Addiction need not ruin your life. Deana Luchia meets the man driving people from drink...
Before devising his own recovery programme, Sober in Seven, Andy Smith had tried quitting alcohol numerous times.
“I did AA, hypnotherapy, SMART Recovery, saw my doctor, went to rehab,” he says. “Nothing worked. I assumed I was unfixable. I couldn’t see a way out.”
Surrounded by alcohol from a young age – his parents ran a pub on Shetland – he grew up, he says, in a culture which equated drinking heavily with being ‘one of the lads’. Struggling with addiction for most of his adult life, he’d drink up to a litre of spirits a night, waking up the next day filled with remorse and self-loathing. Alcohol, he says, ruined his physical and mental health, destroyed his relationships and led him to miss out on family life, as he slept off the effects of his drinking, comatose on the sofa.
Now sober for eight years, Andy is one of a growing number of ‘sober coaches’ offering alternative treatment programmes – and accountability – for those seeking help. Many are ex-addicts, like Andy, who know what it’s like to hit rock bottom.
For Andy, that moment came when his drinking brought on a panic attack, and he passed out in the middle of Tesco in Wokingham.
“A little old lady helped me up and asked if I was OK. I remember thinking: ‘You can’t go on like this.’“
He didn’t. Instead, he created Sober in Seven, which, as the name suggests, is a seven-step march to freedom. It makes use of some NLP techniques, visualisation and mindfulness – things Andy learned during a corporate career in sales.
“I made a commitment to myself that I would work my way to the end of the programme that I had created,” he says.
Soon, he started to feel better, both physically and mentally.
Andy Smith
“I wasn’t waking up hating myself every morning; I felt more in control, and my anxiety levels were coming down. I used to kid myself that I drank to relax, but actually alcohol creates anxiety.”
He never intended to become a sober coach, but the issue seemed “too important” for him not to share what he’d learned. Now 58, Andy has used Sober In Seven to help over 7,000 clients climb on the wagon.
“I often say that I can ruin alcohol for you in a fortnight,” he says.
He doesn’t use or like the phrase ‘recovering alcoholic’, and instead of asking clients to frame their recovery as an attempt to ‘stop drinking’, he gets them to focus on imagining what their life would be like without booze.
“If alcohol were not a driving force, I ask them, how would your life be better? How would your relationships be? What would your health be like? What would happen with your career? And we start to build this picture of the gift they’re looking to give themselves.”
He works with men and women of all ages and backgrounds, but stresses the importance of each individual finding the right sober coach. It is, it seems, very much the same as with therapists: one size does not fit all.
“I’m a big, sweary northern bloke,” he says. “I use humour a lot and I’ll take the mickey out of myself.”
He is, during our interview, very open and easy to talk to. No questions are off-limits, he assures me. I imagine there’s little that would surprise him.
“I am a better friend now that I’m sober,” he reflects, though some people did struggle with the changes he made.
“But you have to ask yourself whether those people were really your friends, or just drinking buddies who were happy for you to enable them.
“If you’re a heavy drinker and one of your friends suddenly stops, it makes you look at yourself. Non-drinkers, or people who don’t have a problem with alcohol, won’t mind if you quit. The only ones who will give you a hard time are those who are struggling themselves.”
Nevertheless, recovery is not always straightforward.
“I’ve seen more people undone by a family bank holiday barbecue than anything,” warns Andy. “But a lot of the tools and techniques I use are about mental rehearsal. We have to get your subconscious mind full of expectations of how this is going to play out.”
As for relapses, they should be seen as lessons, not failure.
“On this journey,” says Andy, “the only failure is giving up on yourself.”
