I Killed My Drunk Self. Best Thing I've Ever Done.

So who was that first Kevin, that first version of me, Kevin V1? He loved sitting in the pub, sitting in the same stool, sitting with the same people, sitting with the same drink.

He loved sitting on his ass for a few hours every night, cans beside him on the floor, on this easy chair, monging out in front of the old gogglebox, right? Back to work the next day, looking forward to the evening when I could do the same thing all over again, and every day do the same thing all over again, and every weekend do the same thing over again.

It's like a twisted version of Groundhog Day.

And I thought that's just what I did.

I thought that was just me.

You know, I'm Irish.

I'm a man.

This is the life.

This is the life, right? Everyone around me was doing the same thing, right? So everyone's propping you up, doing the same thing.

It felt like this was my destiny, like I was born into it and there was no other way around it.

At the turning point, I had loads of times in my life that should have acted as wake-up calls for me, that could've been turning points, but I quietly eased those moments into the, into my memory, right? [laughs] Shoved them under the carpet, so to speak.

And I remember one night, I was blackout drunk, completely gone.

I was on the floor.

I can still see the carpet in my office, and I recorded a video of myself on my phone and sent it to my son.

And I don't remember any of that moment.

I don't remember recording the video, but the next day my son rang me and he said, "What the fuck was that you sent me yesterday?" And so I looked on my phone, found the video, pressed play, and I saw myself laying there on the ground, eyes all over the place, big slurry head on me, making no sense at all.

And I just felt this deep shame that I'd recorded it, first of all, and that I'd sent it to my son, of all people.

And I'm telling you, there were loads of times like that.

I'm fairly-- I'm a fairly sensible chap in the, the, in the general run of things until I've got a skinful.

And when you see yourself like that through your own child's eyes, that's not s- something that you can kind of unsee.

I forgot about that.

I forgot about so many other moments like that.

Like I said, you know, there's so many things that you just-- they're dreaded memories that you, you kind of for your own self-preservation, you push underneath the carpet in your memory bank, right? But they start coming back when you stop drinking.