My drinking problem almost killed me but I still couldn’t go sober – the 99% approach finally saved my life

LIKE many Brits, Paddy Ruddy didn't know how to live without booze.

The 38-year-old believed it made him who he was – ‘Party Paddy’ – a successful businessman who was the life of the party.

But deep down, Paddy was hiding a dark secret – a battle he was losing against drinking.

Here, the dad-of-two young children shares his ‘rock bottom' moment, that proved the catalyst he needed to go '99 per cent sober' – a method he believes could be more effective for many drinkers than going tee-total.

It's the basis of his book, 99% Sober: Improve Your Health, Wealth and Happiness by Taking Control of Your Drinking.

IT was a Monday night and I was alone in the house, so I decided to have ‘a glass of red’ while wrapping the kids’ Christmas presents.

I remember wrapping the presents – then nothing... blackout.

When I woke up the next morning, fully clothed and head pounding, I tried to fill the blanks while in crisis management mode.

Wandering around the house, I expected to find a trail of destruction from my one-man party, only to find the Christmas presents wrapped under the tree, the tree lights off.

The kitchen was also pristine, other than a wine glass on the draining board.

I felt relieved – so what if I had drunk , the housework was done and I'd ticked a job off my festive to-do list?

Then I walked into the utility room and found three empty bottles of lined up... a heavy night, even for me.

Picking up my phone I felt a sinking feeling. I found eight outgoing calls to my wife, all after midnight.

She's sent a stream of messages on that are all too familiar – disbelief, disappointment, concern, anger.

It’s not until I see the video I sent her, that I’m left in utter despair.

I honestly don’t recognise the person in the video. It is me, but I am totally out of it.

The muscles in my face have relaxed to the point it's drooping, like I have suffered a . My eyes are heavily glazed.

I’m slurring something along the lines of, ‘See, I’m not that bad, I’ve just had a few glasses of wine.’ But my voice doesn’t sound like my own.

For the twenty years prior to this day, in December 2021, I had convinced myself that I didn’t have a drinking problem.

I or pouring vodka on my cornflakes, so I thought I had things under control.

I felt like without drink, I wouldn’t have been as successful in my career in finance.

I went from my fairly modest upbringing in to champagne-fuelled lunches with clients and fancy hotels across and felt like I was living the dream.

I felt like people wouldn’t like me as much or that my wife of seven years, with whom I had a toddler and a baby, wouldn’t want to stay with me.

Many serious events were dressed up as “hilarious”; anecdotes to be told at parties or down the pub

Paddy

In truth, the Christmas wrapping present incident was not a major “rock bottom”; – I’d had plenty of those before.

Three years prior, I had come close to walking out in the street.

I was waiting at the side of the road waiting to cross in the city centre.

But as the ‘green man’ sounded twice over, I stood there, contemplating what would happen if I just walked out in front of a bus.

When I thought of how my family would feel, I put the idea to the back of my mind and carried on.

It’s a shameful secret of mine that I never spoke of to anyone.

I had been overwhelmed with the sheer pressure of a newborn baby and my job but still managed to find time to drink between the sleepless nights.

I’d ended up in hospital multiple times after being injured during my , yet thought I was invincible.

I was sacked from my job for turning up drunk but got another job, and celebrated with a three-day bender.

But that morning, the penny was beginning to drop... my life had been narrowed by drinking.

It was a life where I made it to the end of the work week exhausted, reached for a drink (many), before starting the next week sluggish, limping through it and then repeating the cycle.

I had tried countless times before, only to last a week, and had also failed.

After a period of complete abstinence I'd eventually convince myself that I wasn’t an alcoholic and that I should try to moderate, which eventually led to another big blowout and ‘quitting' again.

This cycle would just repeat over and over.

Until I found something that finally worked, the 99 per cent approach.

I’m not ‘poor abstinent Paddy with his non-drinking cross to bear’ – I made a choice not to drink, and if you are someone who struggles to drink ‘normally’, the 99 per cent approach might work for you.

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN…

Like a lot of people in the UK, drinking has been a part of my life since my teens when I was getting blackout drunk with my mates at the weekend.

Many serious events were dressed up as “hilarious”; anecdotes to be told at parties or down the pub.

When I grew up and went off to university, or started a new job, I knew how to make friends easily – just add booze.

I lacked confidence but knew that a few drinks would sort me out and help me feel like the ‘real me’.

For a decade or so, I felt like I had everything, and from the outside, I looked like I was doing well – but deep down, I knew my drinking was causing me harm.

The anxiety I felt when I wasn't drinking was growing. I was constantly feeling like I would be caught out and exposed.

As my anxiety grew, I drank more to drown it out. I lived in a perpetual state of alert.

The lies I had to tell to cover for my drinking also got bigger, the hangovers harder to shake, and the gaps between drinking sessions getting shorter.

By my late twenties, I knew I needed to try and rein it in if I was to have any semblance of a normal life.

It came to a head that December night, when I accepted that as someone with a drinking problem, moderation was an impossible dream.

I started to see alcohol for what it was to me: It was an addictive substance that doesn’t do me any favours.

This seems very simple, and whilst it's how I see it now, it’s not how I have viewed it for most of my life.

MY TURNING POINT

I was anxious, apprehensive, nervous, even scared about giving up.

What if I never had a ‘good time’ again? How do I even socialise?

I’m ‘Party Paddy’ – quick with a joke and first on the dance floor, the man you could rely on to get the party started AND keep it going.

I jumped on the Dry January bandwagon in 2022, which made it easier, but when it was over, I just kept right on going.

I was 100 per cent sober for six months.

Here are a few tips that really helped me:

1. Reading as much literature on alcohol and people’s ‘going sober’ books as I could. This helped me feel like I wasn’t alone – just as you might feel reading this now.
2. Keeping a journal.
3. Going to the gym; after just a few weeks, I realised I wanted to keep feeling good and strong. A toned physique didn’t happen overnight because… (see below point)
4. Eating more sugar; This is a rather known phenomenon that quitting alcohol triggers a craving for sugar, so I leaned into it for the time being.
5. I bought nice things, because I’d spent years buying cheap stuff so I wouldn’t be upset when it inevitibly got lost or broken due to my drinking.
6. I put staying sober before anything else, which meant avoiding situations you would have drunk entirely, for at least three months.

MY RELAPSE… AND LEARNING TO BE 99% SOBER

Whilst I'd worked out how to navigate work events, Christmases and family holidays without booze, my ‘relapse’ came when I had a stag do in , in July 2022.

I crumbled in the first pub, on the first night, watching some of my oldest friends having a great time.

I fully joined in the rest of the weekend, and I absolutely loved it.

I could have beat myself up, thought ‘f*ck it’ and carried on drinking once I got home, or restarted my ‘sober day count’ from that trip.

But I’d argue that it was part of the process and the beginning of what I can actually stick to, which is 99 per cent sober.

‘99% sober’, or ‘dry by default’, is a label for those of us who are fed up with drinking on autopilot, but aren't ready to shut the door on it completely.

That one per cent wiggle room meant I no longer felt like I was depriving myself of anything.

It offers you the option to drink but only when it will enhance your experience or benefit you.

Now, that doesn’t mean you start telling yourself that booze will enhance the experience of loading the dishwasher on a Wednesday afternoon.

It might not even mean having a special drink on your birthday, a wedding or when the sun comes out and you’re sitting in a pub garden.

I’ve decided there are only three scenarios I would choose to drink: A stag do, Vegas and Ibiza.

For me, going 99 per cent sober took the power away from alcohol.

I’ve traded in a life filled with hangovers and anxiety to one filled with energy, happiness and fulfilment.

I never thought of myself as being depressed at the time, but now that I no longer drink, I can see that drinking was doing the opposite of making me happy.

It’s difficult to describe without sounding like a t*sser, but there is a lightness to how I feel now.

There is less anxiety, no more feelings of impending doom, I sleep like a baby and I’ve been promoted twice in two years.

I’m a better dad. I had the red line of ‘I never drink in front of the kids’. But it just meant I waited until they were in bed to get smashed.

But my wife bore the brunt the most. I was a passenger in our life while I pushed more and more responsibility onto her. Now, there is balance to our relationship.

You don’t need to wait for a dramatic rock bottom to try the 99 per cent approach. Don’t tie yourself in knots asking, ‘Am I an alcoholic?’ ‘Do I have a drinking problem?’ Flip it on its head.

Ask yourself, ‘Would my life be better with less alcohol?’ If the answer is yes, or even maybe, it’s worth a shot.