I Drank Again:The Brutal Truth About Relapsing.

Relapse, PTSD, law enforcement trauma and alcohol addiction. 👉 FREE 30-Day Sobriety Survival Guide → https://thesoberstrong.com/calendar 💛 Go Deeper: 1:1 Sober Coaching with Meghan → https://thesoberstrong.com/coaching Join the Sober Strong Community → https://www.skool.com/soberstrong/about Everything in one place → https://thesoberstrong.com/ 🌐 Connect: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Soberstrong ⚠️ Sobriety Uncensored shares personal recovery stories, not medical advice. If you're struggling with alcohol, please reach out to a doctor, a local recovery meeting, or someone you trust — you don't have to do this alone. ⏱️ Chapters: 0:00 The slip nobody expected 0:52 Christmas, his parents' house, four glasses of wine 2:09 Telling his wife the same night 3:08 "I didn't want a drink — I wanted to stop feeling" 4:36 When the people pouring it are family 5:45 "You'll die of something anyway" — how drinkers justify it 6:38 Why a slip doesn't have to become a spiral 7:45 Taking responsibility instead of blaming 9:17 The barbecue: PTSD, anxiety, and a room full of drinkers 10:12 Nobody relaxes around a cop 12:31 Being the sober one — and everyone justifying themselves to you 13:57 Don't put a drink in someone's hand 15:05 Asking the job for help in 2008 (there was none) 16:55 The police charity that got him 20 EMDR sessions 17:52 What EMDR therapy actually is 20:08 Going in with zero research — and why that helped 21:19 Why EMDR leaves you completely exhausted 21:48 Starting where it started: a violent childhood home 22:24 The murder scene he still can't unsee 25:13 How EMDR moves a memory further away 26:09 Gabor Maté: don't ask why the addiction, ask why the pain 27:00 Losing a fellow officer — and the silence that killed him 27:50 The autopsies detectives get sent to 30:08 A year in the woods: the worst scene of his career 33:20 Alcohol as the only off switch he had 34:17 What's happened to UK policing 35:47 Drinking before night shift — his rock bottom 36:32 Quitting, and getting frozen out by his own team 37:47 What his face looked like 12 months later 38:40 12-hour shifts, no food, no water, no break 39:46 A chaplain is not a trauma therapist 41:22 The moment he finally reached out 42:16 Trained to survive the scene, never to leave it 43:10 CID: you only get called to the worst of it 47:31 Megan's EMDR experience — and the therapist she had to fire 48:19 Crying in the car: the release 49:09 Were you skeptical? CBT vs EMDR 50:37 The safe place and the container at the end of a session 51:51 Memories that come back in strange details 52:23 How to find someone actually qualified to do EMDR 53:29 It's punishing — and it works 54:12 What a session really looks like 55:45 Lower anxiety, lower stress, four months in 56:03 Van der Kolk: some people shift in 4–6 sessions 56:39 The first trauma: dad, the glass door, the plates 58:29 You can't heal someone who doesn't want to 59:29 Why veterans and Marines still won't ask 1:01:31 When someone stops wanting to live 1:02:16 Antidepressants alongside therapy — what worked, what didn't 1:03:19 "I'm sober from the thing that was destroying me" 1:05:16 Postpartum depression and traumatic births 1:06:34 His wife's version of the same story 1:08:03 What the slip taught him that years of sobriety hadn't 1:09:52 To the officer drinking alone after everyone's asleep 1:11:07 Don't give yourself permission to keep going 1:12:46 If he can do it, anyone can 1:12:57 Scottish accents, subtitles, and the comments section #Sobriety #FunctioningAlcoholic #QuitDrinking