Relapse, PTSD, law enforcement trauma and alcohol addiction.
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⚠️ Sobriety Uncensored shares personal recovery stories, not medical advice. If you're struggling with alcohol, please reach out to a doctor, a local recovery meeting, or someone you trust — you don't have to do this alone.
0:00 The slip nobody expected
0:52 Christmas, his parents' house, four glasses of wine
2:09 Telling his wife the same night
3:08 "I didn't want a drink — I wanted to stop feeling"
4:36 When the people pouring it are family
5:45 "You'll die of something anyway" — how drinkers justify it
6:38 Why a slip doesn't have to become a spiral
7:45 Taking responsibility instead of blaming
9:17 The barbecue: PTSD, anxiety, and a room full of drinkers
10:12 Nobody relaxes around a cop
12:31 Being the sober one — and everyone justifying themselves to you
13:57 Don't put a drink in someone's hand
15:05 Asking the job for help in 2008 (there was none)
16:55 The police charity that got him 20 EMDR sessions
17:52 What EMDR therapy actually is
20:08 Going in with zero research — and why that helped
21:19 Why EMDR leaves you completely exhausted
21:48 Starting where it started: a violent childhood home
22:24 The murder scene he still can't unsee
25:13 How EMDR moves a memory further away
26:09 Gabor Maté: don't ask why the addiction, ask why the pain
27:00 Losing a fellow officer — and the silence that killed him
27:50 The autopsies detectives get sent to
30:08 A year in the woods: the worst scene of his career
33:20 Alcohol as the only off switch he had
34:17 What's happened to UK policing
35:47 Drinking before night shift — his rock bottom
36:32 Quitting, and getting frozen out by his own team
37:47 What his face looked like 12 months later
38:40 12-hour shifts, no food, no water, no break
39:46 A chaplain is not a trauma therapist
41:22 The moment he finally reached out
42:16 Trained to survive the scene, never to leave it
43:10 CID: you only get called to the worst of it
47:31 Megan's EMDR experience — and the therapist she had to fire
48:19 Crying in the car: the release
49:09 Were you skeptical? CBT vs EMDR
50:37 The safe place and the container at the end of a session
51:51 Memories that come back in strange details
52:23 How to find someone actually qualified to do EMDR
53:29 It's punishing — and it works
54:12 What a session really looks like
55:45 Lower anxiety, lower stress, four months in
56:03 Van der Kolk: some people shift in 4–6 sessions
56:39 The first trauma: dad, the glass door, the plates
58:29 You can't heal someone who doesn't want to
59:29 Why veterans and Marines still won't ask
1:01:31 When someone stops wanting to live
1:02:16 Antidepressants alongside therapy — what worked, what didn't
1:03:19 "I'm sober from the thing that was destroying me"
1:05:16 Postpartum depression and traumatic births
1:06:34 His wife's version of the same story
1:08:03 What the slip taught him that years of sobriety hadn't
1:09:52 To the officer drinking alone after everyone's asleep
1:11:07 Don't give yourself permission to keep going
1:12:46 If he can do it, anyone can
1:12:57 Scottish accents, subtitles, and the comments section
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