I Got Sober for 10 Months, Told Myself I’d Proved I Had Control — Had One Glass of Champagne at My Birthday & Was Back to Square One

Episode 49 | Beth — 4 Years Sober, the Book She Bought at 23 & Why She Built a Free Community for Women Who Can’t Afford Help In this warm, funny and deeply relatable episode, Jimmy sits down with Beth — co-founder of the SOS Collective (Sober Online Sisters), TikTok sober advocate and four-years-sober mother of three from County Durham, now living on the edge of the New Forest in Southampton. Beth grew up in a typical northeastern family where her dad went to the working men’s club on Sundays, came home half-cut, and that was simply how life was. As a child she hated the smell of alcohol so much it was a family joke. By 15 she was drinking Diamond White in the park and having the worst night of her life on New Year’s Eve — sick everywhere, white as a sheet, forced by her dad to sit up and suffer through midnight as punishment. It took years to actually get into drinking. Then it took over. The tools were all there from an early age. At 23, still early in her Southampton life, lonely after university and dealing with the grief of losing her mum at 17, Beth walked into a bookshop and bought Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp. She filled in the addiction questionnaire at the front. She circled every single answer. She still has that same copy — the one with all the circles from 23, plus the ones from every time she went back to check again over the next two decades. Each time the score got worse. She also went to AA at 23. Found it kind, welcoming — and immediately felt she didn’t belong because the woman sharing was drinking cough medicine, and Beth hadn’t got there yet. She left and didn’t go back for years. That one visit became her excuse: I went to AA and they basically said I was fine. Through a high-powered BT career, a loneliness that drove her to drink alone every night in her smart Southampton flat, a marriage that bonded around drinking, a difficult divorce, an ADHD diagnosis that explained the dopamine-chasing and the boredom-drinking and the impulsivity — through all of it, Beth kept finding ways to pause and restart. She got pregnant twice partly because pregnancy was a built-in reason to stop. She got sober for ten months, genuinely proud of herself. Then her husband took her out for her birthday, ordered champagne, she had a glass, and within days she was back to two and a half bottles of wine a day. COVID was the tipping point. Furloughed, in the inflatable hot tub, starting at 12 because it felt like a holiday, drinking through pub quiz Zooms while the influencers made 4pm wine feel glamorous. She was drinking amounts she’d never drunk before, hiding bottles, doing bin runs to Asda so the neighbours wouldn’t see the recycling. Then a dinner party where nobody appreciated the meal she’d worked so hard on. She got drunk. Woke up the next day and thought: you can’t do that every single time someone upsets you. Found an online community of women by accident. Met Linda from Ireland, who became her unofficial sponsor and best friend. Started going to every online meeting available. The days added up. Now four years sober, Beth has co-founded the SOS Collective — completely free, because the reason she nearly didn’t get help was that she wouldn’t spend mon My Instagram is: https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmy And you can find all my other links at: https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle Buy me a coffee… https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt Alcohol Explained - William Porter https://a.co/d/0854fIb6 This Naked Mind - Annie Grace https://a.co/d/0gy6mT9Z A Million Little Pieces - James Frey https://a.co/d/0jdcIjGb Donate: https://motiv8.im/donate/ https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/ My Instagram is: https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmy And you can find all my other links at: https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle Buy me a coffee… https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt Alcohol Explained - William Porter https://amzn.to/4uMmkyB This Naked Mind - Annie Grace https://amzn.to/4eC6L6z A Million Little Pieces - James Frey https://amzn.to/44jOV3i Donate: https://motiv8.im/donate/ https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/