Living alcohol-free and deliriously happy!

My friend, I have a confession. For the last few months, most evenings after my "real" job finished and the house had gone quiet, I have been back at my desk with a notebook, a cup of tea gone cold, and my brain absolutely fizzing. I went back to school. Not in the terrifying, uniform and homework sense. But properly studying, late into the night, rewinding videos, taking notes, practising on anyone who would sit still long enough. I have been training with Paul McKenna's exc

Growth gets talked about like it’s a big, dramatic makeover. New year, new you. Reinvent yourself. Become a completely different human by next Tuesday. But real growth? The kind that actually sticks? It’s usually quieter than that. It’s the tiny choices you make when nobody’s clapping. It’s the boring, unsexy stuff you do on a random Wednesday evening because you’ve decided your life is worth building. And honestly, giving up alcohol cracked growth wide open for me. Alcohol-f

If you’ve found yourself repeatedly searching things like “am I an alcoholic?”, “signs of alcoholism”, “is my liver damaged?” or “how much is too much alcohol?” - you’re not alone. And you’re not “dramatic” or “attention-seeking” for checking. That late-night Googling is usually a sign of something deeper: your brain is trying to reduce uncertainty and soothe anxiety… while also trying to keep alcohol in the picture. That tug-of-war has a name. It’s called cognitive dissonanc

If you’ve noticed that alcohol and menopause are a particularly rubbish combination, you’re not imagining it. There comes a point where alcohol stops feeling like your glamorous little mate and starts behaving more like an absolute knob. What used to be a couple of drinks and a slightly fuzzy morning can suddenly turn into 3am dread, a mouth like a flip flop, anxiety for no bloody reason, and the sort of sleep that feels less “restorative” and more “lightly haunted”. If you’r

Years ago a little voice inside my head would plague me every now and again. It was annoying as hell. It would always be at its loudest after a heavy night of drinking. "You're in trouble... you feel like crap. You cannot keep control of your drinking. Everyone else can! LOSER." "Wow. You did it again. You texted that person late at night. NOW what trouble are you in. Eh?" "You idiot. You can hardly walk or work. Your head is all tizzy. You feel like a bag of dirt. You will r

When people first take a break from alcohol, in those all-important first few days and weeks, it is commonplace to experience a little...