It took a mum hitting rock bottom with an alcohol addiction to turn her life around and go on to help others in that situation.
Originally from Norris Green, Lesley, 52, would disappear for hours at a time, drinking a bottle of wine as her panicked husband rang her phone.
Eventually she'd sneak back into the family home and climb into their bed when she knew he'd be a sleep.
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She told the ECHO: "I was telling lies, saying I hadn't had a drink.
"I was saying to people in work that I wasn't drinking, and then people I was working alongside would find me with a bottle of wine and say, 'What are you doing?'
"That's when I started to realise that I have got an issue with it."
Lesley said she would have ended up "dead or homeless" without her husband, but she struggled to get medical help for the depression driving her drinking.
She said: "At the time, my GP was just putting it down to hormones, and I kept saying to him, 'It's not my hormones, I've got an issue'.
"So this one day - it was a month I'll never forget - I just hit rock bottom.
"I'd been to the shop and got three bottles of wine, drank the second one, had a bottle of wine in my bag, and I'd just had enough.
"I went to A&E and I said to A&E, 'I need help now'."
Lesley went to rehab for six weeks before she started volunteering at the Aintree University Hospital's Windsor Clinic for people with alcohol problems.
There she met a man called John, and together they set up R-Space, a support group run for addicts by addicts.
R-Space meets every week on Monday and Thursday evenings, and they meet each other for walks in Croxteth Park.
How they run the group is informed by their own experience of recovery.
John's motto used to be, "I work hard, so I play hard".
But he started going for drinks at the pub after work, and when turbulence hit his life, he took to drinking more at home.
Soon the booze was in charge, and by the time he was 20 and his daughter arrived, his mum was begging him to get help.
He kept detoxing and trying to get sober while family and doctors told him to stop drinking, but he fell back to booze again and again.
As Lesley, now an assistant manager in a hospital, said: "You get in that mood that you're never getting better, until something turns on in your head. It's like a light."
It was only when John met other people in recovery that he found a path that worked for him.
That's an environment John and Lesley seek to foster at R-Space, where they've built a community of people who understand each other's struggles.
John, 47, told the ECHO: "For people who are new to recovery, or they've come to a point where they know they need to make a change, what you really need to do is help them to see their plus points and their strengths.
"Addiction really, I feel, is based a lot in low self-esteem and low self-worth.
"I don't see stupid people who come to recovery. I don't meet bad people. I meet people who've done bad things while they're under the influence of alcohol, but I don't meet inherently bad people.
"I meet honest, hard-working, talented people. They just made a wrong choice, as in using alcohol as a coping mechanism.
"And I can identify with that because that was me, you know, the oldest brother, a hard worker.
"Unfortunately, what I did was I neglected my emotional health."
John, from Tuebrook, got to a stage where his relationship broke down and he was losing jobs within a couple of days of getting them.
His mother was still pleading with him to get help and eventually he did, and now he's an alcohol worker helping other people through recovery while doing R-Space on the side.
Helping others gives him joy.
John said: "The moments when I feel most proud and most honoured to be amongst these people, is when a new person comes, and everyone understands that new person feels anxious because they themselves felt anxious.
"I watch how they talk, and the kindness that they give and the honesty about themselves that they give, everyone in the group around the table.
"By the time it comes around to that person, you can see how they've relaxed in half an hour."
John said when people first walk through the door, they're "really anxious and shaky" but he offers them a cup of tea and he welcomes them in.
John said: "We're lucky that there isn't an appointment to come, there isn't a form to fill out.
"What we say is, come along, have a cup of tea. If it's for you, great. If it's not, well, you've lost nothing - you've had a cup of tea.
"And quite often, we'll find people will come and then they'll come back a year or two years later and they'll say, 'I came here ages ago and I wasn't ready, but a New Year is here and I'm back'.
"That's great, you know, we haven't got any expectations on people.
"We've only got two rules really. That's no drink on the day of the group, because we understand people might fall off, but don't drink and come to the group, because it's disrespectful for everyone who's trying to stay sober.
"And the other rule is respect, mutual respect, you know, we don't tell people what they should do."
R-Space offers a level of support that can only come from a community whose understanding comes from their own experience.
The benefits to the people who go are tangible.
One woman lost her kids due to drink and drugs, but like many in the group, she's managed to stay sober.
Lesley said: "She's just won her kids back. I think it must be October last year, she won her kids back and she's had her first Christmas with the kids, without any drugs and without any alcohol."
When Lesley got out of rehab that December ten years ago, she experienced the magic of a sober Christmas.
She told the ECHO: "To see my kids and my husband look at me and sit and do a roast dinner on the Christmas Day and not be drunk was best the experience I've ever felt."
John has only drunk twice in the last 11 years, "but both drinks lasted for eight months".
He said: "That was because of my shame, my guilt, my embarrassment.
"So when people say to me in the group, 'I drank last week', and I say, 'First things first, did it work? Was it any good?', and they never say 'yeah'.
"But then what I say to them is, 'Well I'm glad you're here and you're talking about it, because it could be worse. You could be out there still drinking.
"It's not about being ashamed of drinking. I don't think recovery starts with abstinence. I think recovery starts with the decision to make some changes."
A lot of people have made that decision this month as they give Dry January a shot or resolve to cut down on booze this year.
Lesley warned people not to do it alone.
She said: "I'd tell them to go and speak to their GP or to someone who's a bit more experience with drink.
"If you're heavily drinking and then suddenly you stop, you can take a fit because your body's addicted to it.
"So if you need to go and speak to someone for advice, maybe go to AA and speak to someone there, or call R-Space and speak to them.
"I wouldn't just give up drink. I'd slowly come off it if I was heavy, and then do it day by day."
John added: "Take it a day at a time.
"If you've got a goal, that's great, but to keep your anxiety down, to keep the stress level down, if you're trying a Dry January, get up in the morning, have your breakfast, and plan out your day to get some exercise.
"Go about your business, talk to people, you know, try and give a little bit of yourself to other people.
"And then if you get to bed that night without having a drink, you've won a day, and then the next day, you try it again."
