Author: James Gwinnett

In the last few months two friends have, independently of each other, contacted me about their relationship with alcohol. It’s not my place to tell someone else they do or don’t have a drinking problem, but I do feel it’s beneficial to ask them certain questions. I don’t have a definitive list, but questions like ‘Why are you drinking?’, ‘How do you feel when you’re drinking?’, ‘Are you able to stop drinking?’ and ‘Does your drinking affect other people?’ help people to paint a picture of their drinking habits, or at least get them to think about their drinking in…

In my previous blog, I wrote about how my journey through sobriety was enabled by various more literal journeys, running from A to B, up and down, around and about the UK. Rediscovering the fitness that I’d lost after a serious rugby injury – and building up to running a series of ultramarathons – became my Higher Power. In particular, the Kennet and Avon Canal Race, a 145-mile run from London to Bristol along England’s canals, pushed me to my limits. During a heatwave in July 2021, the mercury pushed over 30°C – which is approaching the 90°F mark –…

I decided that I desperately needed to get sober on 26th March 2016, when I woke up on the floor in a dingy hotel room, with an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s next to me, and no recollection of how I’d got there. Presumably I had been so drunk that I hadn’t even made it to the bed to pass out. For three years, after a broken neck sustained playing rugby, I’d bulldozered through life in a series of drunken escapades, with little or no regard for anyone or anything around me. Family and friends had tried to help but…

I’ve had a tough time of things in the last few months. I was made redundant in January – because the world’s financial markets are a mess and seemingly not getting better any time soon – and the job hunt is absolutely brutal. I’ve lost count of the impersonal rejection emails I’ve received. (Actually, I could count them because I have them all logged on a depressing spreadsheet, but it sounds far more compelling to exaggerate the situation, and I really don’t want to count them for the aforementioned reason that it’s depressing.) The robot spends four seconds deciding that…

Have The Wombats made it over the pond? Hailing from Liverpool, the city which famously gave us the Beatles, the Boo Radleys, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Echo and the Bunnymen, and more, they have some big musical shoes to fill. And while they might not be on a par with Paul, John, George and Ringo, it’s good stuff. Catchy, edgy, and lighthearted, albeit with lyrics that come with lashings of irony – why would you move to New York, the city that doesn’t sleep, if you’re having problems with your sleep? – and serious, almost philosophical, undertones. The most pertinent…

‘The opposite of addiction is connection.’ Having recently been interviewed by Alysse and Tamar for The Sober Curator podcast – episode officially ‘dropping’ in April everywhere you listen to podcasts. A sneak peek of the interview can be found on TSC YouTube Channel. I signed up for the e-newsletter The Sober Sip, and this was the opening line of the welcome email I received. I love the mantra because it encapsulates much of what I speak about in my motivational talks and what I write about in my book, READY, SET, LIFE, and that’s connection—more specifically, connection with ourselves. In a world…