One for the Road: The Quit Drinking Podcast

Jess woke up shaking on a Saturday morning at 20 years old. One of the guys handed her a drink and told her it would make the shakes go away. It did. And in that moment, something clicked. This can't be good. She'd had her first vodka at 12. By 20, she could out-drink every guy in the room and still remember her own name. She was in an abusive relationship with her high school sweetheart, weaving...

Andy Stone was driving a 15-mile round trip every night. Headlights broken, full-beam or none at all, pissed and on his way to pick up cocaine, then back to a rented room with a four-pack and a bottle of wine. His dosage was 12 pints of Stella. His marriage was over. His suicidal thoughts were daily. Then his parents drove up the motorway and told him he was going to rehab. Nine years sober as of...

Jason was a 13-year-old kid on the Hatfield Mead estate in Morden when he washed his first car for £7 and used the money to buy another bucket and sponge. Within four weeks he had four mates washing cars while he made the sales. By forty-two he was an angel investor and twenty-six months sober, having quit drinking with his wife. This is the recovery story of a self-made entrepreneur from a south...

Ultra runner Allie Bailey ran 100-mile races, crossed deserts in Namibia, ran across frozen lakes in Mongolia and presented the whole thing on social media. She was also drinking two bottles of wine the night before her first 100-miler and downing pints at mile 22 of marathons. She is the author of There Is No Wall and joins Sober Dave on One for the Road to talk about quitting drinking after 24 y...

Busted singer and bassist Matt Willis was famous at 16, in rehab at 21, and sober for eight years before one tray of champagne sent him back to six grams of cocaine a day. He joins Sober Dave on One for the Road to talk about quitting drinking, the music industry that fed his addiction, and the morning his wife Emma told him "we're not doing this anymore." Matt grew up in a chaotic London househol...

Lucy Bruce was twenty-four when she sat across from an alcohol counsellor and stopped drinking. Eighteen years later, she has weathered childhood abuse, domestic violence, divorce, postnatal depression and intrusive thoughts that almost broke her. And she is still sober. This is the recovery story of a woman who refused to pass her trauma on to her children. Lucy tells Sober Dave about growing up...

The Gavin Sisters, Sharon and Loretta, are a comedy double act, plant-based wellness coaches and the founders of the Detox Barn. They join Sober Dave on One for the Road to talk about quitting drinking together as two single mums after Sharon was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease that put her in a wheelchair at 30. Sharon was six weeks pregnant when she woke up with a chronic rash, then los...

Matt Busbridge has been a male model agent in London for 12 years. He spent most of those years quietly in the grip of alcohol and cocaine, drinking at lunchtime, racking up lines after work, and hiding it from everyone including his own parents. He joins Sober Dave on One for the Road to talk about quitting drinking cold turkey on his 33rd birthday and what year one of sobriety in the fashion ind...

Emily Horwood grew up in the noughties carnage of Camden Town and the Primrose Hill set, where she says you were either selling drugs or taking them. Most of her old crowd are now either sober or no longer here. She joins Sober Dave on One for the Road to talk about quitting drinking after 30 years, and the 15-month slip that taught her what real sobriety actually means. Emily's drinking moved fro...

Tonya Bardsley starred in The Real Housewives of Cheshire for almost a decade. From the outside it looked like champagne, glamour and laughs. From the inside, she was self-medicating undiagnosed ADHD with alcohol, taking diazepam to sleep, on antidepressants she didn't need, and crying on her sofa on Christmas Day 2022 thinking her family would be better off without her. She joins Sober Dave on On...

Kim Ballas, founder of Sober Is The New Cool, joins Sober Dave on One for the Road to celebrate 11 years alcohol-free and tell the story of the moment that changed everything. Kim grew up in Montreal with a Slovak father she adored and a culture of wine at lunch, wine at dinner, and brandy after. She drank her way through her teens, her twenties, a cancelled wedding, two miscarriages and a marriag...

Scott Thomas, Love Island star, founder of one of the UK's most high-profile PR agencies and host of the Learning As I Go podcast, joins Sober Dave on One for the Road for an unusually honest conversation about quitting drinking, identity, and the cost of being the life of the party. Scott was the golden child academically, the smart one in a family where both his brothers became famous at 16. He...

Susannah, known to many in the sober community as Sue's Sober, joins Sober Dave on One for the Road for one of the most quietly powerful conversations on the show. Susannah lost her mum suddenly at 23. Three months later, on Boxing Day 2004, she was on Koh Phi Phi when the tsunami hit. She helped triage survivors, made impossible decisions, and came home to a London life of late nights, drink spik...

He was drinking 20 pints a day and brushing his teeth with alcohol when he picked up the payphone to say goodbye to his mum. From the outside, Harrison Ward had it sorted. Hotel manager. Relationship. The badge of honour for being the bloke who could put it all away. Behind the mask, he was self-medicating clinical depression he'd carried since he was 13, weighing over 22 stone, blacking out night...

Welcome to my bonus episode Of One For The Road with Sophie B Hawkins. The GRAMMY® Award-nominated, RIAA Platinum-certified singer-songwriter has announced her first UK headline performance in almost two decades, set for Sunday, November 26 at London’s The Forge (3-7 Delancey Street, Camden Town, NW1 7NL) For more than three decades, Sophie B. Hawkins has been a chart-topping, award-winning s...

She was the smiliest mum at the school gates, lovely four-bed detached house, two children, a husband who worked away. From the outside, she had it sorted. Behind closed doors she was sitting on the bathroom floor each morning trying not to have a panic attack, self-harming, and drinking a bottle of wine every night just to fall asleep. Caroline Strawson is an award-winning trauma therapist and na...

Laurie Haynes had three father figures before he was ten years old. He left school at 14 with no GCSEs after setting the art corridor on fire. He spent most of his twenties partying, working hard, ordering a rope off Amazon one night, and walking away from a relationship with his own mum. Laurie is a NACOA ambassador, entrepreneur, and mental health advocate building a wellbeing platform called Sh...

We hear a lot about the people who quit drinking and rebuild their lives. We hear far less about the people they leave behind when they cant. This week on One for the Road, Sober Dave talks to Lucy Norfolk, who lost her husband Dan to alcohol last year. This is one of the hardest conversations on the podcast and Lucy is sharing it for one reason. She wants other families going through the same thi...

How do you quit drinking when alcohol is the only thing that stops your panic attacks? When you have been drinking vodka out of a water bottle since music college just to get on a tube, attend a lecture, or walk onto a stage? This week on One for the Road, Sober Dave talks to Rachel Lander, a session cellist who has performed with London Grammar, George Michael, Elton John, and Roger Waters. She i...

100 episodes. Hundreds of stories. One conversation Dave has been wanting to have for a long time. For the 100th episode of One for the Road, Sober Dave sits down with the woman who has been there since episode one. Danny Martinez is the producer behind the show, and over the past two years, working on every single episode has quietly changed her own relationship with alcohol. In this special epis...

Why can some people stop after one drink while others can't stop drinking at all? Why do you wake up at 3am after a heavy night feeling like the world is ending? Is alcoholism genetic? And what is alcohol actually doing inside the brain? This week on One for the Road, Sober Dave talks to Professor David Nutt, one of the world's leading neuropsychopharmacologists and author of the books Drink and P...

How do you quit drinking when alcohol has been your best friend for 25 years? When you've been hiding vodka in the toilet cistern, drinking in your car before work, swigging mouthwash to cover the smell, and still nobody around you really knows how bad it has got? This week on One for the Road, Sober Dave sits down with Jim Weir. Born in Glasgow, now living on the Isle of Man, three years sober an...

Content note: this conversation discusses bereavement and the loss of a best friend to alcoholism. Nicky was the fiery little redhead who lit up every room. Manager of half the shops in town. Mum of two. Knew everyone. The friend you couldn't miss when she walked in. By her early 30s she couldn't walk. By her late 30s she was incontinent, losing her sight, in so much pain she couldn't be touched....

Jess Frost grew up in a beautiful Leicestershire village, in a nice house, in a family everyone called the party couple. Behind the door it was different. Her dad cycled through psychosis, hospital admissions, a cult, then alcoholism. Her mum drank to cope. Jess and her sister tiptoed on eggshells. At 18, three of her four grandparents had died by suicide. Jess was the one telling her mum to leave...

Jim Sonefeld is the drummer for Hootie and the Blowfish. He wrote Hold My Hand. He has been sober for nearly 19 years. He takes Dave through it. The Chicago suburbs. Five kids in a religious household. The 14-year-old summer where he tried alcohol, threw up in the bushes, and scored it like a competitive sport. Six years to finish a four-year degree at South Carolina. The soccer dream dying. Meeti...