Best friends since they were eleven years old and both brought up in pubs, Alex Walker and Lisa Elsworth spent years as self confessed 'binge drinkers,' functioning in their lives under a dark cloud they didn't realise existed.
But with broken relationships, declining work performances, anxiety disorders and poor mental health - the friends decided it was time for the party to be over and realised they no longer wanted life to be one long, permanent hang over.
Alex, 43 from Stockport and Lisa , 42, from Littleborough are now tee-total, have embraced a sober lifestyle and are on a mission to de-stigmatise sobriety in British drinking culture with their none profit support group Bee Sober.
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The two women are knowledgeable, compassionate and funny; they are also disarmingly honest about their past alcohol issues and why they want to help people live a sober lifestyle.
From not showing up for work, vomiting at the end of the night, causing arguments and living in a state of high anxiety - the two friends say they know all too well the downside of drinking.
"I will never go back," says Alex, who also lost both her dad and a close friend to alcohol related diseases and hasn't touched a drop since 2018.
Living in a pub at 15, and drinking from the age of 14, Lisa says alcohol was the only way she knew how to have fun and relax.
Lisa says she never classed herself as alcohol dependent or an alcoholic - but says she was 'drinking way too much' and wants to let people know they don't have to be alcoholics to get help.
"If people only think that alcoholics have a problem with alcohol it stops them from getting help," she says. "We want to remove the stigma."
A mum of three teenagers at 39, Lisa says she was struggling with her "s**t show of a life."
She says: "I would class myself as a binge drinker, I would use the weekends to go out and drink, switch off from parenting, switch off from work and I was in a really unhappy relationship that was breaking down.
"Instead of getting it together I was going out drinking, then on Monday waking up hung over and getting through to Friday and wanting to do the same thing all over again."
Lisa has a family business and runs an accreditation board.
"Often on a Monday morning, I wouldn't turn in." she admits.
"I suffered massively from what we called 'hangxiety' (a play on hangover and anxiety) I would wake up the morning after a night out and it was very quickly prickling with 'What did I say, what did I do?'
"I was the last one to go home. One was never enough - I would go out sometimes fully intending to just have a few drinks to switch off, but would find myself at kitchen parties. I was always the life and soul of the party.
"The hangovers and the anxiety bled into the week. I started to think I was an anxious person, and I never put the two together - that it was drinking that was causing it, even in the week.
"I felt was trapped in a cycle of drinking to switch off from a hard weeks work and parenting - but I didn't realise when I was dumbing down the hard stuff that was going on in my life I was dumbing down the good stuff too.
"I grew up in a pub so it was only natural I would end up drinking. Even at 14, I wouldn't just have a couple - if I was drinking - I was drinking to get drunk."
On July 9, 2018 Lisa says she suddenly decided enough was enough.
She says she read a book about taking 100 days off drinking and decided to go for it. Despite scathing and jokingly dubious remarks from friends on social media, Lisa says she not only accomplished it but she "fricking loved it."
"I found I was not an anxious person after all ," she says, "I started showing up for my business, which immediately became more successful and my relationship with my children really improved.
"My life did not necessarily become so much better, but not drinking gave me the tools to cope with everything."
Lisa says she also left the relationship that was making her unhappy and finally, she decided to set up a support group.
She says everyone in her life drank and when she stopped drinking, she found herself cut off and isolated. So she met up with a group of women from a sober community she chatted to on instagram and decided to form Bee Sober - a none profit community organisation.
One year later, Lisa's best friend Alex decided to also stop drinking.
Alex’s early years were also spent growing up in pubs. Her dad was a musician in the entertainment industry, so alcohol was a huge part of family life.
Unfortunately, it took its toll on Alex’s father, who after being in recovery for 10 years, passed away from alcohol-related heart attack at 63 years old.
Alex says she used her Dad’s drinking as her benchmark for her own behaviour and felt safe in the knowledge that she was a weekend drinker and therefore normal and in no way dependent, but after suffering a devastating miscarriage in October 2018 and plummeting into depression and anxiety, she realised she had started to depend on alcohol to cope with her emotions and mental health.
Alex says her grandparents owned a pub when she was born. Then, from the age of two to 19 she says her parents owned pubs, her dad was a heavy drinker and everyone around her socialised by drinking.
"Everybody I ever met was drinking," she says. "That was how they socialised, it was how they wound down, it was everything. That was what normality looked like to me - so my normality was already skewed."
Graduate Alex says she was always ambitious, driven and did well at school. She says she didn't want to try drinking despite the peer pressure from friends - but she eventually succumbed.
She says: "I tried it as a teenager, but only under peer pressure.
"I just didn't want to be that. I wanted to better myself and had ambitions."
"I had seen the damage it had done to people I knew."
But when Alex tried drinking she says: "I really liked it immediately.
"I liked how it made me feel carefree and allowed me to escape.
"I liked how it gave me confidence and made me feel like I fitted in with people at the time.
"Where I lived and grew up it wasn't the done thing to want to go to university and have a career and I did - so I stuck out.
"I never felt like I belonged but when I had a drink I fit in."
Alex says she soon became a 'huge binge drinker' at the weekends.
"I was the one who would always be vomiting at the end of the night," she says.
"I was the one with the crippling hangovers the next day. But I was really functioning, I went to university and I did well in my job."
Alex says her 'fantastic and hard working' dad was hospitalised when she was 20-years-old and told to stop drinking, even being given 48 hours to live. But she says he took heed and stopped drinking for ten years.
Ironically she says when her dad stopped drinking, her own drinking escalated because she believed she would never get to that level.
Her 30's, she says: "Were an absolute bender."
"I was a party animal for years," she says, describing how when her marriage broke down, from which she had two children, she drank more than ever.
But, Alex who has since remarried and had another child, says it wasn't making her feel good.
"I started to become verbally aggressive, nasty in drink and was on a short fuse."
In 2018 she says she miscarried at three months, despite not drinking in her pregnancy, and from then she says her drinking downward spiralled.
"I was putting away up to three bottles of red wine a night at the weekend," she admits, "My mental health was shattered."
In May, 2019 Alex, says Lisa persuaded her to take a 30 day break from alcohol saying she was concerned Alex was in a dark place.
Suffering from a crippling hangover at the time, she agreed.
"I stopped drinking on June 2, 2019," she says. "And I haven't had a drink since."
Alex says she was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder after giving up drink and realised she had been self medicating. Over time she says she started to sleep better and felt ambitious again.
She says: "Since I stopped drinking I am not even on medication for anxiety anymore - it's like I am cured."
Alex joined forces with Lisa to found none profit organisation Bee Sober CIC to allow other people to meet up socially in their area and set up and the pair host a podcast called The Sober Experiment, with special guests.
They have 25 ambassadors in Australia, US and the UK, who all organise meet ups. They also have coaching, counselling and personal training services and on-line drop ins that people can access.
