“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”
— Epictetus.
This week’s Friday Ramble is about starting. Inspired by a message I received on Instagram last night from someone who didn’t really know where to begin. Plus, an ode to golf and recovery, and for the golf haters, please stick with it because this one isn’t really about golf, although I fully accept I say that a lot and then somehow end up talking about golf anyway.
When your life is starting to fall down around you, and you have become conscious enough to know it’s all probably going to come to a complete stop soon, where do you start?
Not in a motivational quote, fresh notebook, “new me on Monday” kind of way. I mean when you are sat there with the horrible awareness that something has to change, but your head is so noisy that even the first step feels like trying to climb Everest in Crocs, with a hangover, while your brain keeps whispering that maybe things aren’t actually that bad and you should probably just carry on as normal.
That was the feeling I got from the message last night. He didn’t ask for a perfect life plan, and he didn’t ask me to explain the entire meaning of sobriety, addiction, emotional regulation, neuroscience, Stoicism, nutrition, exercise, or how to become one of those suspiciously calm people who drink herbal tea and say things like, “I just listen to my body now.” He just didn’t really know where to start.
And I think that is where a lot of people get stuck, not because they are lazy, not because they don’t care, and not because they haven’t suffered enough, but because the start line can feel like complete chaos. You have the shame of what’s already happened, the fear of what might happen next, the bargaining voice that says maybe it isn’t that bad, the tiny bit of hope that says maybe life could be different, and then the addictive voice in the background trying to drag you back into the same old loop because at least that loop is familiar.
Drink. Regret. Promise. Repeat.
Or whatever your version of that loop is.
For me, it was drink, drugs, gambling, regret, self-hatred, big promises, and then doing it all again as if my brain had been replaced by a badly trained Labrador with access to cocaine and a credit card. Which sounds funny now, but it wasn’t funny at the time. It was exhausting, expensive, humiliating, and eventually it became dangerous because I wasn’t really living anymore, I was just surviving the consequences of the last disaster while quietly preparing for the next one.
That’s why starting is so hard. It isn’t just “stop doing the bad thing.” If it was that easy, none of us would be here, and I wouldn’t have accidentally built an entire life around explaining why it isn’t that simple. Starting means telling the truth before your life forces you to tell it. Starting means admitting that the thing you keep defending might be the thing destroying you. Starting means accepting that the old way has stopped working, even if you don’t yet know what the new way looks like.
Most people don’t start sobriety because they know it will work. They start because something in them knows the old life can’t continue. Most people don’t know loads of sober people, they don’t know how recovery works, and they don’t realise how many AA meetings, SMART meetings, support groups, and slightly dodgy church halls are quietly packed with people trying to do the same thing, which is rebuild themselves one honest day at a time.
From the outside, sobriety can look like some weird secret world you only find once life has grabbed you by the collar and said, “Right, enough now.” For most of us, the beginning isn’t confidence. It’s desperation mixed with a tiny bit of hope. It’s knowing what you’ve tolerated for too long. It’s seeing the damage clearly enough that you can’t fully unsee it again. It’s that strange moment where your soul, or whatever word you want to use for the part of you that still wants to live properly, starts pulling you back towards the light and asking for help.
Not in a dramatic Hollywood way, with emotional music and a slow-motion walk into a better future, but more like a quiet internal whisper that says, “You can’t keep doing this.”
And that whisper is enough to start.
Before I pointed him anywhere, I asked a few questions. Not because I was trying to be difficult, but because you have to understand what is actually going on before you can point someone somewhere useful. If someone is drinking heavily every day, or they think their body might be dependent on alcohol, they need proper medical support before stopping suddenly. That sentence is not there to scare anyone, but it does matter, because there is a big difference between someone who wants to stop weekend binge drinking and someone whose body has become physically dependent on alcohol.
But outside of that, what struck me was how hard it can be for someone to ask a very simple question when they have probably been carrying it around for months or years.
Where do I start?
And really, that is the question underneath so many messages I receive: how can I quit drinking when I don’t even know where to begin?
Not how can I quit drinking and become a brand-new human being by next Thursday. Not how can I quit drinking and immediately fix every part of my life. Just: how can I quit drinking today, or this weekend, or for the next 24 hours, without completely falling apart?
That is a much more honest place to start. Because most people do not need a perfect five-year plan when they are at the beginning. They need a first honest step. They need to get through the next craving, the next Friday night, the next awkward conversation, the next moment where the old voice tells them one drink will somehow solve the exact problem alcohol helped create.
And the honest answer is that you start with the truth.
Not the polished truth. Not the version you tell your partner, your parents, your friends, your boss, or the version you tell yourself at 9am when the anxiety is wearing off and you’re trying to pretend everything is under control again. The actual truth. How much you drink. How often. What happens when you drink. What you’re hiding. What it has already cost you. What it is going to cost you if nothing changes. What you are scared to admit because saying it out loud would mean you probably have to do something about it.
That is the annoying thing about self-awareness. Once you see something clearly, you can’t always unsee it, which is deeply inconvenient when part of you wants to carry on pretending a £90 Friday night that ends with shame, memory gaps and a three-day anxiety festival is just “blowing off steam.”
I think that is why the Epictetus quote landed for me this week.
“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”
Not what do you want to look like on Instagram. Not what do you want people to think. Not what fantasy version of yourself do you talk about when you’re hungover on a Sunday promising that Monday will be different. What would you actually be if you were telling the truth?
Sober. Reliable. Present. Calmer. Healthier. Less chaotic. Someone who keeps promises to themselves. Someone who doesn’t wake up checking their phone with one eye open and a nervous system that feels like it has been plugged into the National Grid. Someone who can enjoy a weekend without needing to recover from it until Wednesday.
Once you say that honestly, then comes the annoying bit, because you have to do what you have to do.
And most of the time, the first thing you have to do isn’t glamorous. It is not a Rocky montage. It is not a dramatic life transformation. It is not suddenly becoming the kind of person who meal preps, meditates and writes “gratitude” in a leather journal while looking out over a lake. It is normally something very small and very unsexy, like not drinking today, deleting the number, avoiding the obvious trigger, eating something decent, going to bed, telling someone safe the truth, going to a meeting, reading something that keeps sobriety in your mind, or just getting through the next 24 hours without pressing the self-destruct button.
That is where most change starts. Not in the big heroic moment, but in the tiny decision nobody claps for.
Which brings me to golf, because obviously it does.
The reason golf has become such a big part of my recovery, and probably why I keep talking about it even when half of you are thinking, “Sean, please, for the love of God, talk about literally anything else,” is because golf is basically recovery with smaller trousers and more emotional damage.
You cannot play the 18th hole from the 1st tee. You can only hit the shot in front of you. That sounds obvious, but it is the whole thing. You can have a plan, you can have a target, you can know where you want to end up, but you still have to deal with the reality of where the ball is now. Sometimes it is sitting perfectly in the fairway and you feel like a majestic athlete with purpose and rhythm. Sometimes it is in a bush, behind a tree, in a footprint in a bunker, or somewhere so stupid that you genuinely question whether the universe has developed a personal vendetta against you.
But either way, you have to walk to the ball and play the next shot from where it actually is, not from where your ego thinks it should be.
That is recovery.
You don’t get sober from the version of your life you wish you had. You get sober from the mess in front of you. You don’t start from the perfect place, because if you were in the perfect place, you probably wouldn’t need to start. You start from the phone message, the hangover, the anxiety, the debt, the shame, the argument, the doctor’s appointment, the broken promise, the quiet panic, or the moment where you finally admit that you are tired of being tired.
And then you play the next honest shot.
I think one of the biggest mistakes people make when they want to change is that they try to solve their entire life at once. They want to know how they are going to stay sober forever, rebuild their health, fix their relationship, sort their finances, find their purpose, become emotionally stable, sleep properly, deal with social situations, go on holiday sober, survive Christmas, and somehow become a morning person, all before they have even got through one Friday night without drinking.
No wonder it feels impossible.
You don’t need to play the whole course today. You need to play the shot in front of you.
So if you are typing “how can I quit drinking” into Google at 2am, feeling ashamed, scared, curious, or quietly desperate, I don’t think the answer is to solve your whole life in one night. The answer is to stop lying to yourself about where alcohol is taking you, then take the next honest step in front of you.
That might be telling someone. It might be reading something that makes you feel less alone. It might be going to a meeting. It might be speaking to a doctor if your drinking has become physically dangerous. It might simply be deciding that today, just today, you are not going to drink.
In early sobriety, that might mean getting through tonight. It might mean telling someone you are not drinking this weekend. It might mean ordering alcohol-free drinks before the craving starts negotiating with you. It might mean not going to the pub at all, even if your ego tells you that you should be able to handle it. It might mean going to bed at 9pm like an elderly cat and calling that a win. It might mean accepting that boring is sometimes beautiful, especially when the alternative is chaos.
And later in sobriety, the “next shot” changes. It becomes dealing with stress without escaping, going to therapy, rebuilding trust, learning how to rest, changing your relationship with money, getting your health back, building confidence, figuring out who you are without alcohol as your personality, and eventually trying to build a life you don’t want to escape from.
That last bit is the real prize for me.
Because stopping drinking was never just about not drinking. It was about getting my time, energy, health, confidence, relationships, peace and future back. Alcohol promised me excitement, connection, confidence and relief, but sobriety was the thing that actually delivered them, just not always instantly and not always in the neat order I wanted, because apparently life does not follow my preferred content calendar.
That is the bigger idea behind the Sober On A Drunk Planet book series — not just quitting alcohol, but learning how to build a life you don’t want to escape from.
So if you are at the start, or starting again, or hovering near the start pretending you are “just thinking about it,” my honest advice is not to wait for perfect confidence, because you probably won’t get it. Most people start before they believe they can do it. Most people start with doubt, fear, shame, confusion, and a tiny bit of hope that refuses to die. That is enough. You don’t need to know the whole route yet. You just need to stop pretending the old road is taking you anywhere good.
Say to yourself what you would be. Then do what you have to do.
If you have something you want to get off your chest, share it with me. Want to celebrate something? Share it with me. Sobriety, golf, or anything else — if you are into watching birds, let me know. I just downloaded an app that listens to the birds in the garden or wherever you are, and lists them out. That’s my new favourite app.
Much love,
Sean
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