After Hours with Jimmy Thistle

Episode 79 | Paul Drayton — Ride or Die Trying: Beach Blanket Babylon, Two Brain Operations & the Love Story at the Heart of It AllPaul Drayton grew up in Sunderland — doors unlocked, family holidays, a dad who ran his own petrol station, a childhood he describes as idyllic. His first real taste of alcohol was chocolate liqueurs at his grandmother's, and he loved the feeling from the start. Not that he became a big drinker early — quite the opposite. As a teenager he was the designated driver, ferrying his friends to gay bars in his little box Astra while they drank cider and he listened to Erasure.Then came London. Drama college. Beach Blanket Babylon, where the tips sometimes came in wraps and the shift ended at 3am and the mornings brought in with Bloody Marys to take the edge off. The trendy bars of the nineties. A life built around parties, people and performance. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, a relationship that would define the next decade of his life — with a man who became, over time, one of the most recognisable faces in Britain, while Paul quietly built everything around him and slowly stopped being Paul.By 2015 he was at home alone with the dogs, self-medicating sciatica with alcohol, going to neighbours' houses to ask if they had any wine left. The drinking went from functioning to dependent. A drink driving incident that Paul still doesn't believe tells the full story ended up in court and in the tabloids. Two lots of brain surgery for a chronic subdural haematoma. A divorce. A month in rehab. And through all of it — all of it — he stayed sober.The book — Ride or Die Trying — is at its heart a love story. Paul talks about the dogs who kept him honest, the 274 days that ended with champagne at a wedding, the ADHD diagnosis that finally made his whole life make sense, and what it means to finally be somebody again on your own terms.You can find Paul on Instagram at:https://www.instagram.com/pauldrayton1His website:https://pauldrayton.co.ukand you can buy his book, Ride or Die Trying here:https://amzn.to/4pguaPP

Nigel Jones is the founder of the 9KM BY 9AM health and wellbeing platform, an accredited life coach, sober coach, hypnotherapist and NLP practitioner, and the author of the best selling QUIT DRINKING book Walking Back To Happiness: The Secret To Alcohol-Free Living & Well-being.After recently reaching 2,000 alcohol-free days, Nigel has become known for his practical, no-nonsense approach to personal transformation and identity change. In this episode, he shares how stopping drinking wasn't the biggest challenge - rebuilding himself was. We explore why alcohol promises what sobriety delivers, the power of small habits, how to break free from old versions of yourself, and why lasting change happens when you stop focusing on willpower and start changing your identity.Drawing on his own journey and his work with thousands of people looking to improve their wellbeing, Nigel explains why becoming alcohol-free is about far more than removing alcohol. It's about creating a healthier, calmer, more authentic version of yourself and building a life you no longer want to escape from.LINKSWebsite - https://www.9kmby9am.com/My Book - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DLPH36R3/ Alcohol Free Coaching Programmes - https://www.9kmby9am.com/coaching/alcohol-free-coaching/Coaching Testimonials - https://www.9kmby9am.com/coaching/coaching-testimonials/Newsletter - https://www.9kmby9am.com/latest-news/newsletter/ Professional Bodies https://general-hypnotherapy-register.com/nigel-jones/ Professional Bodies - https://anlp.org/members/nigel-jones Feel Good Hour  - https://www.feelgoodhour.com Podcasts - https://www.9kmby9am.com/about-nigel/podcasts/ TRY MY AI LIFE COACHhttps://www.9kmby9am.com/about-nigel/ai-coach/ 

Episode 77 | Dan Sheridan — Big Dan Stella in a Straight Glass: Cirrhosis, a 20% Chance & the Liver That Changed EverythingDan Sheridan grew up in Harwell, Oxfordshire — a village with five pubs and a club, a dad who was his hero, and a first attempt on his own life at 22 that he talked his way out of in front of a psychiatrist and never went back to. He became a dad at 19 to a woman sixteen years his senior, never found his footing, and spent the better part of two decades hiding behind a personality so large that the people who loved him genuinely couldn't believe he was suffering. Big Dan. Stella in a straight glass. Never drunk in public — just absolutely hammered at home at two in the morning, singing Adele, dancing to Happy Hardcore and hoping his eyes wouldn't open again.When his liver finally gave out the signs were there for years — size fourteen shoes on a size twelve man, legs that were just blocks of water, blood in places blood shouldn't be. He was diagnosed with cirrhosis in 2019 and that night went on Facebook Live to announce he was going to be the first person to cure the condition. Then bought 18 tins of Stella.In 2020, during COVID, he had a catastrophic GI bleed and decorated his house in blood. He was given a 50% chance of surviving the night. He was thinking about the lager in the fridge. The next morning a doctor told him he had a 20% chance of making it through the next hour — then the ward doors burst open and he went down fast. He woke up in ICU unable to remember his address.What followed was three years of transplant lists, stomach drains, weekly breathalyser tests, encephalopathy so severe he rang friends to tell them he was playing Ronnie O'Sullivan at Twickenham while using a fork to call Domino's. Then a TikTok video. Then a comment. Then a message. Then a phone call. Then Claire.On 1,111 days sober, he got a call on a Saturday — we don't normally ring patients on a Saturday, Dan, but we've got a liver for you. Three years ago on the 4th of June. He thanks that man every single day.You can find Dan on Instagram at:https://www.instagram.com/danman147On TikTok at:https://www.tiktok.com/@mrssheridanshusbandMum, can you Lend me Twenty Quid - Elizabeth Burton-Phillips MBEhttps://amzn.to/4vDciB7Basketball Diarieshttps://amzn.to/4wfkB63

Episode 76 | Brad McLeod — The Million Dollar Man: Running from everything, Drug Trafficking & the Moment Everything ShiftedBrad McLeod was born in Canada, one of twins, to a sixteen-year-old mother still living with her own parents. By the time he was six the family had relocated to Waco, Texas, and the stability he'd known at his grandparents' hands had gone. The anxiety started early. The ADHD diagnosis followed. The suspensions. The arrests. The psychiatrists, the counsellors, the pharmaceuticals — Prozac, Wellbutrin, Adderall, all of it. By sixteen he was in a lockdown treatment unit in Knoxville, Tennessee — transported there by a private security company after refusing to go voluntarily, running through a beehive and a barbed wire fence at a highway rest stop on the way.He did a year in that program, came out the other side with a college acceptance and a car his parents had scraped together to buy him. Six months later he was sitting at a poker table when someone pulled out a pain pill and asked if he wanted to try it. He didn't know what an opiate was. He found out fast. The pills ran dry and the heroin came. He got robbed at gunpoint. He lost the apartment, the car, the college place. He got arrested again — drug trafficking charges — and when he stepped off a plane to visit his family, the police were waiting. A year in jail. Deportation. A lifetime ban from the United States.He came back to Canada with a suitcase on his brother's floor, walking two hours each day to collect his methadone prescription, earning ten dollars an hour cash doing yard work for his parents just to cover the script. It was watching a girl's face light up to see him as he sat handcuffed in the back of a police car that finally made something shift — not the arrests, not the jail, not the deportation. Just one face in a car park.Now sober, Brad runs the Sober Motivation Instagram, hosts his own podcast and has built one of the most active recovery communities online. His grandfather used to call him the million dollar man — for all the money spent trying to fix him. These days Brad's spending it differently.You can find Brad on Insta at: https://www.instagram.com/sobermotivationBrad's Linktree: https://linktr.ee/SobermotivationThe Podcast: https://shows.acast.com/sobermotivationThe Website: https://www.sobermotivation.comand the App! https://www.sobermotivation.com/?fbclid=PAVERFWAShEIpleHRuA2FlbQIxMABzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA8xMjQwMjQ1NzQyODc0MTQAAaeM4yWqIsLZX4WK2KIXxKLT_V16Zhy9KUX7HmMZpj2VYfL9IZKO_NUeosKkGw_aem_uLKEHdE2U-8PLJXYvYoGeQDreamseller - Brandon Novak - https://amzn.to/4guPmz3

Episode 75 | William Porter — Alcohol Explained: Iraq, Cointreau at Dawn & 12 Years on the Other SideWilliam Porter grew up in Raynes Park, South West London — fine childhood, nothing dramatic — started drinking at 14 in a park with a friend and a bottle from the off-licence. It was a non-event. But the culture of the 90s, the lads, the music, Oasis, TFI Friday, all of it normalised getting absolutely hammered as a personality trait. By the time he’d done university in Cardiff, law school in Guildford and landed a paralegal job in London, drinking was simply what you did.Then at 26, half drunk on the sofa watching TV, an advert for the Territorial Army came on. He joined the Parachute Regiment reserve, quit drinking for three months to get through P Company selection, and passed. Then in 2005 he got mobilised and deployed to Iraq. In the build-up training, wracked with anxiety about what was ahead, he found the one thing that made the terror go away — a half cup of coffee filled up with Cointreau each morning, then drinking steadily through the day whenever he wasn’t training. Iraq itself was completely dry for six months. He came back thinking the enforced detox had fixed it. It hadn’t.By his early thirties — married, two young sons — the pattern was drinking heavily from Friday lunchtime through the weekend, waking at 3am to drink himself back to sleep, dragging himself into work Monday and doing nothing, then cramming the week’s work into three days. In February 2014 he crawled out of five days of constant drinking and made the decision to stop. Cold turkey, three days of hell, and then — slowly — the realisation that what he’d thought was him at 100% was actually him at 60%.He wrote Alcohol Explained in 2015, one of the most widely read and recommended books in the sobriety space, explaining the science, psychology and mechanics of alcohol addiction in plain language. Now 12 years sober, running three miles every morning, and navigating a difficult divorce without reaching for a bottle.You can find William on Instagram at:https://www.instagram.com/alcoholexplained?igsh=MXU1NGk1bGdhMW9sZw==Check out his website at:https://alcoholexplained.comDemon Coperhead - Barbara Kingsolverhttps://amzn.to/4uFt026The Outrun - Amy Liptrothttps://amzn.to/4fQ2ApOThe Outrun - Filmhttps://amzn.to/4ede45tAlcohol Explained - William Porterhttps://amzn.to/43HL3Zy

Episode 74 | April (Sally Sober) — From Whistler Snowboarder to 42 Days in Hospital: The Full StoryApril grew up in London, Ontario — good grades, scholarship to university, full of creative ambition. She was the weird middle kid who painted her nails black and hung out with the art kids, and found her first real confidence at 19 when she discovered alcohol above the campus pub. What followed was a decade that looked brilliant from the outside: five years in Whistler snowboarding six days a week, a ska band in Vancouver, a career in travel sales, nightclub promoting. Work hard, play hard — always in balance, always functioning. Then COVID happened.Locked down with a partner who also drank heavily, no job, liquor stores open from 7am, the balance tipped. By the time things opened up and the relationship ended, April was drinking alone to fall asleep and waking up at 2am to do it again. Loneliness was the trigger — it always has been. When a family member flew out and saw what her life had actually become, that was the moment things had to change.What followed was a two-year cycle of getting sober, hitting a milestone, telling herself she’d been sober long enough to have just one — and relapsing. Four times. Each time the withdrawal was harder because she knew what was coming. Then this February: almost five months sober, Valentine’s Day, her friend cancelled at the last minute, a bottle of wine at home, a long weekend, the old crowd, and eventually — through a chain of events she can’t fully discuss for legal reasons — 42 days in hospital with emergency surgery. She lost her job. She couldn’t eat or drink anything for two weeks. A nurse left a bottle of water on the counter and she lay there staring at it, lips cracked, not allowed to touch it.Now two months back and 111 days sober, April — who started her account as Sally Sober before going by her real name — talks about finally knowing who she is without a drink, the opposite of addiction being connection, and why this time genuinely feels different.You can find April on Instagram at:https://www.instagram.com/sobergalproblems?igsh=MTY1OHRtaW04ZmR3MA==

Episode 73 | Ross Powell — Jersey, Ketamine & Running Ultras: How £100K, a Van Crash & 18 Hours in a Cell Finally Broke ThroughRoss grew up on Jersey — nine miles by five — in a house where his dad drank heavily from Friday to Sunday and family life happened around arguing and alcohol. There was no one kicking a ball about with him, no male figure showing up for things. So Ross found his people outside, got easily led, got into trouble at school, and by 13 was paralytic at a New Year’s Eve party wondering why people kept telling him the next day about a version of himself he didn’t recognise. That version, he’d eventually realise, was his dad.Through his twenties he worked as a maintenance carpenter, drank every weekend to blackout, and smoked weed daily. Then after COVID he inherited £100,000. Within 16 months it was gone — all of it snorted or drunk, surrounded by people who appeared when the money did and vanished when it didn’t. He had over 30 Monday no-shows at work in a single year. Ketamine became his midweek go-to. He crashed a van while on it with friends in the back, tried to do a runner, got caught, and spent 18 hours crying in a cell. The fine cleared his bank account. He was close to prison.What pulled him back was running. He went from never running in his life to a sub-four-hour marathon in four months — then an ultra of 100K in Austria. Each time he cleaned up something would bring him back: a funeral wake, a friend saying you’ve done so well, the cogs of the old life turning again. Three pints at a pub and he felt nothing but shame. He left with his mum.Now approaching a year sober on Jersey, training for ultras, in a relationship with a woman who used to take drugs just to try and fit in around him, Ross talks about what sobriety actually is: not becoming a better person, but stripping back to your raw, honest self with nowhere left to hide. His word for life now: magical.Ross is on Instagram at:https://www.instagram.com/rosspowell__?igsh=MWliZHk0aDd5M2N4Mw==The Daily Stoic - Ryan Holidayhttps://amzn.to/4vduoZFCan't Hurt Me - David Gogginshttps://amzn.to/4vmeXyDTOMU - The Open Mic Unfiltered Podcasthttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tomu-the-open-mic-unfiltered/id1822149303

Send us Fan MailEpisode 72 | Jessica White — Sexier Sober: The San Diego Coach Who Quit Without Trying & Never Looked BackIn this bright, sharp and genuinely thought-provoking episode, Jimmy sits down with Jessica White — sober coach, host of the Sexier Sober podcast, and professional organiser based in Carlsbad, California — whose story of growing up in a high-functioning drinking household, nine years of blackout drinking, and a moment of quiet moral clarity that ended it all without drama or rehab is one of the most distinctive the podcast has featured.Jess grew up in San Diego in a well-meaning, loving family where both parents had substance issues — managed, high-functioning, never chaotic — but emotionally distant. She absorbed drinking as the normal currency of connection: football parties, family gatherings, the way adults loosened up and let go. A sensitive, neurodivergent kid who felt something was always slightly wrong with her, she couldn’t wait to find what would finally make her feel okay. At 14, she found it — blacked out the first time, threw up, and couldn’t wait for the next one.For nine years, Jess drank hard and largely had fun — social, energetic, the life of every party. She chose UC San Diego deliberately, a school full of serious students, because some part of her knew she needed that counterweight. She graduated with good grades. But outside the library, Thursday through Sunday, she was blacking out consistently, waking up with no memory of whole nights, doing things she’d never do sober, saying things she’d never say, sleeping with people she’d never have chosen — and rationalising every single time that next time she’d moderate.The moment that broke it wasn’t dramatic. It was a Tuesday night, Taco Tuesday, with a younger colleague who looked up to her as a role model. Jess had two or three drinks, remembered nothing, lost her phone, was driven home drunk by the person who called her a mentor. The shame wasn’t about the hangover. It was about the profound split between who she was performing herself to be and who she was actually showing up as. Out of alignment. Out of integrity. Done.That was July 8th 2020 — two weeks before Jimmy’s own sober date. She never craved it again.What makes Jess’s story distinctive is the path she took before that date. Three years of internal work — meditation, journaling, visualisation, studying how she worked. Six months of treatment at Rogers Behavioral Health for depression and anxiety — not for alcohol. A growing circle of people who were living differently and reflecting back to her what was possible. By the time she put down the drink, the work was already done. The alcohol just stopped fitting the life she was building.Now nearly five years sober, Jess runs Sexier Sober — one-to-one coaching, a podcast, and a community membership — built around the radical idea that sobriety isn’t the goal. The goal is becoming so clear on who you are and who you want to be that alcohol simply stops making sense. Effortless sobriety, she calls it. Not easy. Just inevitable.You can find Jess on Instagram at:https://www.instagram.com/jessmariewhite?igsh=MTdhMnJpeTE2cWdmbA==And her Linktree:https://linktr.ee/jessMy Instagram is:https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmyAnd you can find all my other links at:https://linktr.ee/jimmythistleBuy me a coffee…https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmytAlcohol Explained - William Porterhttps://a.co/d/0854fIb6This Naked Mind - Annie Gracehttps://a.co/d/0gy6mT9ZA Million Little Pieces - James Freyhttps://a.co/d/0jdcIjGbDonate:https://motiv8.im/donate/https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/