The Alcohol Industry Doesn’t Care About Moderate Drinkers — Their Biggest Customer Is the Person Who Can’t Stop

Episode 93 | Melissa Cheriegate: I Was an Extra in My Own Life What happens when you spend so long living for everyone else that you forget who you are? This week on After Hours with Jimmy Thistle, I'm joined by Melissa Cheriegate, artist and creator of the Whoever You Artpodcast, for an honest conversation about addiction, identity and finding your way back to yourself. From the fashion world and its party culture to marriage, motherhood and life across several countries, Melissa's journey took a devastating turn following the death of her father. As her drinking spiralled, alcohol became something she needed just to function. Two stays in rehab, relapse and some frightening moments followed before she finally found her own reasons to stop. We talk about grief, motherhood, ADHD, shame, the dangers of wine culture and the surprising role that art, creativity and podcasting have played in her recovery. But at the heart of Melissa's story is something bigger than alcohol: learning to stop being an extra in your own life and finally becoming the person who gets to write the story. An honest, moving conversation about second chances, self-worth and discovering that it's never too late to begin again. Find Melissa: Instagram @whoeveryouart.podcast https://open.spotify.com/show/033U09Igdg96MTQw9UxMcd?si=02b0f326b3934471 https://www.youtube.com/@whoeveryouart

EPISODE 92 | SOPHIE HYDE "I Could Stop at Two Glasses of Wine. But All I Thought About Was the Next One." What happens when you're the life and soul of the party, but behind the scenes you're absolutely miserable? This week on After Hours with Jimmy Thistle, I'm joined by Sophie Hyde, the former party girl who's discovered she can still dance, celebrate and enjoy life without alcohol. Sophie talks openly about her drinking at university, the mental exhaustion of trying to moderate, and the three friends who helped her take her first proper break from booze. We get into sober weddings, navigating marriage when your partner still drinks, the pressure to be the fun one, and why changing jobs wasn't enough to make Sophie happy. We also talk about the moment she realised she didn't need to hit some catastrophic rock bottom before making a change. And there's a special connection to next week's guest, Millie Gooch, whose podcast and book helped Sophie begin questioning her drinking. If you've ever spent an evening thinking more about your next drink than the conversation in front of you, this episode is for you. Find Sophie: Instagram @sophiesoberglows Find Jimmy: Instagram @recovery_jimmy Enjoyed After Hours? Follow, review and share the podcast! Instagram: @thesoberthistle Coaching: https://thistlefreedomcoaching.com Support: https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt Books: Alcohol Explained: https://amzn.to/4uMmkyB This Naked Mind: https://amzn.to/4eC6L6z A Million Little Pieces: https://amzn.to/44jOV3i Donate: https://motiv8.im/donate/ https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jonny Crawford joined the RAF at nineteen looking for discipline. What he got was twelve years of what he calls the fittest alcoholics in the world. In this episode he pulls the curtain back on a drinking culture most people never see. The beer calls that weren't compulsory but absolutely were, because if you didn't turn up you got the worst jobs the next day. The cocaine syndicates. Lads sweating it out in the sauna on a Friday and pulling a sickie on a Monday to dodge the drugs test. Mates binning eleven-year careers over one night at a festival. And the old flight sergeants living vicariously through the young lads the morning after. It ended on a back road in Cyprus. Jonny got behind the wheel blind drunk, two of his mates in the car, doing 80 miles an hour on his way to the next pub. The car left the road and slid between two trees that would have killed him outright, and into the bushes. All three of them walked out without a scratch. The first car down that empty road turned out to be a pal from boxing. And Jonny asked him for a lift to the pub, and the party ran until the next day. He should have woken up destroyed. Instead he woke up loved. He calls it his first encounter with the Holy Spirit, and the 18th of September 2022 was the last time he touched a drink.

Olivia Farrelly had her last drink on 4 July 2018. It was a gin, at a wedding in Spain, and she knew before she'd finished it. She handed the glass to her husband Gary and asked him to take a photograph, because it felt that big. She still has the pictures. Eight years on, Olivia is an alcohol-free coach and mentor, the host of No More Booze – The Podcast, and the woman her clients call "the smiling assassin". In this episode she tells Jimmy about growing up in nineties Ireland, where the pub was where you learned to be social. About 16 nights in a row out in Sydney, and only making it to the Opera House the night before she flew home. About half a bottle of vodka, throwing it straight back up, and then drinking 16 Baileys. And about hangovers so monumental that in the end they made the decision for her. But this is not a war stories episode. Olivia is trained in psychology, and she's spent eight years working out exactly why life on the other side is better. She talks about alcohol painting you into a corner, and how every drink you don't take lets you see more of the world. About the question that changed everything for her: how does a fish know it's wet? About emotional maturity arriving at 37, and the shame that had to be dealt with before joy could move in. She's honest about the hard parts too. The dark night of the soul after the booze went. Redefining friendships built on drinking. Being called holier-than-thou. Going through menopause with a clear head rather than a foggy one. And she makes the case for what she's built instead: sauna and ice on a Sunday morning, matcha with friends, a weighted blanket, a mango kombucha and a murder documentary. A life she calls beautifully ordinary, and would not trade for a cheque for a hundred million. Jimmy and Olivia also get into gray area drinking versus the alcoholic label, why Sober October should be a count up rather than a countdown, and why twelve people in Olivia's life no longer drink. One word for life now? Joyful.

Episode 89 | Suzanne Warye — Mummy Wine Culture, the Vodka Deal & the Morning She Couldn't Remember Feeding Her Baby Suzanne Warye grew up in Wisconsin, a state where 97 of America's 100 drunkest cities are located and the baseball team is literally called the Brewers. Drinking there didn't feel like a choice. It felt like a foregone conclusion. Her parents divorced when she was six and her dad went hard into the party. Then, when she was nine, he sat her down and told her the doctor had said if he wanted to dance at her wedding, he had to quit. So he did. The next drink he had was at her wedding, twenty-four years later. That was the only conversation about alcohol she ever had growing up. No warning. No cautionary tale. She had her first drink at fourteen — straight vodka, wasted, and that immediate rush of belonging. Varsity volleyball, student council, honour society by day; blackout drinker by night. College in Green Bay was booze and boys. Then Atlanta, then Chicago — single in the city, waking up in places she didn't recognise beside people she didn't remember. She calls it what it was: the walk of shame, a phrase that only ever applies to the woman. It never occurred to her that quitting was an option. She didn't think she qualified. She just had to drink better. Be more adult about it. Find the moderation everyone else had supposedly mastered. Then came motherhood — and one of the most extraordinary confessions on this show. Suzanne became an influencer in 2015, before the word existed. And she was paid by a vodka brand to make drinking look glamorous by the pool. She made it look beautiful. She poured every drop down the drain and never took a sip, because she was a busy mum with three kids and couldn't drink in the afternoon. Her followers didn't know that. They only saw a woman who seemed to have it all and a drink in her hand. She was, in her own words, both a perpetrator and a victim of mummy wine culture. On the 19th of January 2020, after a champagne party, she woke at 10am and realised she'd nursed her three-month-old in the night with no memory of it at all. She spent the day on the couch, looked around at the chaos of her own home and thought: this scene needs a mum. She got up and told her husband she was done. Six and a half years ago. Her husband quit two years later. Her book is The Sober Shift. One word for her life now: wonderful.