I will put a little context around my drinking past. Like many people my regular drinking began when I started work so I had an income and minimal outgoings, living with my parents.

My social environment was mainly the local working mens club and I was also heavily involved in local Football. All in a typical drinking culture of the late 70s,  through to the 80s and 90s.

Don’t get me wrong, even though I eventually stopped drinking I really had some amazingly enjoyable times developing friendships in the company of some awesome people.

Things started to change a bit for me, in my early 50’s when I moved away from the area that I grew up in. When I moved away my drinking became more sporadic, as opposed to being every day and then it started to be even less frequent but was punctuated with really heavy days.

In late 2013 I moved back to the area I grew up in and at Christmas I made a decision to stop drinking all together. I had a glass of wine and said to myself that it would be the last alcohol I ever drink. Something someone said to me years earlier, one is too many and two is never enough, started to resonate more and more with me. For me there was always a thought in the back of my head that I would return to drinking more heavily, so I decided it needed to be a straight forward yes or no.

I admire people who are in control of their drinking habits. My own thoughts were that I couldn’t trust myself to be disciplined and in control, so I decided that my limit was zero.