One for the Road: The Quit Drinking Podcast

Sophie Hutton-Mills was 20, on a train platform with her dad, when he had a heart attack and died in front of her. She couldn't say the sentence out loud for four years. So she did what she'd learned to do at home: she put it in a box, put a blanket of alcohol over the top, and got on with pretending.

Twenty-something years later she was a mum of two small girls, hiding bottles of wine in the cupboard, lying to her husband, and drinking in the mornings the summer everything fell apart. She finally said out loud: I'm not in control any more.

Then her sister died. A year later, almost to the day, her mum. Then her brother. Sophie stayed sober through every single one.

You'll hear about: the moment she knew she had a problem; the mummy wine culture that made it all look normal; why moderation never worked; how the sober community pulled her through the worst losses of her life; the signs she still gets from the people she has lost.

If you're a mum questioning your drinking, this one's for you.

https://www.instagram.com/sober_soph_/

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.

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

https://nacoa.org.uk/

Show producer- Daniella Attanasio-Martinez

Instagram - @TheDaniellaMartinez

https://www.instagram.com/thedaniellamartinez/

www.instagram.com/grownuphustle

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.

Olivia Taylor is two years sober after a decade of alcohol addiction that started with morning drinking at 18 and ended with a litre of vodka a day, crack cocaine binges, and six months lying in the bed she's now recording this sobriety story from. In this recovery story, she walks through how she got sober, how many times rehab didn't work, and the phone call that finally did.

Olivia's earliest memories are of paranoia and OCD so severe she paced her bedroom at six years old. Her first drink at 12 silenced all of it. By 18 she was drinking from 8am. By 19 she'd woken up in her boss's hotel room — a man 30 years older who would become her daughter's dad, isolate her from her family, and make her pregnant at 20 against her will. She left that coercive relationship, got free, and her drinking got worse, not better.

In this conversation, Olivia opens up about being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder at 17 and having it used against her by every controlling man who followed, walking out of her first rehab at 23 and spending four nights on the street smoking crack with strangers, a partner who drove her off the road at 90mph trying to kill them both, writing suicide notes from this same bedroom, and the unknown phone call she felt compelled to answer that turned out to be her mum behind the scenes arranging a rehab bed that actually worked. Six months of intense therapy and dialectical behavioural therapy later, she came out a different person.

Two years alcohol free, raising her daughter Leila in the same house she nearly died in, and now helping other women in recovery through @sobercoastalife on Instagram. Olivia is living proof that however many times you've tried to quit drinking and failed, the next attempt can be the one.

 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sobercoasterlife 

Tiktok @sobercoasterlife

Co-host of @thesisterspat podcast alongside my sister, where we dive into the raw and unfiltered realities of addiction sharing both the addict’s and the family’s perspective with honesty, compassion, and a touch of humour. 

https://www.instagram.com/thesisterspatpodcast?igsh=cnoyNjhybmEzbHB4

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6ak1FH2D72miiw7t8eRt8X?si=JcVt6C4WSrC5oK7N193p2g

Website: https://www.sobercoasterlife.com/

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.

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

https://nacoa.org.uk/

Show producer- Daniella Attanasio-Martinez

Instagram - @TheDaniellaMartinez

https://www.instagram.com/thedaniellamartinez/

www.instagram.com/grownuphustle

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.

Gary Mez was 14 the first time he drank a can of beer. By 19 he was drinking Foster's at half eight in the morning at university. By 33 he was alone in Granada, Spain, with a broken flip flop, no money on his phone, and not a single friend left who would return his call. That was the morning everything cracked open.

Now eleven years sober, Gary tells Sober Dave the full story. The idyllic Cheshire upbringing. The prescription acne drug at 15 that changed him overnight. The 15 years of "no off switch." And the quiet decision he made on a Tuesday morning in Seville that he has never gone back on.

You'll hear about: the connection between ADHD and addiction; why moderation is "dumping your toxic ex and sleeping with them at the weekend"; getting sober alone in a foreign country; finding an English-speaking AA meeting on the street parallel to his flat; what 11 years sober actually feels like.

He is also the co-host of The Sober Stretch with his friend, Craig. https://www.instagram.com/sobernsound/ https://garys-newsletter-9e505a.beehiiv.com/subscribe 

https://open.spotify.com/show/42nfv5PNruzVeGdJU4DbLW?si=65aa303eb0fb4815 

https://www.youtube.com/chan

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.

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

https://nacoa.org.uk/

Show producer- Daniella Attanasio-Martinez

Instagram - @TheDaniellaMartinez

https://www.instagram.com/thedaniellamartinez/

www.instagram.com/grownuphustle

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.

Julie Ravitsky was 21, sitting cross-legged on her parents' dining room floor at 10am, drinking vodka and smoking cigarettes. Within hours she was in a psychiatric hospital being restrained and sedated. She would end up there twice before her 22nd birthday.

The doctors called it drug-induced psychosis. Nobody asked what was actually happening in her life. Nobody asked about the London trading floor where she smoked at her desk, drank at her desk, and watched colleagues sneak off for cocaine. Nobody asked if she was okay.

Decades later, Julie is a business psychologist with five years sober. The road there was long: ten years on antipsychotics, a marriage, two kids, and the kind of nightly wine habit that looked completely normal from the outside.

You'll hear about: 90s trading floor drinking culture; what really sat underneath two psychiatric hospitalisations; grey area wine mom drinking; closing her business to change her environment and quit drinking; what 5 years sober actually feels like.

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.

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

https://nacoa.org.uk/

Show producer- Daniella Attanasio-Martinez

Instagram - @TheDaniellaMartinez

https://www.instagram.com/thedaniellamartinez/

www.instagram.com/grownuphustle

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.

A nurse found Oliver Mason in a hospital bed eating Gillette shaving foam. He'd read the label. He knew there was ethanol in it. The staff had taken his vodka away and his body was screaming for the drug.

That was the bottom. Before that came the panic attack on the Jubilee Line, sweating vodka through his pores, ducking into a corner shop phone booth to neck a bottle of Glen's. Before that came the one Soho whiskey that ended a full year of sobriety and kicked off three months of drinking around the clock. Before that came a Saturday morning kids' TV career that suddenly went quiet, a friend lost to a drink-driving accident, and 15 years of telling himself he was fine because he only drank at weekends.

Oliver is now ten years sober, married, working as an actor, running a podcast called School of Rockbottom, and helping others through the same rehab that saved him.

You'll hear about: the four layers of denial; what really happens in the year before someone relapses; the difference between heavy drinking and alcoholism; what 10 years sober looks like; why connection beats willpower every time.

Instagram - https://bit.ly/3IemHLY 

Facebook - http://bit.ly/3w8S1Gx

TikTok - https://bit.ly/3YGLsYm

LinkedIn - http://bit.ly/3kp4ymC

Threads - https://bit.ly/3svw7yL

X - http://bit.ly/3GQYj2l

Follow School of Rock Bottom -

https://podfollow.com/schoolofrockbottom

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.

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

https://nacoa.org.uk/

Show producer- Daniella Attanasio-Martinez

Instagram - @TheDaniellaMartinez

https://www.instagram.com/thedaniellamartinez/

www.instagram.com/grownuphustle

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.

In this episode, Sober Dave sits down with model, TV personality, and author Millie Macintosh to talk about her raw and honest journey from her first drink at 12 years old to getting alcohol free on August 25, 2022.

Millie opens up about how bullying and unresolved trauma in her teens led to years of drinking to blackout, the shame spiral that came with it, and how her time on Made in Chelsea only made things worse. She talks about using alcohol and Xanax to cope with anxiety, the moment motherhood made her confront the real cost of her drinking, and the panic attack on holiday that finally made her say enough.

But getting sober was only the beginning. Millie shares how she hit a wall months in, experienced burnout and health anxiety, and had to go back to therapy and medication before she was truly ready to do the deep work and face the trauma she had been running from since she was a teenager.

She also talks about her book Bad Drunk, how writing it brought everything back to the surface, the medical insight from Dr. Ellie Cannon on what alcohol actually does to your brain and body, and why she now uses her platform to help other people feel less alone in their own drinking struggles.

If you have ever felt trapped in that cycle of drinking, shame, anxiety, and trying to quit but not quite getting there, this one is for you.

Bad Drunk by Millie Macintosh is available now:

https://www.instagram.com/milliemackintosh/

https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/millie-mackintosh/bad-drunk/9780349443812/

Let's Connect on Instagram: @Soberdave https://www.instagram.com/soberdave/

or my website https://davidwilsoncoaching.com/

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

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

https://nacoa.org.uk/

Show producer- Daniella Attanasio-Martinez

Instagram - @TheDaniellaMartinez

https://www.instagram.com/thedaniellamartinez/

www.instagram.com/grownuphustle

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.

Alison Calder is three years sober after a 15 year back and forth trying to moderate drinking that no other career made harder — she was a trained sommelier who went on to run her own wine company. In this recovery story, she walks through how she finally quit drinking after years of stopping and starting, champagne at breakfast for work, and daily wine drinking at home with two young children upstairs.

Alison's childhood was happy and nothing in it explained what happened when she picked up her first drink at 14. There was no off switch. By 24 she'd already been to an AA meeting and known something was wrong. By her late twenties she was working in a wine company where drinking through the day was the job — vineyard trips, breakfast champagne, tastings, events — and she was always the one who took it too far. She reached for help, she tried online groups with a fake Facebook profile so her clients wouldn't recognise her, she did dry months, she did everything except accept that moderation was never going to work for her.

www.instagram.com/alisoncalderalcoholcoach

www.facebook.com/alisoncaldercoaching

 www.alisoncalder.com

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.

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

https://nacoa.org.uk/

Show producer- Daniella Attanasio-Martinez

Instagram - @TheDaniellaMartinez

https://www.instagram.com/thedaniellamartinez/

www.instagram.com/grownuphustle

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.

Lee Anderson grew up inside pubs. His mum was a barmaid who ran her own pubs, and by the time he was eight or nine he was already pouring himself spirits from the cabinet the way he'd seen adults do it. By 14 he was drinking on the bus to steady his nerves. By his twenties he was the life and soul, and nobody ever questioned it.

What nobody could see was everything underneath: the responsibility of being the oldest, the man of the house one minute and a child the next, the shame passed down from a teenage mum raising mixed-race kids alone in the seventies, and the thing Lee spent years terrified of naming — that he was gay. Alcohol was the uniform he put on before pushing open any pub door. It was, as he puts it, both a place to hide and a place to be seen.

In this conversation, Lee opens up about coming out at 22 and flipping a coin on a toilet roll to decide whether to say the word, a toxic eight-year relationship where the drink and drugs ramped up, a breakdown and two attempts on his life, moving to France and drinking three litres of wine a night, and the Saturday morning he finally sat on a step and said enough.

Four years sober, eight years clean, now a life coach and ambassador for the Lighthouse Construction Charity, standing in front of rooms of 500 builders talking about anxiety, addiction, and being gay. Lee's story is a reminder that the version of you underneath the drinking is still there — and it's worth meeting.

If anything in this episode resonates, please reach out to Samaritans on 116 123 (UK and Ireland), or your local crisis line.

https://www.instagram.com/leeandersoncoaching/

https://www.leeandersoncoaching.com/

https://open.spotify.com/show/13Hx2VN9L62ta3nMto5NmH?si=d809bf1d488f45f6&nd=1&dlsi=d2719481e12a4154

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.

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

https://nacoa.org.uk/

Show producer- Daniella Attanasio-Martinez

Instagram - @TheDaniellaMartinez

https://www.instagram.com/thedaniellamartinez/

www.instagram.com/grownuphustle

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.

Abigail Burrows had her first sip of champagne at nine years old, at a concert at the Dorchester. She topped up her own glass when the teacher's back was turned. She has never, in her own words, been a healthy drinker.

By 19 she was drinking herself into psychosis at the Royal College of Music and dropped out. By her mid-twenties she'd hit a rock bottom serious enough to make her stop. She didn't drink for five and a half years. Then one glass of champagne to celebrate the milestone unleashed a decade of drinking that nearly cost her everything: her marriage, her career, her dad to alcoholism, and a job she'd dreamed of since childhood.

Abby is now over a year sober, back in the West End pit at Les Mis, and credits her recovery to the charity Music Support.

You'll hear about: the first drink at nine that lit her up; why moderation after years sober is a fantasy; what really happens when one glass of champagne breaks a five-year run; how the music industry hides addiction in plain sight; why getting back into Les Mis is the most beautiful chapter of her sober life.

If you've ever told yourself "I can have just one," this one's for you.

 https://www.instagram.com/abbieflutes

www.abigailburrows.com

Music Support is a registered charity that helps anyone who works in the UK music industry experiencing substance use, addiction and/or mental health challenges. Find out more about their work at www.musicsupport.org. The charity is hosting “Understanding Addiction and Embracing Recovery: The Classical Edition,” a webinar in partnership with the Royal Society of Musicians on Blue Monday, 20th January, from 6pm – 730pm. It will feature Abbie and Music Support Trustee and cellist, Rachael Lander (a previous guest on my podcast). This special session that will also include a workshop on the neuroscience of addiction and pathways to recovery is suitable for anyone who works in the UK music industry (and their family and friends). Find out more and register to join at https://www.rsmgb.org/whats-on/understanding-addiction-embracing-recovery

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.

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

https://nacoa.org.uk/

Show producer- Daniella Attanasio-Martinez

Instagram - @TheDaniellaMartinez

https://www.instagram.com/thedaniellamartinez/

www.instagram.com/grownuphustle

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.

Beauty editor Donna Francis spent 30 years drinking white wine through her career, motherhood and perimenopause before quitting drinking last July. In this episode of One for the Road, she tells Sober Dave the story most mum-wine-culture women never say out loud.

Donna grew up in an Islington family where pub culture was love, where pouring someone a drink was how you showed up. She married young, built an award-winning beauty editor career, raised her son, moved to Florida, and slowly noticed the white wine was no longer optional. There was the night she threw a tuna steak at her husband. The 40th birthday she ended throwing up in the lobby of Claridge's. The pool lilo she fell asleep on at a family pub party at 47.

Donna talks perimenopause and alcohol, gray area drinking, hidden family trauma, and what quitting drinking actually feels like when wine has been your love language.

Sober journey, beauty industry, mum wine culture, perimenopause sobriety.

https://www.instagram.com/thebeautyed/?hl=en

https://www.tiktok.com/@thebeautyed?lang=en

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/smiling-gives-you-wrinkles/id1725957283

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.

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

https://nacoa.org.uk/

Show producer- Daniella Attanasio-Martinez

Instagram - @TheDaniellaMartinez

https://www.instagram.com/thedaniellamartinez/

www.instagram.com/grownuphustle

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.