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:
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Support the show
My Instagram is:
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And you can find all my other links at:
https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle
Buy me a coffee…
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Alcohol Explained - William Porter
https://a.co/d/0854fIb6
This Naked Mind - Annie Grace
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A Million Little Pieces - James Frey
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Donate:
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https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/
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
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This Naked Mind - Annie Grace
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A Million Little Pieces - James Frey
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