One for the Road: The Quit Drinking Podcast

A special bonus roundtable to close out the season. Dave is joined by Eric Zimmer (host of The One You Feed), Casey McGuire Davidson (host of Hello Someday) and Jill Teets (host of Sober Powered) for an honest conversation about how four very different people actually quit drinking for good. Eric got sober first time as a homeless heroin addict in 1994, then again eight years later through a 12-st...

She was the girl from Hearsay. Then she was the mum on the bathroom floor most mornings, wondering how she ended up here again. Suzanne Shaw spent years drinking to fit in. Through the bullying at school, the late nights in theatre, the relationship with an addict, the early grief of losing her dad. A bottle of wine became "coping." Two bottles became a problem. The dark thoughts became regular. O...

Ash got drunk for the first time at twelve, at a Christmas party full of A-list celebrities. By eighteen she was pawning her saxophone to pay back a drug dealer. By twenty-eight, she was a daily drinker. This is Ashley Butters's recovery story, told to Sober Dave. The host of Behind the Smile podcast sits down to share what happens when you grow up in an alcoholic home, marry a man two weeks after...

Shaa Wasmund tried to stop her father at eight years old to protect her mother. By nine, she was homeless in California. She has never had a single drink of alcohol in her life. This is the story of a daughter of an alcoholic who broke the cycle. Shaa tells Sober Dave about growing up with a Stanford-educated lawyer father who was a violent cocaine and alcohol addict, watching her family swing bet...

Emma had to leave her two small children alone in a cinema watching Frozen so she could be sick in the loos. She had only had three glasses of wine the night before. That was the moment she knew her drinking had to change. It still took her another year to quit drinking. This is the recovery story of an award-winning alcohol-free drinks mixologist. Emma tells Sober Dave about being given white por...

John Taylor is a qualified addictions and family counsellor, the author of the bestselling book Alcohol Stole My Mum, and 19 years sober. He joins Sober Dave on One for the Road for a quietly devastating conversation about what it actually feels like to grow up loving an alcoholic. John was the special one. The clever boy who sang Leo Sayer to his mum at bedtime. By eight he was trying to sober he...

Lou Hamilton was twenty-three when she watched the Lockerbie air disaster fall from the sky onto the village where she had just moved. She did not lose anyone. She was not injured. So she told herself she did not have the right to feel traumatized, and she got on with it for two decades. This is the recovery story of an artist, author and podcast host who finally quit drinking at fifty, after half...

Franxy was the tour manager of Coldplay when Chris pulled him aside and told him his drinking was out of control. He kept drinking for another year. By then he had been sneaking gin he hated down to the kitchen in the middle of the night, refilling the bottle with water, and walking the dog as cover to get to the pub. This is the recovery story of a multi-award-winning tour manager who has worked...

Kate Taylor pulled out her phone on December 20, 2021, two bottles of wine deep, and recorded herself sobbing for thirty minutes. She begged herself to stop drinking. The next morning she watched it back, felt sick, and quit. She has not had a drink since. This is the recovery story of a writer and mother of two who finally quit drinking after twenty years on the wheel. Kate tells Sober Dave about...

One glass of wine. That's all it took. By 3 a.m. Louise Morgan would be wide awake, heart racing, the anxiety she'd taken medication to manage now back in full force. For five years she lived like that. Not a daily drinker. Not someone hiding bottles. Just a mum and a working professional who'd have one glass on a Tuesday and pay for it for the rest of the week. This bonus episode of One for the R...

He was the funny one. The life and soul. The manager who could run a packed Notting Hill restaurant on four hours sleep and a barman's breakfast Bloody Mary. Paul Drayton was a functioning alcoholic for years before he ever named it. From chocolate liqueurs at his grandparents' house to dirty martinis after work to taking glugs of vodka out of the freezer at his own dinner party. He's been through...

Emma Gannon is a Sunday Times bestselling author, novelist, and host of Control Alt Delete. She also wrote the Guardian piece that lit up the sober curious conversation: I knew I didn't have a drinking problem, but I had a problem with drinking. She talks Dave through it. Growing up around the party-couple normality of wine every night. Uni and PR culture and pretending to enjoy it. Then lockdown,...

Lewis Harrington was a professional golfer. He was also a drinker, from 16. Two drink driving convictions by 21. A career that should have been about consistency and discipline, dismantled quietly by Friday nights, away trips, and the championed hangover. In January 2019 he stopped. Same week Sober Dave did. They've never sat down one-on-one until now. Lewis takes Dave through the moment in a curr...

Quint Bower is eight years sober. He runs a video production and animation company with offices in London, the Netherlands, New York and Los Angeles. His father was Bruce Bower, the Canadian actor in  Fawlty Towers ,  Full Metal Jacket ,  Octopussy  and  Empire Strikes Back . He was also a raging alcoholic who lay bedridden for much of Quint's childhood and only sobered up...

When Dax wrote Dear Alcohol, he was still drinking every single day. Tequila in the morning before 500 push-ups. A few sips before every music video, every interview, every social post, every show. He had been doing it for years. Then the song dropped, hit 28 million views, and changed everything. This week on One for the Road, Sober Dave talks to Dax, the Ottawa-born rapper behind Dear God and De...

Jo, also known as Sober Jo, is a sober coach based in Jersey in the Channel Islands. Before she quit drinking she was the MD of a marketing agency, a former brewery rep, and by her own admission a booze bully who would have laughed in your face if you turned up to the pub on a soft drink. She takes Dave through it. Growing up on an island she describes as filled with alcoholics clung to a rock. AD...

Jack Cotterall is a 29-year-old jazz drummer from the Cheshire and Stoke-on-Trent border. He has been sober for four years. The drinking in his family goes back generations. He takes Dave through it. His dad, a professional drummer, died of a heart attack at 32 when Jack was four. His granddad, also a professional drummer, died at 62 after a lifetime of twenty pints a night. Jack discovered drinki...

Amy Dixon lost her dad Steve to alcoholism in September 2020. He was 68. Two weeks before he died, Amy had already started the work of giving up alcohol herself. In this conversation with Sober Dave, she opens up about what it was actually like growing up as the child of an alcoholic, and what life looks like two years on. Amy talks about the bear she thought was prowling the house at night, who t...

Mike Faria was 36 when he looked in the mirror and saw highlighter yellow eyes staring back. His liver was shutting down. His stomach was the size of a beach ball. His mother had started planning his funeral. For five months he'd been drinking a litre of vodka a day. Working in construction. Raising two sons. Telling himself he was weaning off. A paramedic asked Mike who the president was. He answ...

Michael Sargood is 500 days sober. By the end of his drinking, he was on a litre of vodka a day, had lost a relationship, his driving licence, nearly lost his home, and was going to bed every night with a knife under his pillow. In this conversation with Sober Dave, Michael opens up about growing up gay in the 90s in a conservative part of the UK, why he loved alcohol for the same reason his dad h...

In this episode, Sober Dave sits down with Abi Feltham to talk about her journey through alcohol addiction, mental health struggles, and recovery. Abi Feltham shares what it was like growing up feeling disconnected, struggling with low self-esteem, and using alcohol from a young age to cope. What started as a way to feel more confident quickly became something much deeper. Over the years...

Danusha Malina Durban was in her late twenties before she took drinking seriously. By the time she was a working mother with a city consulting career, she was fiercely territorial about her bottle of Prosecco. It was the only thing in her life nobody else could touch. This is the recovery story of a mother of ten who quit drinking quietly three years ago. Danusha tells Sober Dave about being adopt...

Adrian Cox needed a hip replacement at thirty. Not from a sports injury. From drinking. The alcohol had thinned his blood so much it stopped feeding the ends of his bones, and the ball of his hip had turned half black. This is the recovery story of a jazz musician and the tour manager of UK ska legends Bad Manners. Adrian tells Sober Dave about leaving home at fifteen to join a band in Devon, the...

She started drinking at 14 to numb a life that was falling apart. Her parents had separated. Her uncle had died suddenly. Her mum had just been diagnosed with a terminal illness. And the only coping strategy she knew was the one her alcoholic father had modelled her whole life: drink, lie about it, and make everything look fine on the outside. This week on One for the Road, Sober Dave talks to CeC...

Fraser Franks was a Chelsea academy kid. He played 12 seasons as a professional, climbed up through Brentford, AFC Wimbledon, Luton and Stevenage, and ended his career at Newport County with a heart condition that forced him to retire at 28. His last finished game was against Manchester City in the FA Cup. He takes Dave through it. The shy kid who promised himself at six years old he'd never touch...