Alan Davies

And, you know, it helps you to sort of forget in a way.

And I quite remember one session with a psychotherapist who I saw for years.

who talked about, you know, sipping this sweet liquid.

I'm drinking alone at home, you know, and getting in some kind of numbed state, playing a video game on repeat for hours, and taking yourself almost into a bit of out of it.

And he equated it to breastfeeding.

It took me a while to get on board.

He said, you know, you're sipping away and you're going off into a place of total contentment and bliss and, you know, you're removed.

And it's possible that there's some part of you that's trying to return to that place or something like that.

Those are the kind of conversations in therapy that I really enjoyed and I really got a lot out of.

And seeing patterns of behaviour that go all the way back to the childhood was very kind of illuminating.

Then the other side of that, of course, is alcohol is powerfully addictive, so you can't shake it off anyway.

So there are lots of reasons why you might end up

drinking more than the average person, and there are reasons why you can't get out of it.

So periods of abstinence and managing what's going on and acknowledging what's happening, it's been very, very important, really.

I'm currently in a month of abstinence, largely because...

My football team, Arsenal, has just won the English Premier League for the first time in 22 years.

And all of North London was pretty drunk for about a week.

In a good way.

Now, I'm 60 years old.

We're going to put some fire breaks in and say, OK.