Why I went to alcohol rehab

I've always known I drank too much, but it's a case of justifying it. And I always had an excuse. There's always some reason for why I had to have a drink. So, my mum's not well: I'll have a drink. I've had a bad day at work: I'll have a drink. And it's just excuses at the end of the day. And it was how I justified it to myself, really.

So, yeah, I'd say the thought of losing absolutely everything – Joe, my little boy, my girlfriend – was probably the reason that I had to pack it in.

There's an illness behind this. There's a reason that you're the way you are. People don't get up in the morning, drink a bottle of wine.

It was proper rock bottom at that stage. I knew that I was thinking, actually, this is it now. I was having bits of panic attacks when I wasn't drinking. Days were just blending into one. I had no idea of what was going on, no concept of what day it was. I was somehow managing to bundle my way through work, as a functioning alcoholic would do. I suppose there's no joy in it at all. There's nothing at all, and people, my close friends, I went quiet on WhatsApp. I went quiet on on anything whatsoever, any social media platform, because I just didn't want any interaction, and mainly because I knew, in my own mind, that I looked a mess and I was a mess.

So it came to a head. Katie came around and just said, listen, you, you're going to A&E. Luckily enough, one of her cousins worked at Prestwich hospital, which is a mental hospital near where we live. So she said, you need to take him down to A&E. They'll admit him overnight. And after they've admitted him overnight, they'll move him to an NHS hospital at Prestwich for a week, for a detox.

So I went to the went to the hospital, and again, devious alcoholic you are. I'm sat in hospital with Katie. I think she's going to have to go at 4:00 because she's got to go and pick my son up from school. She'll go at 4:00. I can just get out the back door, go for a couple of pints and kind of wing my way through getting out of it.

And then at 4:00, one of my best mates turned up, so she'd been speaking to him. He's like, ‘You're not going anywhere.’ And I remember just being sat on a ward in A&E. And obviously I'm getting massive withdrawals and they weren't doing anything for me at that stage. I don't know why, because again, I can't remember a lot. I remember just crying to him, going, ‘Listen, there's a pub down the road. We'll go for two pints and I promise you, I promise you we'll come straight back. Once I've had two beers, we'll come back.’ And he was like, ‘No.’ And he was like, ‘You're killing me, mate. Stop it.’ And, I just remember being sat in this hospital, there's all blood on the floor in A&E, and just thinking, how on earth have I got myself in this absolute pickle?

Private ambulance turns up, and then just take you there, and you get checked into this NHS facility that's, I'm trying to explain it, it's kind of a place you go to have a 7-day detox. By this stage, I was still shaking a lot. So, I was on medication in there a lot. Did seven days in that in there.

It was really weird. It was, you weren't made to do any therapy. You didn't have to do it. It was all, it was all like, do you want to do this course? Well, no. Well, don't do it then. This was the last chance to learn. This was if you didn't work now, it was gone. And I had a lot of responsibilities. I had a, I had a young boy.

So, yeah, at that stage, I was like, listen, I've done the hard bit, which is say I've got a drink problem for God knows how many years. I've lied about that to start with. Somebody weirdly enough, somebody asked me the other day, what's the hardest thing about what you've been through? And I said, admitting that I drink. That's hardest.

Yeah, so I, I did a week in there, and luckily enough, again, my girlfriend Katie had been doing a load of work behind the scenes to get me into the Priory in Altrincham. And then, obviously, I did 28 days an inpatient in there.

So I remember vividly packing my swimming shorts and my girlfriend going, ‘what are you doing? You're going to a mental hospital’. And yeah, there’s going to be a pool, surely. She's like, ‘what do you mean it's going to be a pool? You're going to get better’. So I think there’s this stigma that it's great, and all stars go, and it's a bit of a jolly. You have 28 days, you get fed well. It's nothing like that. It is absolutely intense. And I mean intense.

So I went in for 10 days. I was sober. I was in a good place. I just said goodbye to my girlfriend. So I was like, ‘actually, yeah, I'm going to smash this. I'm going to absolutely’. So you'd have your therapy sessions. And then there was one where you had to write down what I'd done to everybody. So none of this typing on a laptop. They made you write it because it means more, and it makes you think more when you're writing it down.

So they call it my story. I had to write what I'd done. And obviously, there's lots of gaps because I've been drunk for so long and I don't remember a lot of it. People who had known for maybe two or three days were like, that letter doesn't sound like you. And I'm like, that was me. And I'm, I was a horrible person. I was a horrible drunk. I was a really nasty drunk, snide, nasty drunk. I'd say horrible things to people for no reason. Just because that's the way it made me. It just made me horrible.

So what they do is they get you down as low as you can go. By this stage, I'm on the floor. I'm like, ‘Oh my god, I've ruined everything.’ And then they build you up after that, and you, you need to have a bit of self-care. You need to respect yourself a little bit more. And when you have that self-care, then you start appreciating other people a little bit more.

And there's a massive stigma attached to alcohol, alcoholics and being labelled alcoholic. And if you say alcoholic, everyone goes, ‘Oh, park bench, brown bag, tramp.’ That's what everyone thinks, there's a certain amount of people out there who hold down good jobs. I held down a good job. I was a functioning alcoholic.

A lot of people in there were saying, ‘what you can tell them when you get out’. I was like, ‘what do you mean? Everyone knows I'm in here! I'm not, I'm not shying away from any of it. My responsibility is my responsibility, and I've got no problem with telling people.’

So other people going, ‘so just say you go to the pub and you don't have a drink. What's someone going to say to you?’ I'll just say, ‘I've got a problem with drinking. I don't drink anymore. And that's my business. And if you don't like it, don't stand with me, or don't ask me.’ And that’s entirely down to me.

It's not a case of, right, I've now done two years and about three months. I'm not okay now. I just can't go, all right, great, and stop thinking about it, because it's a, it's a constant one. It's a constant journey. I need to keep practising. I need to keep myself going and keeping myself busy.

And I do things now that I would have never done in the past ever. Not a dream. Like, I'm a big Man City fan. I would have never took my lad to football because that would have seriously disrupted my drinking on a Saturday. Now I'll take him to football whenever I can do.

I used to do things that I thought he liked. He didn't like the things I liked. Let's go to the Queen [pub] and it's got a play area. It's rubbish. He had no enjoyment. But to me, I'm doing something good for my son, but I can have a drink at the same time. And everything related around me being in a pub.

Life's good. And listen, I'm not one of these who's going to go, ‘Oh, stop drinking and everything goes brilliant, and it's the best life in the world.’ Life's still hard. I still have times when I'm like, ‘This is tough.’ I had it a couple of weeks ago, and it wasn't that I wanted to drink again. I just found it hard. I had no motivation to see anyone. I didn't want to go out. I just didn't.

My mate's going, ‘Right, we're going to go play snooker.’ And no, I'm all right. And even the girlfriend was going, ‘You need to go out’. Because she can see it in me obviously straight away. But I had no motivation. I'm more than that now.

So, I'm going to go through little ups and downs. It's about making sure, when I've had the downs, that I don't turn to the way that I used to be.

Your luck doesn't change. You're in more of a capable space to deal with what comes at you. So, it feels like your luck's changed.

So, I've done stuff now and I'm like, ‘Oh god, that's good. I'm having good news.’ So, good news about my job, or good news about my baby. That's not because the heavens have gone, ‘oh, you stopped drinking.’ It’s because I've got my head in gear and I've gone, ‘actually, I need to do something.’

So, yeah, it isn't all about, if you stop drinking your life becomes brilliant. It doesn't work like that, and nobody should think that. But it's about you're in a better place yourself to deal with what you need to deal with, and what you want to speak about, and then the good things happen, and good things happen to good people.