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David Wilson has been sober for almost seven years. Today, the 61-year-old is a sobriety coach, speaker and author of the book One For The Road: Soberdave. He has hosted a popular podcast about sobriety for almost five years.
On his Instagram account @soberdave, which has amassed a following of almost 200,000, he posts daily motivational tips and insights into the lives of hundreds of people who have joined him in his sober life.
It has been quite the journey for a man who was a carpet fitter with a drink problem for decades.
Wilson grew up in a rough area south of London and his parents did not have much money. Home life was happy – until it was not.
His parents began arguing a lot. Then, he says, they moved house “out of the blue”, probably to try to save their marriage. At 13, he had to leave his friends behind and start a new school in a new area in the middle of the school year.
That would have been upheaval enough for a boy who was “shy, not streetwise, nerdy”. Then Wilson woke one day, aged 14, to a letter from his mum to say she had left his dad.
“There was no social media in those days, no mobile phones, no internet. I had no idea when I was going to see her again.” He was devastated.