After Hours with Jimmy Thistle

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.Jonny talks honestly about what came next: ordering a Bible he couldn't understand, locking his door at weekends and watching sobriety videos with headphones in while the old crowd knocked, and the people back in Scotland asking his mum whether he'd had a breakdown. As he puts it, when he was sniffing coke and wrecking his life, it was "that's just Johnny Boy." When he got sober and found faith, he'd lost the plot.He and Jimmy get into the identity question too, and don't entirely agree. Jonny won't let the men he works with call themselves addicts. Jimmy makes the case for what the fellowship gave him and what he had to leave behind.Plus: what men really hide from their families, why alcohol is the gateway, and the morning journal that changed everything.One word for life now? Clarity.You can find Jonny on Instagram at:https://www.instagram.com/jonnycrawfordmentor/Project Knight:https://jonnycrawford.unforged.me/links/?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAcGRvZgJzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA85MzY2MTk3NDMzOTI0NTkAAaftTeFdIKdJC5U-Q26FI9ETXa6aDQRj84oCFfkZOPk0E6gVUQi4NfUr0YOj9w_aem_tHU4KJuvMX8EfFf1A5VkIg

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.Find Olivia on Instagram at:https://www.instagram.com/greyareadrinker/No More Booze 30:https://nomorebooze30.lovable.app/?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAcGRvZgJzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA85MzY2MTk3NDMzOTI0NTkAAafqMV47f9QGRvNDTF8xByxEhaKCJSDrnUJhA5B7jb71HMs2Oxo0q6z5Xjsu3A_aem_WfMt3HpKCGZhTZllsgEGsw&utm_id=97760_v0_s00_e0_tv3Am I a Grey Area Drinker Quiz:https://grey-area-assessment.lovable.app/?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAcGRvZgJzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA85MzY2MTk3NDMzOTI0NTkAAadwbhpUxaZyvQ-8pKbMZjJ8qXC2GTd-BHbUhafHQ4U6fXiVg4xodrkwWC7Oew_aem_kLMN5fgrfbkgPfS-fEA6EA&utm_id=97760_v0_s00_e0_tv3No More Booze - The Podcast:https://open.spotify.com/show/037RmUDIJ3hW44FI5YLRjN?si=QsxQaVaqRdCQNL8s-2T-dA&utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAcGRvZgJzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA85MzY2MTk3NDMzOTI0NTkAAafwG9VjlfPf_V0F_FSj0Xy68kdwFy73yU1qRVERRm9zuZ1C3A7H3F3xqp6lgA_aem_TEke57rdTZeVPCOyUOTfMw&nd=1&dlsi=796525ccc19848e3The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober by Catherine Gray:https://link.amazon/B0g5RWsbyFeel Good Podcast with Dr Rangan Chatterjee:https://drchatterjee.com/is-it-time-for-a-tactical-break-from-alcohol-with-andy-ramage-re-release/

Episode 89 | Suzanne Warye — Mummy Wine Culture, the Vodka Deal & the Morning She Couldn't Remember Feeding Her BabySuzanne 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.Suzanne Warye is a sobriety influencer (@suzannewarye and @thesobermomlife) and the host of the popularpodcast The Sober Mom Life. Residing on the North Shore of Chicago with her husband and three kids, Suzannespends most of her time reheating her coffee and rocking her “whole heart, half ass” parenting philosophy.For more visit:https://suzannewarye.com/https://thesobermomlife.com/You can get the paperback copy of The Sober Shift here:https://amzn.to/4yMk1he

Episode 88 | Steve Smith — Nitro, the Door Handle & the Man Who Quit on a Train PlatformSteve Smith grew up in Berkshire, the son of Glaswegian parents — his dad a police officer turned private investigator who joined the force in England because Glasgow wanted him two inches taller. There was always a party. Beers dangled over the garden fence to signal the neighbours. Eventually a bar built into the house, optics and all, pure Del Boy. Nobody got into trouble. It was just fun. That's what Steve learned alcohol was.Then Cocktail came out. He started at the TGI Fridays in Reading, moved into the West End, and became one of the top flair bartenders in London. He went by Nitro. He competed in Dubai and Vegas. He won the World Championships. Free drinks and free entry everywhere he went, because in that world he was a rock star. Managers told the team to down a Bloody Mary before shift to sort themselves out. It wasn't a red flag. It was the job.He drank every single day through his twenties and most of his thirties. He moved into management, then operations, then senior management for big restaurant chains — where the drinking simply changed clothes and became wine tastings and client entertaining. He ran over twenty marathons and used every one as proof he was fine. How could there be a problem? He'd just run 26 miles.At 41, with an eleven-week-old son at home, he fell asleep on a train after a 10am wine tasting and woke up fifty miles from home on the last service with no phone, no wallet and no keys. That was the first time he really sat up. It took another five or six years.There was the morning he woke in agony convinced he'd damaged his liver — and discovered he'd slept on a door handle in his brother's spare room. The GP said he'd strained something. Steve took it as a green light.The end, when it came, was quiet. A night in London where he drank faster than colleagues fifteen years younger, left his glasses behind, and felt like the old boy who couldn't handle it. He woke up and thought: I'm bored of this. A few weeks later, a curry with his brother, standing on a train platform — I think that's it for me. 27th June 2021.He signed up for an Ironman having never done a triathlon. Now he runs 200-mile ultras, coaches dads through their first 90 days, and hosts The Alcohol Free Revolution.One word for his life now: full.Steve is on Instagram at:https://www.instagram.com/sober.illiant/His website is:https://www.soberilliant.comThe Acohol Free Revolution Podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-alcohol-free-revolution-podcast/id1826062887Alcohol Lied to Me - Craig Beckhttps://amzn.to/4yxdB5vThe Unexpected Joy of Being Sober - Catherine Grayhttps://amzn.to/3T5XtJg

Episode 87 | Janey Lee Grace — Wham!, Cola Boy & the Elephant in the Room Nobody Told Her AboutJaney Lee Grace grew up in Nottingham, got into music in her teens, and somehow navigated the drug-soaked world of touring bands without falling too far in — largely, she thinks, out of fear. She had no safety net. Nobody was coming to pick her up if it went wrong. So it didn't go wrong. Not yet.She toured with Mary Wilson and the Supremes, then Wham! — she's in the documentary, a young woman in her early twenties watching George Michael become a superstar from the wings. She had a top 10 hit in 1991 with Cola Boy, played a warehouse rave in Venice that felt like being Madonna for five minutes, worked with Boy George, Kim Wilde, Matt Bianco, and Chris Evans at BBC London and Virgin Radio. Then she landed at Radio 2, where she'd stay for 23 years.In between all of it, she wrote a book called Imperfectly Natural Woman — 20 years ago — that made her the queen of holistic living. Coconut oil. Soap nuts. Natural deodorant. Organic everything. She talked about it on national radio to millions of listeners. And she stepped around the elephant in the room every single day, because alcohol was her treat. The one thing that didn't fit the brand. The one thing she couldn't touch.She mentioned it to a GP once, on the way out the door, a classic doorknob moment. The GP looked at her, said she seemed fine, suggested an alcohol-free day and a glass of water between drinks. Janey walked out relieved. That kept her stuck for five more years.In late 2017, a producer handed her a copy of Claire Pooley's The Sober Diaries ahead of an interview. She glanced at the back, realised Claire was just like her, and knew. She didn't read it until after Christmas — she didn't want to spoil the holidays. On the 30th of January 2018, she started the book and quit the same day.The first two months were rough. Leg cramps, terrible sleep, emotional chaos, shame she couldn't explain. She told nobody except Claire. She navigated a Radio 2 Christmas party, awards evenings and functions without telling a soul she'd stopped drinking. At two and a half months she sat in a car park outside a Club Soda event for twenty minutes before she dared go in. At three months, on her birthday, she went to a sober rave at the Ministry of Sound at 6.30 in the morning and thought: I get it now.At eight months she posted her coming out video on YouTube. She expected backlash. Every message said welcome to the club.In 2019 she did a TEDx talk called Sobriety Rocks Who Knew. She'd forgotten there'd be a live audience. Five people pulled her aside at the break and said: you described me exactly. Can you help? She founded the Sober Club that September. She's now a sober coach trainer, still doing BBC local radio, still championing the imperfectly natural life — with the elephant finally out of the room.One word for her life now: freedom.You can find Janey on Instagram at:https://www.instagram.com/janeyleegrace?stkn=MXY1NTJyc3d3MTB2NQ==The Sober Club at:https://www.thesoberclub.com/And Janey's books:https://amzn.to/4qV1Kvohttps://amzn.to/4yIPIIzhttps://amzn.to/4i9MicG

Episode 85 | Richard Chapman — £2,000 a Day, a Drug Cartel & the Finance Director Who Got Clean in the Rehab That Saved HimRichard Chapman grew up in Bradford, the youngest of three, with a father who was an HSBC area director, a grandfather who was a West Yorkshire police superintendent, and a home where the tea had better be on the table or things would get thrown against the wall. His dad was beloved by everyone who worked for him. Richard's experience was slightly different.He found his outlet on a rugby field — playing for Yorkshire at fifteen, inflicting as much violence as legally permissible on anyone in front of him — and left school with two O-levels and a desire to work on a building site. His dad sent him to Midland Bank instead. In a suit from Marks & Spencer. At 18.He turned out to be brilliant at it. Which his dad, now area director, deeply resented having to ring and confirm every Friday.At 29, a man with tattoos on his head offered Richard a line of cocaine in a bar in Guiseley. He'd never touched it before. He bought £500 worth the next day, in a Burberry duffel coat, in a pub called the Living Rooms. The man with the tattoos became his best friend for the next seventeen years.By the end, Richard was spending £2,000 a day on cocaine, sitting in Leeds car parks trying to run his banking team through a Blackberry, checking into hotels for the night and ordering seven more grams, laundering money for a drug cartel, defrauding his parents of £150,000, taking a £50,000 mortgage out in his wife's name and walking from his hotel in Scarborough to a drug deal with one flip-flop on and a sock.His 11-year-old son sent him a text from the next room. He drove home. He walked into rehab on the 5th of April 2020 with three grams left and snorted the lot before he walked through the door.Now six years clean. Finance director of Ark House — the rehab in Scarborough that got him well. Five boys. A dog. A view of the sea. One word: peaceful.In-Recovery is on Instagram at:https://www.instagram.com/in_recovery_podcastYou can find them at:https://arkhouserehab.co.uk/podcast/The Bag Lady Doc:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596767/Wet House Doc:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF5wNsfKo84

Episode 84 | Sarah Rusbatch — Grey Area Drinking, Mummy Wine Culture & the Morning Her Daughter Asked What Happened to Your FaceSarah Rusbatch grew up in Scotland in a household where alcohol was simply part of life — grandma offering sips of wine at nine, her dad's beer froth, men in kilts addressing the haggis on Burns Night. By the time she was fourteen and had moved to five schools in eight years, alcohol was the answer to a question she hadn't quite formed yet: how do I fit in?She went to university in Hull, got deep into the nineties dance scene, moved to London, climbed the career ladder in recruitment — where in 1997 the fourth stage of every job interview was a pub session with tequila shots to see if you could handle your booze. She wore her capacity for alcohol as a badge of honour. She was lit up like a Christmas tree the moment she had a drink, and she didn't stop until the sun came up.Then came the baby, the move to Perth with no friends and no family, the loneliness that nobody talks about when everything on paper looks perfect, and a bottle of wine a night that slowly became the only thing in her toolbox. In 2017, she fell at a party, smashed her face, and was woken the next morning by her five-year-old daughter standing beside the bed asking what had happened to her face. There was dried blood and congealed vomit around her mouth.She did 100 days sober. She went back to drinking. She was back to exactly where she'd been within a month. She tried again. And again. Until 2019, when she finally understood it wasn't a her problem. It was alcohol.Now seven years sober, Sarah is one of Australia's leading grey area drinking coaches, the author of Beyond Booze, and the host of Stronger Bolder Wiser. She works with women aged 40 to 65 who are ready to change their relationship with alcohol — and she does it with a directness and warmth that makes this one of the best conversations we've had on the podcast.You can find Sarah on Instagram at:https://www.instagram.com/sarahrusbatchSarah's other links here:https://www.instagram.com/sarahrusbatchSarah's 100 things to do instead of drink:https://www.instagram.com/sarahrusbatchSarah Rusbatch - Beyong Booze:https://amzn.to/3U1EHmoSarah's Stronger, Bolder, Wiser - Podcasthttps://open.spotify.com/show/0NgeQwAek802stoj6ZfzYmSoberful Podcast:https://open.spotify.com/show/0Xll4Cyn6m18n5p24FXdhE

Episode 83 | Sarah Drage — The Doctor, the Car Keys & What Happens When You Finally Get Your Dad Back and then lose him again...Sarah Drage grew up in West Yorkshire, the eldest of three daughters to a man who was, by her account, genuinely ahead of his time — forward thinking, emotionally open, taking his girls to business meetings in the nineties, teaching them to be independent and articulate and to challenge the world around them. He also drank. Not obviously at first — whiskey, a glass here and there — but enough that Sarah noticed, from a young age, that there were two versions of her dad. The one she adored. And the one she tried to avoid.By the time she was a teenager she knew what it was. She tried everything. She poured his drinks down the sink and topped bottles up with water — not knowing that removing the alcohol from a physically dependent person could trigger a fatal seizure. She tried confrontation. She tried tough love. She tried overachieving, becoming the first in her family to go to university, as if her own success might give him a reason to stop.In 2015, after a family holiday where he arrived drunk and volatile, she gave him an ultimatum: rehab or no contact. He agreed. He detoxed. He got sixteen months sober — the best sixteen months the family had had in years. She got her dad back. Then his father died. And within four months so did he.Thirty hours after being admitted to A&E, at 59 years old — one week before his sixtieth birthday — Steve Drage was taken off life support. He didn't recognise Sarah in the wheelchair. He asked if she had his car keys because he wanted to check the girls were okay.Sarah is now a NACOA ambassador, a social media manager and one of the most honest voices on what it means to grow up in the shadow of a parent's addiction. This episode ranges from the mechanics of alcohol dependency to social media addiction, emotional resilience, the manosphere, and why she now believes stigma was never really the problem.You can find Sarah on Insta at:https://www.instagram.com/sarah_drageYou can find Nacoa at:https://nacoa.org.uk/The Lancet report by Professor David Nutt (2010)https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)61462-6/abstractInside the Manosphere - Louis Therouxhttps://www.netflix.com/watch/81920687