Episode 77 | Dan Sheridan — Big Dan Stella in a Straight Glass: Cirrhosis, a 20% Chance & the Liver That Changed Everything

Dan Sheridan grew up in Harwell, Oxfordshire — a village with five pubs and a club, a dad who was his hero, and a first attempt on his own life at 22 that he talked his way out of in front of a psychiatrist and never went back to. He became a dad at 19 to a woman sixteen years his senior, never found his footing, and spent the better part of two decades hiding behind a personality so large that the people who loved him genuinely couldn't believe he was suffering. Big Dan. Stella in a straight glass. Never drunk in public — just absolutely hammered at home at two in the morning, singing Adele, dancing to Happy Hardcore and hoping his eyes wouldn't open again.

When his liver finally gave out the signs were there for years — size fourteen shoes on a size twelve man, legs that were just blocks of water, blood in places blood shouldn't be. He was diagnosed with cirrhosis in 2019 and that night went on Facebook Live to announce he was going to be the first person to cure the condition. Then bought 18 tins of Stella.

In 2020, during COVID, he had a catastrophic GI bleed and decorated his house in blood. He was given a 50% chance of surviving the night. He was thinking about the lager in the fridge. The next morning a doctor told him he had a 20% chance of making it through the next hour — then the ward doors burst open and he went down fast. He woke up in ICU unable to remember his address.

What followed was three years of transplant lists, stomach drains, weekly breathalyser tests, encephalopathy so severe he rang friends to tell them he was playing Ronnie O'Sullivan at Twickenham while using a fork to call Domino's. Then a TikTok video. Then a comment. Then a message. Then a phone call. Then Claire.

On 1,111 days sober, he got a call on a Saturday — we don't normally ring patients on a Saturday, Dan, but we've got a liver for you. Three years ago on the 4th of June. He thanks that man every single day.

You can find Dan on Instagram at:

https://www.instagram.com/danman147

On TikTok at:

https://www.tiktok.com/@mrssheridanshusband

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Episode 76 | Brad McLeod — The Million Dollar Man: Running from everything, Drug Trafficking & the Moment Everything Shifted

Brad McLeod was born in Canada, one of twins, to a sixteen-year-old mother still living with her own parents. By the time he was six the family had relocated to Waco, Texas, and the stability he'd known at his grandparents' hands had gone. The anxiety started early. The ADHD diagnosis followed. The suspensions. The arrests. The psychiatrists, the counsellors, the pharmaceuticals — Prozac, Wellbutrin, Adderall, all of it. By sixteen he was in a lockdown treatment unit in Knoxville, Tennessee — transported there by a private security company after refusing to go voluntarily, running through a beehive and a barbed wire fence at a highway rest stop on the way.

He did a year in that program, came out the other side with a college acceptance and a car his parents had scraped together to buy him. Six months later he was sitting at a poker table when someone pulled out a pain pill and asked if he wanted to try it. He didn't know what an opiate was. He found out fast. The pills ran dry and the heroin came. He got robbed at gunpoint. He lost the apartment, the car, the college place. He got arrested again — drug trafficking charges — and when he stepped off a plane to visit his family, the police were waiting. A year in jail. Deportation. A lifetime ban from the United States.

He came back to Canada with a suitcase on his brother's floor, walking two hours each day to collect his methadone prescription, earning ten dollars an hour cash doing yard work for his parents just to cover the script. It was watching a girl's face light up to see him as he sat handcuffed in the back of a police car that finally made something shift — not the arrests, not the jail, not the deportation. Just one face in a car park.

Now sober, Brad runs the Sober Motivation Instagram, hosts his own podcast and has built one of the most active recovery communities online. His grandfather used to call him the million dollar man — for all the money spent trying to fix him. These days Brad's spending it differently.

You can find Brad on Insta at: https://www.instagram.com/sobermotivation

Brad's Linktree: https://linktr.ee/Sobermotivation

The Podcast: https://shows.acast.com/sobermotivation

The Website: https://www.sobermotivation.com

and the App! https://www.sobermotivation.com/?fbclid=PAVERFWAShEIpleHRuA2FlbQIxMABzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA8xMjQwMjQ1NzQyODc0MTQAAaeM4yWqIsLZX4WK2KIXxKLT_V16Zhy9KUX7HmMZpj2VYfL9IZKO_NUeosKkGw_aem_uLKEHdE2U-8PLJXYvYoGeQ

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Episode 75 | William Porter — Alcohol Explained: Iraq, Cointreau at Dawn & 12 Years on the Other Side

William Porter grew up in Raynes Park, South West London — fine childhood, nothing dramatic — started drinking at 14 in a park with a friend and a bottle from the off-licence. It was a non-event. But the culture of the 90s, the lads, the music, Oasis, TFI Friday, all of it normalised getting absolutely hammered as a personality trait. By the time he’d done university in Cardiff, law school in Guildford and landed a paralegal job in London, drinking was simply what you did.

Then at 26, half drunk on the sofa watching TV, an advert for the Territorial Army came on. He joined the Parachute Regiment reserve, quit drinking for three months to get through P Company selection, and passed. Then in 2005 he got mobilised and deployed to Iraq. In the build-up training, wracked with anxiety about what was ahead, he found the one thing that made the terror go away — a half cup of coffee filled up with Cointreau each morning, then drinking steadily through the day whenever he wasn’t training. Iraq itself was completely dry for six months. He came back thinking the enforced detox had fixed it. It hadn’t.

By his early thirties — married, two young sons — the pattern was drinking heavily from Friday lunchtime through the weekend, waking at 3am to drink himself back to sleep, dragging himself into work Monday and doing nothing, then cramming the week’s work into three days. In February 2014 he crawled out of five days of constant drinking and made the decision to stop. Cold turkey, three days of hell, and then — slowly — the realisation that what he’d thought was him at 100% was actually him at 60%.

He wrote Alcohol Explained in 2015, one of the most widely read and recommended books in the sobriety space, explaining the science, psychology and mechanics of alcohol addiction in plain language. Now 12 years sober, running three miles every morning, and navigating a difficult divorce without reaching for a bottle.

You can find William on Instagram at:

https://www.instagram.com/alcoholexplained?igsh=MXU1NGk1bGdhMW9sZw==

Check out his website at:

https://alcoholexplained.com

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My Instagram is:

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Buy me a coffee…

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