John Robbins

I could both exist and not exist at the same time, which is in a sense meditation, right?

So alcohol was saying, I give you this spiritual experience.

You will be here and you won't be here.

You will transcend.

You will escape all of the things about being human, which you find really difficult.

What I've had to do is find ways to do that without alcohol.

I tried everything else.

I was in bed.

I tried, I started doing CrossFit, that hadn't stopped me drinking.

My GP telling me I need to sort my fucking life out, direct quote.

Yeah, the first line of the book is my GP saying to me, you need to sort your fucking life out.

And I would say that made me want to stop drinking for about two hours.

Wow.

And then it made me a bit annoyed that I needed to sort my fucking life out.

And then it became a distinct inconvenience.

And eventually I got to a place where I was like, I'm going to drink myself to death because that's the only way I can continue drinking is if I accept that.

Um,

So, you know, two years on from my GP saying that, I was still drinking.

Relationships had ended.

Life was difficult.