Hannah: Hello and welcome to Happily Ever After, this is Hannah and today I’m talking to Sean Alexander who is the author of Sober on a Drunk Planet. So i quit drinking myself about 5 years ago almost to the day, so I wanted to speak to Sean almost as a sort of celebration of this anniversary but also because i’m now fascinated by the subject of addiction and in particular how it can impact on relationships. But before we get onto relationships and addiction, Sean hello!
Sean: Hi, how’re you doing?
Hannah: Good! Would you might giving a little bit of background about your drinking and drugs and how you ended up writing this book?
Sean: Yeah, I’ll just try and give you the short version. Addicts are quite known for talking about their past. I was born and raised in Wimbledon in South West London, where the tennis is, easiest way for people to remember it. Privileged upbringing, no council estate or any sort of known trauma. My Mum and Dad were amazing, I went to a good school, went to university up in Nottingham, lived up there for three years. Didn’t get into drugs till after I left uni. I then started working in a pub. When you work in a pub, especially in South London, drugs and drink are as easy to get as one or the other. The pub I used to work in probably had 5 or 6 dealers who worked out of there every day and it was just part and parcel of life.
I’m 36 years old now so when I was there it was so easily accessible. But it started off as once a month, once a week, twice a week, during the week and then before I knew it I was in rehab at the age of 31. Worked in finance, I was a qualified financial advisor, qualified pensions advisor. Had a house, very close to having a wife to be as well, sort of a bit of a car crash addiction. I gambled all my money away. Sold my house to pay off the debts then did exactly the same thing again just with a lot more money.
But luckily losing all the money was the thing that actually was the catalyst for me getting help. The prospect of being homeless sort of got me into rehab and it was a bit of a strange thing. I was working as an investor at the time, earning a good salary but my lifestyle was crazy. Loads of drugs every day, drinking, just not doing all the things that I learned to do in my financial advice qualifications. So I’d run out of money, I couldn’t even afford to get into work. All my credit cards were completely maxed out. Gambling was a problem again and then all I had was a private medical policy with work at the time that got me a 28 day stay at rehab, then that luckily was the turning point really.
I went to rehab because I needed an excuse to say that I didn’t have any money. But actually I knew deep down when I walked into that room in rehab with loads of other strange looking people all lost, I felt very at home. I went to rehab at The Priory in London and it was like the top care you could get. I was very fortunate, but a lot of people come out of it at they relapse. I think it’s like a 95% relapse rate. But I’d already gone through years of trying to quit, telling people I had a problem, one car crash after another, lots of things going wrong. Then the penny dropped when I was at rehab.
I spoke about my drinking habits, I had never contemplated drinking was a problem because I drank like everyone else from university. You’d black out, you’d wake up, there would be sick everywhere, and it was that sort of normality, the people that I was drinking with, it never felt like it was a problem but actually when you go to rehab and they look at your pattern of drinking and the behaviour associated with it, it’s very obvious that I had an addiction with alcohol. It might not be your stereotypical one where you’re drinking 2 bottles of wine in the morning to function, I wasn’t a functioning alcoholic, I was a binge drinker. I’d go out Thursday and just drink and drugs until I got to Sunday and then I’d sleep for about 14 hours before going to work on Monday and lived in that same repeatable nightmare for the best part of 17 years. When you were young you can sort of get away with it a bit more because your liver is better to detoxify itself and the hangovers don’t last all week but I think, I don’t know if you found, with age, hangovers seem to drag on all week.
Hannah: Definitely, it’s funny because I think for me, people will often be like ‘oh you just drink the same amount I do’ but I felt like I had a problem. So I wasn’t doing what you were doing necessarily and adding drugs into the mix but there was definitely this underlying requirement to drink almost. I think you touch upon it lots in the book and it’s that feeling of ‘something’s not quite right’ and you’re trying to fill a void. But my point is that there’s lots of different levels, that you don’t have to have been going at it every single night of the week and like you say getting up and drinking all day. It can be as simple as, you’re thinking about it a bit too much. Do you know what I mean?
Sean: Yeah and I think that when I was at rehab, one person’s problem with alcohol is completely different to someone else’s. It’s the same principal that you use alcohol, which is a drug, to me there’s no difference between me snorting a line of cocaine or drinking too many pints. Drinking too many pints inevitably got me arrested a few times where as snorting cocaine didn’t. So I actually think alcohol is worse than the other drugs. But equally, they’re all pretty bad.
It’s such a spectrum of ‘is it just a bad habit?’ and then I think you start the perfect storm of things going wrong. Then you sort of drink a bit more often and then I was drinking every day and drugs every day because that was my coping mechanism. So filling that void where I didn’t want to face up to the fact that my life was completely spiralling out of control.
Being a typical bloke I didn’t have that emotional intelligence to ask for help or even know what was wrong. It’s that whole thing of - if someone says ‘how are you?’ I just say ‘Oh, fine’. But deep down there are a lot of things going wrong and that adulting and not wanting people to see that you’re struggling was a big problem of mine. So I just kept everything quiet until eventually I managed to spent an awful lot of money in about 10 years all in all.
All the gambling and stuff escalates. Gamblings quite dangerous because people don’t realise.. we talk about alcohol and drug addiction but gambling addiction can completely destroy you in the matter of an hour. Drinking and drugging - yeah you can overdose, but there’s a bit of a bigger lead up to getting to that point, whereas gambling is so rife and so accepted in society that it’s a lot more obvious. I know you’ve got pubs and you’ve got shops you can buy alcohol in but you almost don’t have that level of advertising or association with sports. It’s definitely more of a male thing, I’ve personally not met many female’s in Gamblers Anonymous but I’m sure there’s more with the day time betting with all these bingo things that really annoy me. Like Foxy Bingo and stuff like that.
Hannah: Yeah it’s becoming much more of a thing! I think they’ve spotted a gap in the market and they’re like ‘how can we get women in on this as well.. they’re going to do bingo!’ I personally don’t get it but I can understand what it is about it that people like. It’s really interesting.
So, the thing I wanted to talk to you about is the fact that.. I guess it’s for the person who isn’t the addict. So you mention in the book, specifically in the relationship section, about if you quit, what happens with your partner, it can go one of two ways.
One is that they quit too because they aren’t really that big a drinker and it’s not that big a deal and they just want to. Or they don’t and it can become an issue. What’s coming up quite a lot in the community that we have here is people talking about their partners drinking or drug taking or other addiction, gambling, people do talk about that too. And how much of a negative impact it’s having on the relationship to the point where they feel they have to leave and I know it’s like a really common issue within relationships, I don’t know whether it’s like an age thing or just because we grew up just drinking. I worked at the university and everywhere we went there was free booze. You know if you go to a conference, you plan where you’re going to go based on where the free booze is going to be. So I don’t know if it’s just because we’ve grown up doing it and you just get used to drinking a lot.
Sean: My mum doesn’t really drink but my dad was part of the rugby society, played rugby and they all drink, all their partners drink. So all the guys and friends that I grew up with all drink. You go to university and if you don’t drink at university, I mean it’s pretty alien. And in the corporate world it’s the worst, everything I did in the finance industry is drinks related. I think I did a Crystal Maze thing once in the 13/14 years I worked in the finance industry. But all the other events were drink related. And drink inevitably leads onto lower inhibitions which makes gambling worse. Which makes drugs.. literally one pint, two pints and you call your dealer, you get home you’re wide awake and you gamble, I think they all are more intrinsically linked than people think. I think if you cut out drinking you’re giving yourself half the chance of dealing with the other addictions as well.
Hannah: I’ll talk about that later, about when I left my ex and how I’m grateful I don’t drink. But, going back to the relationship thing. It feels like for a lot of people it’s really taboo. They’re really struggling with this thing but they’ve got no one to talk to and it’s like a dirty secret within the relationship that just becomes utterly toxic. Were you in a relationship when you were drinking and do you have some experience of that effect it has?
Sean: It’s obviously from my perspective so it’s a bit different, I’ve never really had any closure or anything from my girlfriend at the time. We were sort of at that point where we’d moved in together and everyone was thinking we were gonna get married and have 2 kids and live that life that everyone else expects you to. But I guess I wasn’t happy in the relationship because I wouldn’t have turned to drink and drugs if I was happy.
So I told her that I was a coke addict, she didn’t really have a clue that I was doing coke in the toilet, blamed it on IBS as to why I was always in the loo. Then when I told her she was shocked, she made me ring my Dad, my Dad was pissed off and then she just left. I mean she just didn’t even try or anything and there was definitely some resentment from me but I was so numb to everything because my life had literally spiralled out of control by this point. She made the right decision, you see it all the time, even when I was counselling clients as well.
You get people that enable something, I guess to some extent it’s codependency. Even if deep down you know that you don’t necessarily like the person in the relationship, it doesn’t always have to be that strong a feeling. It could be that you know that this person is someone you can spend the rest of your life with and you can both tolerate each other and the thought of splitting up and being single is too much.
I think you stick to it even if you aren’t particularly happy but that sort of fuels the drinking and the drugging as well. And I think that for me, that was a side effect of it, but because I was emotionally redundant, I didn’t know how to convey it, so I kept turning to drink and drugs instead, which obviously is not the solution to trying to work through relationship problems. But, I see her all the time. I grew up with a lot of builders and a lot of manual labourers and that kind of emotional intelligence is never passed down through the generations. You don’t have men talking openly about relationship problems and how to overcome them, you just have men saying let’s go to the pub and get f**ked and let’s forget about it, and that’s generally how we used to regulate our emotions, was down the pub.
Hannah: And do the guys ever go in for one?
Sean: Yeah I was never friends with the guy that went for one, not one.
Hannah: I didn’t know that existed until I quit.
Sean: I don’t think they do!
Hannah: They do! Well.. yeah I think so. I don’t understand it but I think so. On the enabling thing, do you think that if your girlfriend had said ‘Okay, let’s get you some help, go to rehab, or some sort of couples therapy’. Do you think you would have heard what she had to say or been open to the idea?
Sean: It’s difficult, I think everything in life pans out how it should do. But I think to go from not trying anything to just leaving, especially when we were apparently in love, knowing what I know now, I would not leave my other half if they went through a bit of a wobble. I’d like to think I’d spot the signs of it beforehand but if you really do like the other person then you should go through the motions of trying. Because worst case scenario you’ll come out of the therapy sessions, whether it’s joint or individual or both and you’ll get a load of insight into how you operate and your part in it as well. Sometimes it gives a bit of closure and sometimes it gives you the clarity you need to make the decisions.
Hannah: One person in particular that I’m thinking of had done everything they can and it’s like a circle. Your partner might quit for a little while and something happens and then they start again and you do the therapy and you do couples therapy and I guess it’s the time when you go ‘nothing that we’re doing and nothing that we’re trying to do here is working, and so I need to leave’.
And I think you can be the enabler for years if you want to, under the guise that the other person feels like you… if you’re in love you should keep putting up with their behaviour. I think a lot of people then feel guilty for choosing to leave because they’re like ‘I feel like I’ve tried everything and nothing is working’. It’s like you have to give yourself permission to go ‘this person’s not going to change while I’m around’. Do you understand where I’m coming from? Have you seen much of that? Or do you feel like people have really tried but you know..
Sean: When I was counselling some clients about a year ago, it was the family enabling thier behaviours through money. So it works in different ways, so you could be enabling your other half by staying with them or you could be enabling them if they’re a relative by giving then money and they’re telling you all these white lies.
And it’s difficult because at the end of the day we don’t like to do things that are uncomfortable. The whole human nature is to do things that are comfortable and our whole bodies system is to stay in your comfort zone. So when you have to go through that and make those decisions, logically it makes more sense. If you go through all the motions of going through the therapy, trying and then getting to that point where you’ve got nothing more to give. The relationships dead, that’s that person’s life. As selfish as it feels, sometimes it can be the making of the other person.
So for me personally, when she left it was a bitter pill to swallow but I had to realise that all my problems were my problems and until I finally got the help I needed, and I wanted to get help, no one was gonna change me, because you get fixers in relationships as well. The girlfriend at the time obviously wasn’t the fixer, she was the polar opposite. But sometimes if you get fixers they’ll keep thinking ‘they’ll change for me, they’ll change for me’ but I think you realise over time that they won’t.
And you’ve been wasting time, whether that’s wasting time or it’s actually just realising it is what it is. I know some people stay in relationships for almost their entire lives and they aren’t happy so it really is a spectrum, at what point do you leave. And to what extent do people tolerate not being happy. I’ve seen it so many times, people are unhappy but they won’t leave. Codependency is another addiction, it’s exactly the same as drinking too much alcohol, too much dependence on one person and it becomes toxic.
Hannah: I think, five years into my journey and I’m realising that it wasn’t just about booze. That was a big thing that I leaned on but I could say the same for sugar and I do think codependency. So when I left my ex, it was almost worse for me than quitting alcohol because one day I just woke up and went ‘this is not working for me’.
We were trying for another baby or thinking about it and I was trying to cut down and I was like ‘why can I not cut down?!’ and it’s because I can’t just have one. And I’m the kind of person that finds it easier just to say no than to say maybe. So that was it, I just stopped. But with my ex, I do think I was addicted to him and the whole external validation of being in that relationship, having the nice house having the nice life, having the holidays, having the kids, everything fitted really nicely and coming out of that was like this ridiculous emotional rollercoaster and I made some really terrible decisions even when I was sober so I’m just so grateful that I wasn’t drinking.
Sean: It’s interesting because what you allude to is societal conditioning and it was exactly the same point that I got to. I’m half Italian, half Irish so family is very much; be successful, have children, stay married your whole life. But that doesn’t fit everyone and I think I was always fighting against that. And then I just realised I was really unhappy in that position.
Everyone was telling me ‘you’re doing so well, you’ve got everything’ but at the end of the day you’re not happy, you sort of know that deep down. We’re all brought up thinking that that’s how people view us as successful but the truth is, I’ve been the happiest that I’ve ever been when I was on benefits because one of my businesses after I got sober and I left the finance world, got hit by covid, it was a travel business I’d set up, so I had to do everything on a shoe string budget for a couple of other years while I was doing some other work as well.
It just showed me that you don’t need to have all those things in your life to be happy. If anything, less is more. So I’m more comfortable just with a book and being on my own than with a puppy and a missus than needing to go out and validate with other people standing and talking about how the books doing and stuff, I just like my little introvert life now.
Hannah: Yes, I know what you mean. So we’re coming up to October and Sober October and all that kind of stuff. Would you mind ending on some tips for sober curious people, and if you want to, moving into sober dating. Because I think when you’re going through the rollercoaster of ending a relationship, for me, it’s not a bad idea to just stop drinking for a while but obviously that brings it’s own ‘something to be nervous about’ you know, being sober and then going out to meet people is pretty scary.
Sean: It is scary but I think once you tackle that then everything else in life becomes pretty easy. I think that for me was where I went from being this scared boy to then becoming a bit more of a man who’s confident in what he didn’t want, not necessarily what he wanted. So yeah, in terms of, Sober dating..
Strangely enough through doing the 12 step programme I learned a lot and I think a lot of it was centred around, if you aren’t happy in yourself then that radiates, so if you’re going dating and you’re not really happy or you’re not confident in certain areas then that codependency can really really kick up and you’re just looking for validation from people. If they don’t text you straight away then you’re worrying about this that and everything else and you’re worrying that they might not like you.
But I think with modern dating, you can filter out all those, before you even get to the date, I went through a process of going…
I think I got addicted to dating but that’s just my personality, I am very all or nothing, it did feel like towards the end of it like I’d completely burned out and it was soulless but you understand what it is that you do want.
And I think after dating for about a year I realised I didn’t want to date someone that drank. So then on my profile I was just like ‘look, I want this, I want someone who’s into spirituality a bit, who’s a bit different, not your usual rat race lifestyle, they’re working in a corporate company and they work Monday to Friday and they do all that’.
So I just put exactly what I wanted on Hinge. That manifestation of ‘what you want, if you don’t put it out there then, you’re not going to get it’. Then ended up meeting my missus, we’ve been together a year and a half, but it’s just a case of, I mean at the end of the day it is a numbers game. You can’t get too caught up in the fairytale of it. There’s times when me and my missus have arguments, we don’t talk to each other for 10 minutes or whatever and I think my realisation of what being in a relationship is, is different to what it was originally.
And we’re a lot lot better at talking to each other. So if something does annoy us or we think that there’s something coming up then we’ll have a proper grown up chat about stuff and that is so much better than my previous relationships where I would just shut down emotionally and not talk about it. Then you’re walking around with all these thoughts in your head and stuff as well.
Hannah: Guessing what the person is thinking.
Sean: Yeah and it’s such a negative way to be in a relationship. Communication really is key. With the dating side of it - dating’s fine, at the end of the day there were some terrible dates, there were some exciting dates and there were just some really boring dates but I think you go into the mindset of thinking ‘look i’m doing this because I want to meet someone’ or for whatever reason. It’s good, you’re doing it without having to reach for drinks as well. So you sort of know that you’re going in there as that person that that person is going to meet every time.
When I was thinking I was a completely different person when I was drunk to when I was sober. Which is probably why I was single for the best part of 10 years when I was drinking.
Hannah: And if someone wants to give not drinking a try for a little while, what would your tips be for that?
Sean: I think accountability, so for the personal training stuff that I’ve done, I think when people buy a package, it doesn’t have to be an expensive one, it can be an online course or one of the journals, the 30 day journal for £5.99 or whatever. Just give yourself that end goal and something that can keep you accountable along the way because accountability is a powerful coaching tool that people use and I think if you potentially do things in group settings as well there’s an extra layer of accountability with other people.
There’s plenty of sober courses out there for people, just find one that you like. I think courses are the best way of doing it and those 30 day journals, 90 day journals because accountability really is key. I know from experience when you just say ‘oh i’m going to be sober for 30 days’ but all your lifestyle and all your friends still drink weekend to weekend it’s not really going to happen. You need to build in accountability for it to stick.
And then inevitably, I’ve not met anyone who regrets going sober so it’s literally one of those life changing things that if you really want to change every area of your life for the better then quitting alcohol will do it from the physical to the mental side of things. I mean you’ll know as well, it is bonkers how much you can change. And you get all the nice benefits as well, you look younger, you feel younger, with all that extra energy and stuff it’s really motivating.
Hannah: Definitely, I literally don’t know how I did it actually now that you’re saying this. I’m like ‘it must have been some other, bigger reason that I needed to quit’. But I definitely don’t ever regret it. I think it’s massively helped my confidence in general. I think once you’ve worked out how to step into a room, a party, a wedding, anything like that without drinking, it’s like it becomes your superpower. I’ve already arrived ready to hit the dance floor, I’m just waiting for all you guys to catch up.
Sean: And people are like ‘oh you’re not drinking, strange!’
Hannah: And the conversation with family members is always hilarious. You mentioned your Gran in the book and my Grandad recently turned 90 and he must have asked me 5-6 times at his birthday party if I wanted a drink and each time he was like ‘oh yeah that’s right you don’t drink do you’. In the morning he was like ‘are you hungover then??’ and I was like ‘no Grandad! of course I’m not’.
Sean: Yeah it’s funny my Nonna is exactly the same, she’s a proper Italian Nonna as well, she’s 96 years old and she just can’t understand how I don’t drink and like your Grandad she just asks me about 10 times and I’m like ‘no, i’m still not going to drink’.
Hannah: Still don’t want one..
Sean: Yeah
Hannah: They just grew up with it and it feels really odd I think. I do think my family didn’t like the fact that it means you might have a problem. Like ‘why can’t you just have one?’ It’s just better for everybody if I don’t.
Sean: To some extent it’s like a mirror. So your ‘not drinking’.. the uncomfortable questions start kicking in. They’ll start asking those questions that they’ve never asked when you’re in a group of family and friends that have always drank together, no one ever asks ‘oh I think you’re drinking too much’.
People normalise it, like ‘oh you got really drunk last night, you were hilarious, you were throwing up and making an idiot out of yourself’. Take that out of context and it’s actually not fun, it’s not hilarious and you’re in a world of pain. But because you’re in a group of people that normalise it, it’s different. So when you’ve got one black sheep that suddenly stops drinking, then the questions start kicking in, and sometimes it can bring up quite uncomfortable things for people. But in true style, they’ll just ignore them. But I don’t know! Have you got anyone in your family that you might think ‘oh, you drink too much?’
Hannah: No comment!! Doesn’t everybody. I’m just not a fan of alcohol at all but I’m happy for people who can have a couple.
Sean: Still haven’t met those.
Hannah: Each to their own. When I first sat down to read your book I got that feeling of ‘it’s really exciting’! You know when you’ve just finished a series then you realise your friend’s never watched it.
There will be some people out there who would love to just quit and I think if they read your book they’ll get that permission and see that there is a way of doing it where you can quit and life is much better. So I’m going to link to that in the show notes so people can link to that if they are interested.
Overall thank you so much for coming on and chatting with me, it was very interesting, particularly on the relationship side from your perspective, what that can be like so yeah. Really cool thank you so much!
Sean: Thanks for having me on!
