One for the Road: The Quit Drinking Podcast

Seye Adelekan is the bassist for Gorillaz. He's toured with Lana Del Rey, Emeli Sandé, KT Tunstall and Paloma Faith. By his early thirties, he'd also spent three months locked in his bedroom, drinking three bottles of cheap wine a day, scraping cocaine bags off the floor, with bottles piled to the height of his bed.

On April 1st 2019 he walked through the doors of Teen Challenge, a residential Christian rehab in the middle of a motorway. No phone. No internet. No guitar for the first 16 weeks.

What followed was an identity crisis, a confrontation with childhood trauma he'd packed away, and the slow rebuild of a person who could finally tell the difference between his playing being okay and him being okay.

In this conversation with Sober Dave, Seye talks about sober shaming, the music industry's relationship with drink, and the blast radius of good decisions.

If you want to connect with me via Instagram, you can find me on the instahandle @Soberdave https://www.instagram.com/soberdave/

or via my website https://davidwilsoncoaching.com/

Provided below are links for services offering additional help and advice and contact links for Seye.

Instagram @seyemusic

https://alcoholchange.org.uk/https://www.wearewithyou.org.uk/

https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/advice/alcohol-support-services

https://nacoa.org.uk/

Show producer- Daniella Attanasio-Martinez

https://www.grownuphustle.com/

Instagram - @TheDaniellaMartinez

@GrownupHustle

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@soberdaveonefortheroad

More information about Sober Dave's 1:1 Coaching: https://www.soberdave.co.uk/

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

Steve Flynn was 20, deep in Irish rugby-lad culture, and proud to tell his granny he was going out to get drunk. He hadn't kissed a girl sober. He didn't really know who he was outside the pub.

Then his twin brother Dave found a book on detox in the library. They quit drinking for a month to train for a marathon. They never really went back.

Twenty years later, Steve is one half of The Happy Pear: a million-and-a-half followers, five number one cookbooks, online courses that have reversed heart disease markers in thousands of people, and a vegetable shop that started with a small dream and a stinking van full of cabbage.

In this conversation with Sober Dave, Steve goes deep on Irish drinking culture, how giving up alcohol gave him permission to question everything else, and why community and laughter are the superfoods nobody talks about.

If you want to connect with me via Instagram, you can find me on the instahandle @Soberdave https://www.instagram.com/soberdave/

or via my website https://davidwilsoncoaching.com/

Provided below are links for services offering additional help and advice and contact links for Steve.

Instagram @thehappypear

https://alcoholchange.org.uk/https://www.wearewithyou.org.uk/

https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/advice/alcohol-support-services

https://nacoa.org.uk/

Show producer- Daniella Attanasio-Martinez

https://www.grownuphustle.com/

Instagram - @TheDaniellaMartinez

@GrownupHustle

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@soberdaveonefortheroad

More information about Sober Dave's 1:1 Coaching: https://www.soberdave.co.uk/

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

Kelly Burkhart looked like she had it all. Healthy food business, two teenage kids, marriage, the lot. From the outside, perfectly on point.

Inside, she was climbing into bed at 11.30pm with a triple gin and tonic after a 16-hour day, alarm set for 5.30am to motivate her team.

It wasn't bottles. It wasn't every day at the start. It was an Aperol Spritz that turned into another Aperol Spritz. It was the recycling slowly filling up. It was the dad-and-mum guilt of not being able to drive to pick her son up because she'd already had a few.

This is grey area drinking, the kind so many women in midlife are quietly in and don't know how to name.

In this conversation with Sober Dave, Kelly talks about doing Dry January as a cover for never going back, what changed when her husband had a cancer scare, and why she's now four months sober and never been clearer.

If you want to connect with me via Instagram, you can find me on the instahandle @Soberdave https://www.instagram.com/soberdave/

or via my website https://davidwilsoncoaching.com/

Provided below are links for services offering additional help and advice and contact links for Kelly and Boxxfresh.

www.boxxfresh.com

Instagram @Boxxfresh

Facebook @Boxxfresh

Twitter @Boxxfresh_xx

https://alcoholchange.org.uk/https://www.wearewithyou.org.uk/

https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/advice/alcohol-support-services

https://nacoa.org.uk/

Show producer- Daniella Attanasio-Martinez

https://www.grownuphustle.com/

Instagram - @TheDaniellaMartinez

@GrownupHustle

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@soberdaveonefortheroad

More information about Sober Dave's 1:1 Coaching: https://www.soberdave.co.uk/

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

At his peak Ryan Phillips was pulling in half a million dollars a week in cash, buying 80% of the marijuana in British Columbia. National Geographic called him the King of Weed.

It started at 19 with an ounce of BC Bud in a deodorant cap. By 23, he was face down at a US border crossing with the DEA's guns drawn and 103 pounds of marijuana in the truck. Two years in a maximum federal penitentiary followed.

What finally stopped him wasn't prison. It was a quiet realisation, after losing 50 friends to murder, that no amount of money could fill him up.

In this conversation with Sober Dave, Ryan, an ex-pro ice hockey player six years sober this July, talks about junior hockey abuse, 50-plus concussions, the Japanese prisoner who taught him law of vibration, surprising his daughter at her door, and the ride across Canada he's starting in May for mental health.

If you want to connect with me via Instagram, you can find me on the instahandle @Soberdave https://www.instagram.com/soberdave/

or via my website https://davidwilsoncoaching.com/

Provided below are links for services offering additional help and advice.

https://alcoholchange.org.uk/https://www.wearewithyou.org.uk/

https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/advice/alcohol-support-services

https://nacoa.org.uk/

Show producer- Daniella Attanasio-Martinez

https://www.grownuphustle.com/

Instagram - @TheDaniellaMartinez

@GrownupHustle

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@soberdaveonefortheroad

More information about Sober Dave's 1:1 Coaching: https://www.soberdave.co.uk/

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

Bryony Gordon is a Telegraph columnist, the author of The Wrong Knickers, Mad Girl and Glorious Rock Bottom, the founder of Mental Health Mates, and nearly five years sober.

She takes Dave through it. Growing up scared, with what she now knows was OCD running untreated through the eighties and nineties. The first drink at 14 in a park with a friend, a litre of cider and a small bottle of vodka, being violently sick, and knowing immediately she wanted to do it again. The Telegraph noticing she was good at turning her chaos into a hilarious column. The cocaine years, the blackouts, the late twenties she now looks back on as sad rather than funny. The slow horror of realising that all the rules she had built around her drinking, no drinking before the baby was in bed, no spirits, no every-day drinking, were not proof she was in control. They were proof she was not.

Bryony talks openly about the type of OCD nobody drops into conversation. Not the sock drawer. The Pure O type, the intrusive thoughts that convinced her she might be a serial killer, that made her check the local papers for murders on the walk home from school. The way alcohol shut the OCD up for a few hours and then made it louder the next day. The rehab she went to. The counsellor she still sees. The friend Holly she met there who lived a mile from her with kids the same age.

Bryony and Dave talk about the recovery community, why she still calls herself an alcoholic, why she does not see sobriety as a cure, and what it took to start Mental Health Mates so that people experiencing mental health issues had somewhere to walk together.

If you want to connect with me via Instagram, you can find me on the instahandle @Soberdave https://www.instagram.com/soberdave/

or via my website https://davidwilsoncoaching.com/

Provided below are links for services offering additional help and advice, and links for Bryony.

@bryonygordon

https://alcoholchange.org.uk/https://www.wearewithyou.org.uk/

https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/advice/alcohol-support-services

https://nacoa.org.uk/

Show producer- Daniella Attanasio-Martinez

https://www.grownuphustle.com/

Instagram - @TheDaniellaMartinez

@GrownupHustle

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@soberdaveonefortheroad

More information about Sober Dave's 1:1 Coaching: https://www.soberdave.co.uk/

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

James Veck-Gilodi is the lead singer-songwriter of Deaf Havana, with three top-ten albums, a top-five record, headline shows at Brixton Academy and tours with Kings of Leon behind him. He played almost every one of those shows drunk. He joins Sober Dave on One for the Road to talk about quitting drinking after 15 years of touring through it.

James started getting hammered at 14 in a small Norfolk town. By 18 he was on tour and the riders never stopped. By 2019 he'd overdosed on Xanax and alcohol, and his now-wife had broken up with him at an airport in Asia. He got sober in April 2020 through AA, slipped this January, and is now back and clearer than ever.

Inside: the cocaine years, the resentment that drove the slip, the only sober show he's ever played, and Deaf Havana's new music.

Quitting drinking, Deaf Havana, music industry, gray area drinking, AA, sober journey.

If you enjoy One For The Road, then click follow to be notified of the release of our next episode.

If you want to connect with me via Instagram, you can find me on the instahandle @Soberdave https://www.instagram.com/soberdave/

or via my website https://davidwilsoncoaching.com/

Provided below are links for services offering additional help and advice, and links for James.

Instagram @deafhavana

Twitter @deafhavana

https://alcoholchange.org.uk/https://www.wearewithyou.org.uk/

https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/advice/alcohol-support-services

https://nacoa.org.uk/

Show producer- Daniella Attanasio-Martinez

https://www.grownuphustle.com/

Instagram - @TheDaniellaMartinez

@GrownupHustle

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@soberdaveonefortheroad

More information about Sober Dave's 1:1 Coaching: https://www.soberdave.co.uk/

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

Philip Barantini moved to London at 17. He was on Dream Team, then Band of Brothers as the youngest cast member, then Ned Kelly. He had free Soho House membership, a driver, and a 5am bedtime. Then the work fizzled out and the anger came in. He spent the next decade in restaurant kitchens drinking red wine out of coffee cups during service.

In this conversation with Sober Dave, Philip walks back through the whole arc. The mum who poured her vodkas with him at the bar when he was ten. The audition years where he thought he was untouchable. The wife who packed up and left after six months of marriage. The morning something in his brain just switched, the one-on-one counsellor who helped him stay sober, and then the loss that opened the door to everything since: directing Villain with Craig Fairbrass, then Boiling Point with Stephen Graham, then his production company Three Little Birds Pictures, named after his late mum's favourite song.

If you enjoy One For The Road, then click follow to be notified of the release of our next episode.

If you want to connect with me via Instagram, you can find me on the instahandle @Soberdave https://www.instagram.com/soberdave/

or via my website https://davidwilsoncoaching.com/

Provided below are links for services offering additional help and advice, and links for Philip.

https://www.instagram.com/barantini/

https://alcoholchange.org.uk/https://www.wearewithyou.org.uk/

https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/advice/alcohol-support-services

https://nacoa.org.uk/

Show producer- Daniella Attanasio-Martinez

https://www.grownuphustle.com/

Instagram - @TheDaniellaMartinez

@GrownupHustle

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@soberdaveonefortheroad

More information about Sober Dave's 1:1 Coaching: https://www.soberdave.co.uk/

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

Cat Sims got blackout drunk at 13 and her parents thought it was funny. She'd been drinking that way ever since, mostly with people who drank that way too. By her thirties she'd figured out she could mix vodka with coke and Xanax and stay personable instead of sloppy. She thought she'd solved the riddle of life.

There was no movie-grade rock bottom. There were car wrecks and missed bedtimes and 4am anxiety attacks from over-drinking. There was a marriage that nearly broke. There was a mother she loved who'd fallen asleep face-down in her dinner in front of Kat's school friends, and a shame Kat had been numbing ever since.

At 100 days sober, this is Kat as honest as she's been about any of it. No spin. No "I've never been better." Just: this is hard, this is necessary, and this is the work.

If you enjoy One For The Road, then click follow to be notified of the release of our next episode.

If you want to connect with me via Instagram, you can find me on the instahandle @Soberdave https://www.instagram.com/soberdave/

or via my website https://davidwilsoncoaching.com/

Provided below are links for services offering additional help and advice, and links for Cat.

https://www.notsosmugnow.com/

https://www.instagram.com/notsosmugnow/https://alcoholchange.org.uk/https://www.wearewithyou.org.uk/

https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/advice/alcohol-support-services

https://nacoa.org.uk/

Show producer- Daniella Attanasio-Martinez

https://www.grownuphustle.com/

Instagram - @TheDaniellaMartinez

@GrownupHustle

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@soberdaveonefortheroad

More information about Sober Dave's 1:1 Coaching: https://www.soberdave.co.uk/

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

Thanks for joining me for this bonus sober spring special of One For The Road.

Today’s episode is with Richard Piper, CEO of Alcohol Change UK.

We discuss Stigma, Sober shaming and the start of Sober Spring, and of course my 24 hour Liveathon on the 26th of March.

Alcohol Change UK work to end the harm caused by alcohol. Helping tens of thousands of people take control of their drinking and provide vital advice for families desperate to help a loved one. They are not anti-alcohol; they are for a future in which people drink as a conscious choice, not by default. They want those who drink too much, and their loved ones, to have access to high-quality support whenever it’s needed, without shame or stigma.

They help people to find alcohol services in their area and support tens of thousands of people and their families online via our peer support groups and advice hub. Over 200,000 people used their Try Dry app to monitor their drinking this year alone, and many of them were able to successfully reduce or stop drinking. 

 Through their Blue Light programme they work with some of the UK's most vulnerable people, who are too often considered to be ‘beyond help’. They train local services to support them, saving the NHS and other frontline services money, and more importantly changing and saving lives.

If you enjoy One For The Road, then click follow to be notified of the release of our next episode.

If you want to connect with me via Instagram, you can find me on the instahandle @Soberdave https://www.instagram.com/soberdave/

or via my website https://davidwilsoncoaching.com/

Provided below are links for services offering additional help and advice, and links for Alcohol Change UK.

https://www.facebook.com/AlcoholChangeUK

https://www.instagram.com/alcoholchangeuk/

https://twitter.com/AlcoholChangeUK

https://alcoholchange.org.uk/https://www.wearewithyou.org.uk/

https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/advice/alcohol-support-services

https://nacoa.org.uk/

Show producer- Daniella Attanasio-Martinez

https://www.grownuphustle.com/

Instagram - @TheDaniellaMartinez

@GrownupHustle

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@soberdaveonefortheroad

More information about Sober Dave's 1:1 Coaching: https://www.soberdave.co.uk/

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

Content note: this conversation discusses childhood abuse and domestic violence.

Johnny Lawrence called alcohol his best friend of 20 years. He met it at 16, alone in a council flat after leaving home to keep his mother safe.

Born in Islington to a Nigerian father and a white British mother, Johnny grew up in 80s Hertfordshire as a survivor of physical child abuse. He worked four jobs as a teenager, came close to giving up, then found 20 quid on the pavement.

The drinking carried on into fatherhood, where holding his newborn son cracked something open he couldn't put back. Lockdown forced it. A therapist named Maliki named it: if you want to know why you drink, stop drinking.

Now sober and working as a self-development coach in Cornwall, Johnny talks to Dave about trauma, fatherhood, and turning a curse into a superpower.

If you enjoy One For The Road, then click follow to be notified of the release of our next episode.

If you want to connect with me via Instagram, you can find me on the instahandle @Soberdave https://www.instagram.com/soberdave/

or via my website https://davidwilsoncoaching.com/

Provided below are links for services offering additional help and advice, and links for Johnny.

Instagram @Theselfdevelopmentcoach

Facebook-The self development coach

YouTube-Theself development coach

Website-www.schoolofselfdevelopment.com

https://www.wearewithyou.org.uk/

https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/advice/alcohol-support-services

https://nacoa.org.uk/

https://alcoholchange.org.uk/

Show producer- Daniella Attanasio-Martinez

https://www.grownuphustle.com/

Instagram - @TheDaniellaMartinez

@GrownupHustle

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@soberdaveonefortheroad

More information about Sober Dave's 1:1 Coaching: https://www.soberdave.co.uk/

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