One for the Road is the quit drinking podcast hosted by David Wilson — accredited sobriety coach, speaker, and the voice behind @SoberDave. Each week, David sits down with inspiring guests from all walks of life who have changed their relationship with alcohol, chosen an alcohol-free lifestyle, and found a new path forward.
Whether you're sober curious, just starting your quit drinking journey, taking a break from alcohol, or deep into long-term sobriety, this podcast meets you where you are. Guests share raw, honest stories of addiction recovery, mental health struggles, peer pressure, and the life-changing decision to stop drinking — along with the joy, freedom, and community waiting on the other side.
Topics covered include: how to quit drinking alcohol, staying sober in social situations, sobriety motivation, building an alcohol-free life, sober living tips, overcoming alcohol dependency, mental health and sobriety, and finding support in the sober community.
If you're looking for a sobriety podcast packed with real stories, practical tools, and sober inspiration — One for the Road is your companion for the journey.
Connect with me anytime: www.davidwilsoncoaching.com
The Teenage Drinker Who Saved Her Own Life: Lauren White
Episode 122
Wednesday, July 10, 2024 • Duration 01:01:58
Lauren White had her first drink at 11. By 18, she was modelling for Abercrombie at a size zero, drinking, using MDMA and cocaine, throwing up after every meal, and hiding all of it behind makeup, university, and a "perfect" Hertfordshire upbringing.
She walked into Charter House rehab in a belly top, ego intact, certain she didn't really belong there.
Four months later, she walked out a different person. She's now 11 and a half years sober, an addictions counsellor, NLP practitioner, and transformation mentor based in Bali, where she runs workshops and one-to-ones for people doing the same hard work she did.
You'll hear about: growing up as the parent in her own family; the bulimia she hid for years because the shame felt worse than admitting to alcohol; the second rehab stay at 21 after work addiction nearly killed her; how AA, the 12 steps, and trauma work fit together for her; and why she now lives in flip-flops without a scrap of makeup.
If you've ever wondered whether anyone really gets sober that young and stays that way, this one's for you.
What Alcohol Really Does To Your Body: Dr. Brooke Scheller
Episode 121
Wednesday, July 3, 2024 • Duration 54:36
Dr. Brooke Scheller spent years collecting nutrition degrees, a bachelor's, a master's, and a doctorate, while privately drinking herself into anxiety, depression, and the kind of double life only a high-functioning health expert can pull off. The wellness conferences ended in bars. The shame ran underneath everything.
Then in June 2021, she stopped. She's now coming up on 1,000 days sober.
Brooke is the author of How To Eat To Change How You Drink and the founder of Functional Sobriety, a nutrition and root-cause approach to supporting an alcohol-free life. She and Dave dig into the science most doctors never mention: how alcohol depletes B vitamins, magnesium, and zinc; why blood sugar crashes drive afternoon cravings; how alcohol wrecks the gut microbiome that produces your serotonin and dopamine; and why some drinkers literally can't moderate.
You'll hear about: the protein and snack strategy that kills the 5pm urge; the supplements that support early sobriety; why sleep regulates within weeks; and the genetics question every drinker asks.
If you want the science behind why your body feels the way it does, this one's for you.
For further insights and guidance on your journey to wellness, connect with Dr. Brooke Scheller on Instagram (@drbrookescheller) or visit her websites at brookescheller.com and functionalsobriety.com.
Matt Busbridge on Quitting Drinking, Cocaine + the Fashion Industry Spiral
Episode 112
Wednesday, February 7, 2024 • Duration 56:23
Matt Busbridge has been a male model agent in London for 12 years. He spent most of those years quietly in the grip of alcohol and cocaine, drinking at lunchtime, racking up lines after work, and hiding it from everyone including his own parents. He joins Sober Dave on One for the Road to talk about quitting drinking cold turkey on his 33rd birthday and what year one of sobriety in the fashion industry actually looks like.
Matt grew up the chubby kid in Kent. Alcohol at 17 gave him confidence for the first time. Cocaine at 22 took him the rest of the way. By his 30s he was missing flights, hiding bags of gear, and labelling lunchtime pints as normal. After his fiancée wrote him a list of six occasions he'd messed up, he stopped completely.
Inside: low self-esteem, the cheat code that skipped his development, lockdown spiral, going sober without AA, and his new podcast High Sobriety.
Millie Gooch: From Pub Crawls To Sober Girl Society
Season 3 · Episode 6
Wednesday, November 17, 2021 • Duration 54:36
Millie Gooch is the founder of Sober Girl Society, author of The Sober Girl Society Handbook, and one of the loudest voices in the UK sober community for women in their twenties.
But four years ago she was a blackout drinker.
She didn't drink at all until 18, then went to uni, took three bar jobs, got paid in alcohol, and came out the other side a four-or-five-night-a-week binge drinker. PR and journalism after that. Free Bar Fridays. Ending up in Dover at 4am because she'd fallen asleep on the train. Three weeks in Thailand spent almost entirely drunk or hungover. A six-year relationship breakup at 24 that sent her head-first into another year of going out and getting hammered.
She read a Stylist magazine interview with Catherine Gray on the tube one hungover morning. Took a photo of the article. Did nothing about it. Then in February 2018, after a night she couldn't remember at all, she downloaded the audiobook and listened to it for eight straight hours on the worst hangover of her life.
That was her last drink.
In this episode she walks through how Sober Girl Society started by accident, the trap of becoming "the sober person" instead of just a person, and what changes between year one and year four.
If you enjoy One For The Road, then click follow to be notified of the release of our next episode.
You can also access further content and shows on my Patreon account by clicking the link below.
Why Addiction Is Different For Women: Jenny Valentish
Season 3 · Episode 5
Wednesday, November 10, 2021 • Duration 48:37
Jenny Valentish is a British-Australian journalist and author. Her book Women of Substances is an addiction memoir that uses her own story as a case study to explore the gendered way women experience trauma, mental health, eating disorders, and addiction. She's also a board director of SMART Recovery in Australia and has written four books in total, the most recent on people who push their bodies to extremes.
She started drinking at 13 the day her grandmother died. Got a key cut for her dad's drinks cabinet. Filled a Body Shop shampoo bottle with mixed spirits and got the train into London at 14 to drink her way through Camden, Kensington and Portobello markets on her own. The drinking masked sexual abuse she'd experienced as a child, something she wasn't allowed to get help for because her mum didn't want people knowing.
She stopped at 34 after one final blackout where she woke up with nothing on the paper and nothing in her head. She stayed sober for eight years. Four years ago, in London with friends, she had a cocktail and chose to moderate rather than spiral into shame.
This conversation gets into territory most sobriety podcasts avoid: harm reduction, the biopsychosocial theory of addiction, and why "Choose Your Own Adventure" might be a more honest framework than abstinence-or-bust.
If you enjoy One For The Road, then click follow to be notified of the release of our next episode.
You can also access further content and shows on my Patreon account by clicking the link below.
Provided below are links for services offering additional help and advice, and links for Jenny.
The Welshman Who Quit Drinking After His First Breakup: Charlie Owen
Season 3 · Episode 4
Wednesday, November 3, 2021 • Duration 54:19
Charlie Owen was twenty-three when his seven-year relationship ended, his Asia trip got cut short by COVID, and he found himself stranded in Brisbane with no idea who he was sober. He started drinking five beers before every date just to feel good enough.
This is the recovery story of a Welsh farmer's son who quit drinking at twenty-five. Charlie tells Sober Dave about growing up in a 2,000-person town in North Wales, escaping to Australia when borders closed, the breakup that broke him open, and how he used alcohol as a crutch for confidence on dates and nights out.
You'll hear about: drinking through a breakup; using alcohol to fake confidence; the moment meditation actually worked; what real connection looks like without drinks; instant gratification, social media and young men; and why his Instagram page Lads Search for Meaning is hitting a nerve.
If you're a young man wondering if you can quit drinking and still have a life, this one's for you.
If you enjoy One For The Road, then click follow to be notified of the release of our next episode.
You can also access further content and shows on my Patreon account by clicking the link below.
Courtney Carver on Quitting Drinking, Minimalism + Meditation at 1000 Days
Season 3 · Episode 3
Wednesday, October 27, 2021 • Duration 45:01
Courtney Carver, author of Soulful Simplicity and Project 333, spent decades quietly managing her relationship with alcohol before she stopped on a hungover morning in January 2019. Nearly 1000 days later, she joins Sober Dave on One for the Road to talk about quitting drinking the simplest way she knows how.
Courtney was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2006 and started stripping stress out of her life. She paid off debt, decluttered her home, built a minimalist fashion challenge, and changed careers. The thing that simplified her life most, she says, was finally letting go of wine. Inside, she shares why she never labelled herself, how transcendental meditation killed the craving, and the line that's become her sober mantra: alcohol removed her, so she removed it.
Quitting drinking, minimalism and sobriety, gray area drinking, transcendental meditation, Project 333, simplifying your life, sober journey at 1000 days.
If you enjoy One For The Road, then click follow to be notified of the release of our next episode.
You can also access further content and shows on my Patreon account by clicking the link below.
Catherine Gray woke up in a Brixton police cell at 27 years old. When the officers handed back her belongings, the only thing she had on her was a tiny pink glittery hairbrush that wasn't hers. No phone. No keys. No purse. Just a child's hairbrush she'd picked up off a dirty floor at some point during the night.
You'd think that would be the moment she stopped. She drank for six more years.
Catherine is the bestselling author of The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober and Sunshine Warm Sober. She's almost eight years alcohol-free, and she's one of the most clear-eyed voices on what nobody tells you about long-term sobriety. The slumps. The advertising propaganda. The boundary work. The friends who don't remember your soberversary. The corruption inside the alcohol industry.
You'll hear about: the failed moderation experiments that ate six years of her life; the litre of vodka a night Dave was drinking; what AA gave her even though it wasn't her path; and why year six of sobriety nearly broke her.
If you've ever told yourself you'll just have one more, this one's for you.
Her first bookThe Unexpected Joy of Being Sober was published by Aster Books on the 28th of December 2017. A tri-brid of a read, it mixes up memoir details of how Catherine quit alcohol in 2013, along with Buzzfeed-style listicles, illuminating interviews with top experts, and over-arching cultural comment. She hopes her book will help reinvent how Britain thinks about being alcohol-free.
Her latest new book Sunshine Warm Sober is out now- Link below.
If you enjoy One For The Road, then click follow to be notified of the release of our next episode.
You can also access further content and shows on my Patreon account by clicking the link below.
Cherry Healy on Mum Wine Culture, Gray Area Drinking and Sobriety
Season 3 · Episode 1
Wednesday, October 13, 2021 • Duration 55:13
Cherry Healy was drinking a bottle of wine a night by the time lockdown lifted. She had a brilliant career as a BBC presenter, a partner who barely drank, two kids she adored, and "wine o'clock" creeping into every evening.
This is the story of a woman who caught herself in the gray area before it got worse. Cherry tells Sober Dave about being raised by an alcoholic father, watching her drinking escalate through her thirties, the lockdown bottle of wine that became normal, and the Christmas her dad got pancreatic cancer and she finally said enough.
You'll hear about: drinking at home as a working mum; the danger zone between five and eight pm; what three months sober actually does to you; how she handled her hypersensitivity without alcohol; the mum wine culture problem; and what gray area drinking really looks like up close.
If you've been wondering whether you're drinking too much at home, this one's for you.
You can also access further content and shows on my Patreon account by clicking the link below.
Growing Up With an Alcoholic Dad: Emmerdale's Liam Fox Tells His Story
Season 2 · Episode 8
Wednesday, September 15, 2021 • Duration 52:41
When Liam Fox was 12, he started taping his dad. He'd plug in a little radio cassette recorder, hit play and record, and capture his dad coming home drunk and talking through his backside. The next morning he'd play it back. His dad would be mortified. He'd swear he was never drinking again. A few months later, the cycle would start over.
That cycle lasted 40 years. Liam's mum finally kicked his dad out in 1995, when scaffolding went up the back of the house, a window got opened, and a £2000 video camera went missing. By the end, his dad was drinking two litres of vodka a day, losing three stone in a fortnight, and waking up with stab marks in his hands.
Liam's dad died in February. Two weeks before, he'd promised his son this was the last time.
You'll hear about: growing up with an alcoholic dad; why his school work collapsed and he blamed the teachers; the morning his mum had finally had enough; what really sat underneath his dad's drinking; what it feels like when the parent you've fought for finally goes.
It has been another incredible season, and thank you so much for all of your ongoing and continued support.
If you are not already, then be sure to click subscribe to be first in line for the drop of the first show for Season 3;
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