After Hours with Jimmy Thistle

Episode 82 | Michael Kiernan — The Wrong Number, the Guinness World Record & the Cold Water That Changed Everything
Michael Kiernan grew up in Crosshill, a small town where everybody knew everybody and especially knew your family. Good childhood, strong women, a mum and a gran raising him — and then a stepdad who came into his life at eleven and whose surname he briefly took on. He got his first job, met the wrong crowd, had his first drink at seventeen — a bottle of Thunderbird downed at a party — and promptly fell asleep. It barely registered. What registered was the weed he was introduced to at work shortly after, and the week in Blackpool in 1991 that changed his personality permanently.
One disco biscuit on a dance floor in Sequins, every night for a week, washed down with everything else going. He came home a different person. His first full-blown panic attack sent him to bed for months, cost him his job, introduced him to beta blockers and codeine. And in codeine, he found something. An opiate that was socially acceptable, prescription-grade, and brilliant at making everything stop.
For the next thirty years, Michael was what he calls the undercover addict. Always had heavier users around him to compare himself to. Still holding down jobs, still keeping up appearances, still the driver because his substance of choice wasn't alcohol. Weed to start the day. Speed to stay up late. Valium to get to sleep. Codeine for the pain — first from arthritis in his hips, then for everything else. At his worst he was 22 stone, eating two tubs of Ben & Jerry's a night, binge eating fruit and veg to lose weight while still medicating everything with pills, not caring whether he woke up in the morning.
Then COVID. Made redundant. No pretence of going to work. Forty to fifty dihydrocodeine a day. And one afternoon outside a health centre, rattling, out of prescription, running through his options — he scrolled to H on his phone meaning to call someone he knew who used heroin. He called his mum instead by accident. And he stayed on the line.
Now in recovery. Guinness World Record holder — two hours and five minutes buried in snow in shorts at Glenshee. Founder of Flowstate Experience, a cold water and ice therapy community in Scotland. Partner, radio show host, ice bath evangelist. One wrong number from a completely different life.

You can find Michael on Instagram at:
https://www.instagram.com/michael_flowstate_experience_

His website:
https://www.facebook.com/share/g/19YCYLESpp/?mibextid=wwXIfr

And the radio show:
https://www.instagram.com/michael_flowstate_experience_?igsh=MXZ5MXFrOG5lenB0aw==

Links to the 2 Flowstate films that inspired Michael:
https://youtu.be/dftQD_EEcgg?si=e2o95sFcmuRnHWtU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvuCViWPlZY
My Instagram is:
https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmy

And you can find all my other links at:
https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle

Buy me a coffee…
https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Alcohol Explained - William Porter
https://amzn.to/4uMmkyB

This Naked Mind - Annie Grace
https://amzn.to/4eC6L6z

A Million Little Pieces - James Frey
https://amzn.to/44jOV3i

Donate:
https://motiv8.im/donate/
https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 81 | Ashley Baker — Rocket Fuel at 13, Death Metal in Dubai & 17 Years Sober His Own Way
Ashley Baker was born in the UK but never lived there. He grew up in Dubai in the late seventies and eighties — before it was trendy, when it was still mostly desert — the only child of an English mum who'd stayed after his dad left when he was four. She tried to take her life twice before he was old enough to understand why. He grew up with four languages, an Arabic school, a private English school, and by thirteen, a can of Fosters nicked from his parents and a plan to be the coolest kid on the 31st floor of the Hyatt Regency.
The plan involved rocket fuel — everything in the drinks cabinet mixed into a 1.5 litre water bottle, downed on a dare in front of his friends. He fell into the pool, woke up the next day still drunk, got on the school bus, and everyone applauded. That was it. He was the man. He never really stopped drinking after that.
At seventeen his family moved to Germany, where he discovered that you could buy alcohol in supermarkets at sixteen and that every death metal bar in Stuttgart was open until dawn. He got an apprenticeship as a chef — the one job in the world where drinking before a shift was not just accepted but culturally expected — and spent the next fifteen years being the best and worst version of himself simultaneously.
By thirty-one he was drinking two bottles of wine before he could get out of bed, going to his neighbours to ask if they had any wine left, and shaking so badly he had to medicate the withdrawals with more alcohol just to get upright. He went to rehab twice — the first time he left after two weeks and was back drinking within a week. The second time it stuck.
Seventeen years sober. Fully tattooed. Qualified addiction counsellor and sober coach in Stuttgart. Completely at peace. And still listening to death metal.

You can find Ash on instagram at:
https://www.instagram.com/ashleybaker.sobercoach?igsh=dnJobnFnZXdsNHRn

and his Linktree at:
https://linktr.ee/ashleybaker.sobercoach

The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle
https://amzn.to/4gZ0eWs

Boiling Point - Stephen Graham
https://amzn.to/4pPYWiL
My Instagram is:
https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmy

And you can find all my other links at:
https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle

Buy me a coffee…
https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Alcohol Explained - William Porter
https://amzn.to/4uMmkyB

This Naked Mind - Annie Grace
https://amzn.to/4eC6L6z

A Million Little Pieces - James Frey
https://amzn.to/44jOV3i

Donate:
https://motiv8.im/donate/
https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 80 | Scott Murdoch — Four Cans in the Fridge, the Marathon des Sables & Running to the First Minister
Scott Murdoch grew up on the schemes of Loch Lomond — grey houses, young teams, a school that got burnt down so they learned in caravans — and moved at thirteen to a nicer part of town where he suddenly realised other people's parents had Ferraris. His gran died of alcoholism at 58 looking about 80. His dad drank every day. His mum put up with it because she'd grown up in it too. As a kid, Scott knew that if his dad had four cans of beer in the fridge at home, the evening would be okay. If he went to the pub with his friends, it was best to hide under the covers and wait for it to pass.
He left school with a C in PE and a C in Music — both on performance marks alone, because he never bothered sitting the written exams. Drank in the park, caused trouble, got himself a reputation and wore it as a badge of honour. At 21, something shifted. He made two Google searches on the same day: being the child of an alcoholic, which is when NACOA appeared. And what is the toughest race on earth, which is when the Marathon des Sables appeared. Six marathons across the Sahara Desert in five days, 50 degree heat, sandstorms, a medical tent where people's feet were degloved from the sand. Scott decided he was going to do both.
It took him eight years. He went back to college, got straight A's, went to university, got straight A's again and won the court medal — the highest academic award for business at his university. Retrained, found a job he believed in, started working with NACOA, ran the Marathon des Sables in April last year for the charity, then ran 100km from Glasgow to Edinburgh through the night without sleeping to hand a letter from a grieving child to John Swinney, Scotland's First Minister.
Now 60 days out from attempting a Guinness World Record — two marathons in two time zones on the same day in Samoa — with Callum Best, Ian Stringer and Josh Connolly, all children of alcoholics, all NACOA ambassadors. The goal: to fund a national schools education programme so that children like Scott never have to count cans in silence again.

You can find Scott on Instagram at:
https://www.instagram.com/scott1murdoch

and you can donate to his Chasing Yesterday Marathons here:
https://www.instagram.com/scott1murdoch?igsh=MWhkMG01OTltdmo4OA==

My Instagram is:
https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmy

And you can find all my other links at:
https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle

Buy me a coffee…
https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Alcohol Explained - William Porter
https://amzn.to/4uMmkyB

This Naked Mind - Annie Grace
https://amzn.to/4eC6L6z

A Million Little Pieces - James Frey
https://amzn.to/44jOV3i

Donate:
https://motiv8.im/donate/
https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 79 | Paul Drayton — Ride or Die Trying: Beach Blanket Babylon, Two Brain Operations & the Love Story at the Heart of It All
Paul Drayton grew up in Sunderland — doors unlocked, family holidays, a dad who ran his own petrol station, a childhood he describes as idyllic. His first real taste of alcohol was chocolate liqueurs at his grandmother's, and he loved the feeling from the start. Not that he became a big drinker early — quite the opposite. As a teenager he was the designated driver, ferrying his friends to gay bars in his little box Astra while they drank cider and he listened to Erasure.

Then came London. Drama college. Beach Blanket Babylon, where the tips sometimes came in wraps and the shift ended at 3am and the mornings brought in with Bloody Marys to take the edge off. The trendy bars of the nineties. A life built around parties, people and performance. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, a relationship that would define the next decade of his life — with a man who became, over time, one of the most recognisable faces in Britain, while Paul quietly built everything around him and slowly stopped being Paul.

By 2015 he was at home alone with the dogs, self-medicating sciatica with alcohol, going to neighbours' houses to ask if they had any wine left. The drinking went from functioning to dependent. A drink driving incident that Paul still doesn't believe tells the full story ended up in court and in the tabloids. Two lots of brain surgery for a chronic subdural haematoma. A divorce. A month in rehab. And through all of it — all of it — he stayed sober.

The book — Ride or Die Trying — is at its heart a love story. Paul talks about the dogs who kept him honest, the 274 days that ended with champagne at a wedding, the ADHD diagnosis that finally made his whole life make sense, and what it means to finally be somebody again on your own terms.

You can find Paul on Instagram at:
https://www.instagram.com/pauldrayton1

His website:
https://pauldrayton.co.uk

and you can buy his book, Ride or Die Trying here:
https://amzn.to/4pguaPP

My Instagram is:
https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmy

And you can find all my other links at:
https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle

Buy me a coffee…
https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Alcohol Explained - William Porter
https://amzn.to/4uMmkyB

This Naked Mind - Annie Grace
https://amzn.to/4eC6L6z

A Million Little Pieces - James Frey
https://amzn.to/44jOV3i

Donate:
https://motiv8.im/donate/
https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nigel Jones is the founder of the 9KM BY 9AM health and wellbeing platform, an accredited life coach, sober coach, hypnotherapist and NLP practitioner, and the author of the best selling QUIT DRINKING book Walking Back To Happiness: The Secret To Alcohol-Free Living & Well-being.
After recently reaching 2,000 alcohol-free days, Nigel has become known for his practical, no-nonsense approach to personal transformation and identity change. In this episode, he shares how stopping drinking wasn't the biggest challenge - rebuilding himself was. We explore why alcohol promises what sobriety delivers, the power of small habits, how to break free from old versions of yourself, and why lasting change happens when you stop focusing on willpower and start changing your identity.
Drawing on his own journey and his work with thousands of people looking to improve their wellbeing, Nigel explains why becoming alcohol-free is about far more than removing alcohol. It's about creating a healthier, calmer, more authentic version of yourself and building a life you no longer want to escape from.

LINKS
Website - https://www.9kmby9am.com/
My Book - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DLPH36R3/
Alcohol Free Coaching Programmes - https://www.9kmby9am.com/coaching/alcohol-free-coaching/
Coaching Testimonials - https://www.9kmby9am.com/coaching/coaching-testimonials/
Newsletter - https://www.9kmby9am.com/latest-news/newsletter/
Professional Bodies https://general-hypnotherapy-register.com/nigel-jones/
Professional Bodies - https://anlp.org/members/nigel-jones
Feel Good Hour - https://www.feelgoodhour.com
Podcasts - https://www.9kmby9am.com/about-nigel/podcasts/

TRY MY AI LIFE COACH
https://www.9kmby9am.com/about-nigel/ai-coach/

My Instagram is:
https://www.instagram.com/recovery_jimmy

And you can find all my other links at:
https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle

Buy me a coffee…
https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Alcohol Explained - William Porter
https://amzn.to/4uMmkyB

This Naked Mind - Annie Grace
https://amzn.to/4eC6L6z

A Million Little Pieces - James Frey
https://amzn.to/44jOV3i

Donate:
https://motiv8.im/donate/
https://nacoa.org.uk/get-involved/donating/donate/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.