Little Pieces - James Frey

https://a.co/d/0jdcIjGb

Donate:

https://motiv8.im/donate/

https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/

Enjoyed After Hours? Follow, review and share the podcast!

Instagram: @thesoberthistle

Coaching: https://thistlefreedomcoaching.com

Support: https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Books:

Alcohol Explained: https://amzn.to/4uMmkyB

This Naked Mind: https://amzn.to/4eC6L6z

A Million Little Pieces: https://amzn.to/44jOV3i

Donate:

https://motiv8.im/donate/

https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 49 | Beth — 4 Years Sober, the Book She Bought at 23 & Why She Built a Free Community for Women Who Can’t Afford Help

In this warm, funny and deeply relatable episode, Jimmy sits down with Beth — co-founder of the SOS Collective (Sober Online Sisters), TikTok sober advocate and four-years-sober mother of three from County Durham, now living on the edge of the New Forest in Southampton.

Beth grew up in a typical northeastern family where her dad went to the working men’s club on Sundays, came home half-cut, and that was simply how life was. As a child she hated the smell of alcohol so much it was a family joke. By 15 she was drinking Diamond White in the park and having the worst night of her life on New Year’s Eve — sick everywhere, white as a sheet, forced by her dad to sit up and suffer through midnight as punishment. It took years to actually get into drinking. Then it took over.

The tools were all there from an early age. At 23, still early in her Southampton life, lonely after university and dealing with the grief of losing her mum at 17, Beth walked into a bookshop and bought Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp. She filled in the addiction questionnaire at the front. She circled every single answer. She still has that same copy — the one with all the circles from 23, plus the ones from every time she went back to check again over the next two decades. Each time the score got worse.

She also went to AA at 23. Found it kind, welcoming — and immediately felt she didn’t belong because the woman sharing was drinking cough medicine, and Beth hadn’t got there yet. She left and didn’t go back for years. That one visit became her excuse: I went to AA and they basically said I was fine.

Through a high-powered BT career, a loneliness that drove her to drink alone every night in her smart Southampton flat, a marriage that bonded around drinking, a difficult divorce, an ADHD diagnosis that explained the dopamine-chasing and the boredom-drinking and the impulsivity — through all of it, Beth kept finding ways to pause and restart. She got pregnant twice partly because pregnancy was a built-in reason to stop. She got sober for ten months, genuinely proud of herself. Then her husband took her out for her birthday, ordered champagne, she had a glass, and within days she was back to two and a half bottles of wine a day.

COVID was the tipping point. Furloughed, in the inflatable hot tub, starting at 12 because it felt like a holiday, drinking through pub quiz Zooms while the influencers made 4pm wine feel glamorous. She was drinking amounts she’d never drunk before, hiding bottles, doing bin runs to Asda so the neighbours wouldn’t see the recycling.

Then a dinner party where nobody appreciated the meal she’d worked so hard on. She got drunk. Woke up the next day and thought: you can’t do that every single time someone upsets you. Found an online community of women by accident. Met Linda from Ireland, who became her unofficial sponsor and best friend. Started going to every online meeting available. The days added up.

Now four years sober, Beth has co-founded the SOS Collective — completely free, because the reason she nearly didn’t get help was that she wouldn’t spend mon

My Instagram is:

https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmy

And you can find all my other links at:

https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle

Buy me a coffee…

https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Alcohol Explained - William Porter

https://a.co/d/0854fIb6

This Naked Mind - Annie Grace

https://a.co/d/0gy6mT9Z

A Million Little Pieces - James Frey

https://a.co/d/0jdcIjGb

Donate:

https://motiv8.im/donate/

https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/

Enjoyed After Hours? Follow, review and share the podcast!

Instagram: @thesoberthistle

Coaching: https://thistlefreedomcoaching.com

Support: https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Books:

Alcohol Explained: https://amzn.to/4uMmkyB

This Naked Mind: https://amzn.to/4eC6L6z

A Million Little Pieces: https://amzn.to/44jOV3i

Donate:

https://motiv8.im/donate/

https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 48 | Kim (Sober Kimbo) — From Blackout at 14 to a Year Sober: The Canadian Dental Hygienist Who Lost Two Phones in Europe & Found AA in Nova Scotia

In this warm, funny and genuinely relatable episode, Jimmy sits down with Kim — aka Sober Kimbo on Instagram — a dental hygienist from Nova Scotia, Canada, who got her one-year anniversary just weeks before this episode aired. Her story spans blackout drinking at 14, a solo Europe trip that imploded spectacularly, a devastating breakup, a DUI, a coworker finding her drunk in bed, and finally walking into her first AA meeting brought by a man she didn’t know was sober — who turned out to be the same stranger who’d let her into an apartment building three in the morning months earlier.

Kim had her first drink at 14 — a water bottle full of vodka in a park — and immediately blacked out. She discovered two things that night: she didn’t react normally to alcohol, and she didn’t care. She and her sister both joked they were “allergic” to alcohol — it turned out Kim actually was. Neither the blackouts, nor the shame, nor the concern of everyone around her was ever enough to make her stop.

Through high school and then dental hygiene college in Montreal — where the drinking age is 18 and the bars were open to her from day one — Kim kept drinking every weekend, always more than anyone around her, always the one people assumed had been spiked. On her very first night at college, with her mum still in the room, she went out with strangers and came back so drunk that two concerned students knocked on her door the next morning to check she hadn’t been drugged. She told them that’s just what alcohol does to her.

The real crisis point came at 22 after a brutal breakup — her boyfriend told her not to come back to the condo they shared while she was home for a weekend visit. She spiralled hard: a week in bed with a box of wine, then a solo trip to Europe that fell apart almost immediately. She lost her phone in Berlin, bought a new one, lost that one the same night. She ended up stranded in Munich airport for two days without a phone, and flew home early through Iceland with a pint of vodka and an accidental business class upgrade. She landed with no memory of the flight, her ID cards mailed back to her by the airport weeks later.

The scrapes kept coming — more situations involving police, a DUI driving to her parents’ house after a bottle of wine on a night she was supposed to be working the next day. None of it was enough.

The end came last summer. A Friday night date — she drank a full mini vodka before he even picked her up, remembered nothing, didn’t show up for work on the Saturday. Her coworker came to her house, found her key in the unlocked car, let herself in and found Kim drunk in bed. She went back to work and told everyone. Kim kept drinking for two more days — cycling to the liquor store after her parents took her car keys, crashing her bike into the woods. When she finally woke up and looked at her phone she thought it was Monday. It was Tuesday.

She went to AA — brought by a man her friend had suggested, who turned out to be the same stranger who’d silently let her into an apartment building at 3am months earlier. She walke

My Instagram is:

https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmy

And you can find all my other links at:

https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle

Buy me a coffee…

https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Alcohol Explained - William Porter

https://a.co/d/0854fIb6

This Naked Mind - Annie Grace

https://a.co/d/0gy6mT9Z

A Million Little Pieces - James Frey

https://a.co/d/0jdcIjGb

Donate:

https://motiv8.im/donate/

https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/

Enjoyed After Hours? Follow, review and share the podcast!

Instagram: @thesoberthistle

Coaching: https://thistlefreedomcoaching.com

Support: https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Books:

Alcohol Explained: https://amzn.to/4uMmkyB

This Naked Mind: https://amzn.to/4eC6L6z

A Million Little Pieces: https://amzn.to/44jOV3i

Donate:

https://motiv8.im/donate/

https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 47 | Will Edwards — 1,360 Days Sober: The NHS Cardiac Instructor Who Quit Before It Became a Problem & Journals Everything

In this refreshingly different and genuinely thought-provoking episode, Jimmy sits down with Will Edwards — NHS cardiac exercise instructor, cold water therapy advocate, obsessive journaler and one of the most proactively sober people the podcast has ever featured. Will didn’t have a rock bottom. He didn’t lose a job, a relationship or a licence. He reached into his fridge for a beer after a stressful day, caught himself thinking I need this, and that single moment of clarity changed everything.

Will grew up on a council estate as the youngest child, his father gone before he could walk. His mum raised him alone, and by his early teens he was effectively the man of the house, growing up fast while his much older siblings had long since moved on. He started drinking in the fields after school like everyone else — the mate from the year above who looked old enough to get served, the 50p bottles of cider from the co-op — and drank through his twenties with a pattern that many would recognise: sporadic, rarely in the house, but when he went out, no off switch. He’d leave a club and wake up on a park bench four hours later. He’d walk home through rough parts of town without a thought. He’d have a few drinks a couple of times a year and end up not remembering getting home, regretting it for days.

It wasn’t daily. It wasn’t vodka at breakfast. But it was enough, once he started tracking it, to see a clear pattern: whenever he drank, his cold water therapy slipped. His journaling stopped. His reading dried up. His habits collapsed. And he knew exactly what those habits meant to him — because he’d spent the COVID lockdowns deliberately building them, one by one, as a scaffold for the life he wanted. He’d started cold water therapy after his friend Sam Phillips (Dare to Dip on Instagram) had been doing it. He’d started journaling. He’d started tracking everything. And every time he had a drink, the chart showed the same thing.

Then came the fridge moment. Stressed after kids’ bedtime hadn’t gone well, rubbish day at a rubbish job, hand reaching for a beer — and a thought: that’s probably not a healthy coping mechanism. Not a crisis. Just a question. And then, playing the tape forward: how arrogant to think this couldn’t happen to me. If there’s any chance it could, why run that gauntlet? He set himself a goal to do a year without alcohol. Christmas Day 2021 was his last drink. He never went back.

Now 1,360+ days sober, Will does a 5am ice bath every morning, runs half marathons, works with cardiac rehab patients in the NHS, and journals every single day across what must be his seventh or eighth volume. He tracks gratitude, goals, hydration, steps, cold plunge, exercise — in a system so simple it takes less than ten minutes but has changed everything. He is, in his own words, someone who felt like an imposter in the recovery space for a long time — because he wasn’t an addict. But he’s come to understand that that’s exactly why his voice matters.

You can find Will on Instagram at:

https://www.instagram.com/willedwardswellness

My Instagram is:

https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmy

And you can find all my other links at:

https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle

Buy me a coffee…

https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Alcohol Explained - William Porter

https://a.co/d/0854fIb6

This Naked Mind - Annie Grace

https://a.co/d/0gy6mT9Z

A Million Little Pieces - James Frey

https://a.co/d/0jdcIjGb

Donate:

https://motiv8.im/donate/

https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/

Enjoyed After Hours? Follow, review and share the podcast!

Instagram: @thesoberthistle

Coaching: https://thistlefreedomcoaching.com

Support: https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Books:

Alcohol Explained: https://amzn.to/4uMmkyB

This Naked Mind: https://amzn.to/4eC6L6z

A Million Little Pieces: https://amzn.to/44jOV3i

Donate:

https://motiv8.im/donate/

https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 46 | Jen Hirst — 12.5 Years Sober: The Minnesota Coach Who Drank Mouthwash, Hid in the Sober Closet for Four Years & Built Lighthouse Sobriety

In this warm, searingly honest and deeply relatable episode, Jimmy sits down with Jen Hirst — founder of Lighthouse Sobriety, sober coach, and one of the most open voices in the US recovery community — whose story spans a perfectionist childhood, a devastating breakup that planted the seed, a wedding morning she drank through just to survive, and years of mouthwash, rotating liquor stores and hidden bottles before April 24th 2013 changed everything.

Jen grew up in Minnesota in a loving, high-achieving family where her grandfather was an alcoholic but her parents rarely drank. The pressure she put on herself — to get the grades, win the awards, earn love through achievement — created an anxiety she had no tools to manage. Drinking, when it arrived at 15, didn’t ignite anything immediately. It was a breakup at college — her second boyfriend wanting to go on a break — that planted the real seed. A housemate offered her Adderall to take the pain away. It worked instantly. She thought: if that works, so will alcohol. And from that moment, she was using it as medicine.

What followed was a ten-year progression — social drinking that became secret drinking, that became solo drinking, that became hiding bottles in her closet after her fiancé went to bed, that became rotating liquor stores with sunglasses and a hat, that became drinking before dates, drinking before going out, drinking at her dad’s office while hiding vodka in her desk. Through it all she maintained enough of a veneer — the job, the relationship, the functioning surface — that nobody quite believed it. A month before her wedding she told her fiancé she thought she was an alcoholic. He said: “No you’re not.” She said okay.

On the morning of her wedding she was drinking vodka to manage the anxiety. She blacked out the night before. She doesn’t remember the evening. Two days after the wedding she stopped hiding it — just collapsed, stopped going to work, stopped pretending. Her husband looked at her and thought: what did I marry?

Then began a year and a half of attempts: AA drunk, then outpatient, then inpatient at Hazelden, then relapse, then a second DUI on Valentine’s Day 2013, then a breathalyser fitted in her home, then being kicked out, then drinking mouthwash — because it was cheaper, because there was no shame buying it in Target, because her family had started hiding or replacing the real stuff. She blew a 0.34 at detox. She was alone, $200 to her name, no job, no car, no home to go back to.

On April 24th 2013 she just knew. No fanfare. Just done.

Now 12 and a half years sober, Jen coaches women through the first weeks of sobriety with six daily habits and a 10-minute walk, and lives by a simple truth: you will not die from feelings.

Jen’s website is here:

https://www.joinlighthousesobriety.com

You can find Jen on Instagram at:

https://www.instagram.com/jenleehirst

Jen's Linktree is here:

https://linktr.ee/jenleehirst

Beyond the Booze by Sarah Rusbatch:

https://amzn.to/4nXWUMo

My Instagram is:

https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmy

And you can find all my other links at:

https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle

Buy me a coffee…

https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

My Instagram is:

https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmy

And you can find all my other links at:

https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle

Buy me a coffee…

https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Alcohol Explained - William Porter

https://a.co/d/0854fIb6

This Naked Mind - Annie Grace

https://a.co/d/0gy6mT9Z

A Million Little Pieces - James Frey

https://a.co/d/0jdcIjGb

Donate:

https://motiv8.im/donate/

https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/

Enjoyed After Hours? Follow, review and share the podcast!

Instagram: @thesoberthistle

Coaching: https://thistlefreedomcoaching.com

Support: https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Books:

Alcohol Explained: https://amzn.to/4uMmkyB

This Naked Mind: https://amzn.to/4eC6L6z

A Million Little Pieces: https://amzn.to/44jOV3i

Donate:

https://motiv8.im/donate/

https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 45 | Ryan Kennedy — Rock Bottom With Ryan: Airlifted, Arrested & Almost Out of Time in Washington State

In this raw, funny and deeply honest episode, Jimmy sits down with Ryan Kennedy — host of the Rock Bottom With Ryan podcast — whose story spans a chaotic childhood in Seattle, fraternity drinking, a toxic marriage to a bartender, an abusive relationship, a DUI he drove away from to get a drink, and a face-plant fall down brick stairs at 4am that ended with a helicopter airlift to Spokane. All before his rock bottom.

Ryan grew up in Seattle with parents who split when he was seven. His mother moved him constantly through her relationships, changing schools every year until Ryan found himself living in a basement, not welcome upstairs, developing the social anxiety that would dog him through high school. At 12 he started smoking weed; he barely drank in high school, partly because his first ever drinking experience ended with someone elbowing a bottle into his mouth and knocking his teeth out. He drove people home instead.

College was different. Freed from his dad’s strict household and arriving at Washington State University at 18, Ryan was invited into a fraternity on his first week. Day one in the frat house: the older members got him hammered. He went to class still buzzing the next morning, thought it was brilliant, went back and did it again. For the next five and a half years he was rarely fully sober.

After college the drinking escalated from social to solo — beer runs to the minimart, then bars alone, then hard alcohol, then waking up with uncontrollable shakes he didn’t understand were withdrawal. He started work at a cell phone company, sought out the colleagues who wanted to party, added cocaine to the mix, and began a life of cycling through drinking, relationships, and fresh starts that never quite reset anything.

Then the fall. At 4am, still drunk, deciding to go for a run as part of his commitment to stop drinking, Ryan face-planted down brick stairs — broke his teeth, gashed his eye, split his lip, head injury. He finished the run. Went to bed. Woke up to find blood everywhere. Was airlifted to Spokane with injuries the local hospital couldn’t handle. His mum stayed in a hotel for a week just to be near him.

He got 90 days in AA. Felt good. Slowed down. Relapsed for six weeks. Hospital again. A nun he’d known from childhood walked into his room and asked what he was going to do this time. He said he was going to go to rehab. He did 60 days. He has not had a drink since.

Now approaching one year sober, hosting his own podcast, Ryan is finally learning who he is — and his story is just getting started.

You can find Ryan on his Instagram at:

https://www.instagram.com/rockbottomwithryan

His Podcast Rock Bottom with Ryan is here:

https://linktr.ee/rockbottomwithryan?fbclid=PAdGRleAMzt3pleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABpypULW2wRB_bI7XHJouwmcYM7SfS7kSRM1v62P9OcuN_DpqcHoRXn7zvcqCO_aem_JviN1OhOYAaC6zErHq85vw

Forged in Silence Podcast:

https://open.spotify.com/show/5Z8hxu2cDovocvyJUzqaAA?si=14859864934b426b

Leaving Las Vegas with Nic Cage:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113627/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

My Instagram is:

https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmy

And you can find all my other links at:

https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle

Buy me a coffee…

https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Support the show

My Instagram is:

https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmy

And you can find all my other links at:

https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle

Buy me a coffee…

https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Alcohol Explained - William Porter

https://a.co/d/0854fIb6

This Naked Mind - Annie Grace

https://a.co/d/0gy6mT9Z

A Million Little Pieces - James Frey

https://a.co/d/0jdcIjGb

Donate:

https://motiv8.im/donate/

https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/

Enjoyed After Hours? Follow, review and share the podcast!

Instagram: @thesoberthistle

Coaching: https://thistlefreedomcoaching.com

Support: https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Books:

Alcohol Explained: https://amzn.to/4uMmkyB

This Naked Mind: https://amzn.to/4eC6L6z

A Million Little Pieces: https://amzn.to/44jOV3i

Donate:

https://motiv8.im/donate/

https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 44 | Oli Stringer — 1,000 Days Sober: The Bedford Carpenter Who Stood on a Cliff in Cyprus, Saw His Kids & Chose to Come Home

In this raw, warm and deeply spiritual episode, Jimmy sits down with Olly Stringer — carpenter, hiker, father and Bedford-based sober advocate just days from his 1,000-day milestone — whose story spans a construction apprenticeship drinking culture, a horrific witnessed accident, PTSD he never properly dealt with, a near-fatal organ shutdown, and a wagtail bird in a Yorkshire valley that sent him to a reiki healer who told him about a man in a flat cap.

Oli grew up in Bedford, parents separating at seven, life revolving around football, pubs and the normal rhythms of a British working-class childhood where the pub was just where adults went. His first drink came at 13 or 14 — park tinnies, fitting in, nothing deeper than that. At 16 he went straight from school into a carpentry apprenticeship, walking directly into one of the most entrenched drinking cultures there is: finish time equals pub time, your mentors are buying, and turning it down means you can’t handle yourself.

Through his twenties Oli drank heavily but functionally — working away, football weekends, binge drinking that came round on a Thursday and didn’t stop until Sunday. He met his now-wife at 19 on a night out. She moderated; he didn’t. But it was manageable — until the morning he was working outside a pub and heard a scream.

A lorry had reversed into a 17-year-old girl on her bike. Her shoulder was almost completely severed. Oli helped get her inside, where pub staff reconnected the arm just before the ambulance arrived. He never found out if she kept it. The next day he nearly passed out driving on the motorway — the delayed shock hitting him at 70mph. He had weeks off. Then COVID arrived, and what had been an unaddressed trauma became a free-floating anxiety with no outlet and no distraction.

He started drinking at home more, developing the social anxiety that meant he needed drinks before leaving the house — before the local pub, before a concert, before the school play. He blacked out regularly, came home and cracked open a bottle of wine when he didn’t need it. He face-planted a fence post in a blackout and had seizures for three months. He fell down the full length of his staircase drunk, foaming at the mouth. He worked in Cyprus, treated it like a holiday, took whatever was on offer, and one afternoon after a day-long bender on alcohol and speed found himself on the edge of a cliff, looking down.

He came round lying at the top. He put music on. He looked out and had what he describes as an out-of-body experience — seeing himself from above, and then seeing his kids standing there. He came down. He didn’t tell anyone.

Now approaching 1,000 days, Oli goes to work in Scotland and stays in the mountains while his colleagues hit Wetherspoons. His ten-year-old daughter tells him he’s not drinking. The universe, he says, is looking after him now.

You can find Oli on Insta at:

https://www.instagram.com/levellinguponlife

You can find the Dryy app at:

https://www.instagram.com/dryyapp?

My Instagram is:

https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmy

And you can find all my other links at:

https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle

Buy me a coffee…

https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Support the show

My Instagram is:

https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmy

And you can find all my other links at:

https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle

Buy me a coffee…

https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Alcohol Explained - William Porter

https://a.co/d/0854fIb6

This Naked Mind - Annie Grace

https://a.co/d/0gy6mT9Z

A Million Little Pieces - James Frey

https://a.co/d/0jdcIjGb

Donate:

https://motiv8.im/donate/

https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/

Enjoyed After Hours? Follow, review and share the podcast!

Instagram: @thesoberthistle

Coaching: https://thistlefreedomcoaching.com

Support: https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Books:

Alcohol Explained: https://amzn.to/4uMmkyB

This Naked Mind: https://amzn.to/4eC6L6z

A Million Little Pieces: https://amzn.to/44jOV3i

Donate:

https://motiv8.im/donate/

https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.