Booze cost me my wife, kids and home but now I’m helping change lives
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SITTING on a hard mattress inside his prison cell, Daniel Fincham was hit by two things.
First, a crippling hangover. Second, the realisation he’d lost everything – his wife, his kids and the house he just tried to burn down.
The dad-of-three had struggled with alcohol abuse since his teenage years. His complicated relationship with booze began when he was just 15, describing his first sip as ‘love at first drink.’
But what started out as boozing at the weekend turned into drinking non-stop.
Before he knew it, Daniel, 39, found himself consuming up to four bottles of wine a day, throwing up his stomach lining every morning just to make himself feel better.
Daniel, from Hale, said: “I liked skipping into work knowing I’d had a few gin and tonics because no one knew. I thought, ‘if everyone likes going out on the weekend, why don’t we all just live in this world?’ And that’s what I did – I gave my power to alcohol.”
After getting married and having a baby, he thought he could change for good.
He said: “After the birth of my son, I thought something would shift inside of me which will make me change what I do. It didn’t – and that made me feel worse.”
Daniel got promoted at work, bought a plot of land and built his dream family home. Despite having what seemed like the perfect life, his addiction to alcohol only grew stronger. He also developed a gambling problem, eventually losing £100,000.
He said: “I was never present because I was always drinking. I had three kids, a loving wife and a massive house but I was empty because none of it had shifted.” By 2019, Daniel would wake up shaking and could not get through the day without having an alcoholic drink. He said: “I would be drinking four bottles of wine a day and I was knackered. I wasn’t sleeping right. I might have to take days off work, but I’d be lying in bed and still drinking. I didn’t want to tell anyone I was an addict because I would lose my job and we had a big mortgage on the house.” Rehab didn’t work for Daniel but the breaking point was the end of his 10-year marriage.
He said: “My wife was taking our daughter to a birthday party and I found a delivery service that would deliver a bottle of vodka to my house. She came back and I had lost about £16,000 in an hour gambling and she left – and that was it. I could accept losing my job, but losing her was the last straw.” Living back with his parents, Daniel was kept locked inside the home to stop him accessing alcohol. Desperate to save his marriage, he phoned the police so they could let him out and drove to his former family home. But when he arrived, no one was there. Daniel then lit a pile of logs and went upstairs, believing he would die in the blaze.
Emergency services quickly descended on the scene and Daniel was arrested and charged with arson. He was kept in a prison cell until he received a suspended sentence for the incident.
But he later found himself back in prison for contacting his ex-wife – a breach of his sentence. Away from alcohol and gambling, it was inside that prison cell where was finally able to turn his life around.
Daniel said: “I let myself be and accepted that I had lost everything and accepted where I was. When I came out, I hadn’t thought about drinking. After a few days, I noticed I wasn’t paralysed by this need to drink and I could see my thoughts.
“I had nothing left to fear so nothing could hurt me. I had a choice – if I kept drinking, I was going to die. I decided to live.”
Following his release from a month behind bars, Daniel attempted to find recovery services to help stay sober.
After searching online, he says he was ‘blown away’ that he couldn’t find any run by former addicts.
He said: “There’s no one right way to recovery. But addicts will get addicts. You need to speak to someone who can understand because you think you’re wrong and no one is like you.”
Daniel was six weeks sober when he launched Recoverlution, which claims to be the world’s first platform dedicated to recovery.
Since starting the company two years ago, he now has a team of 30 recovery enthusiasts located in the UK, Denmark, US and India. The platform helps addicts choose the support and journey that’s right for them.
I would be drinking four bottles of wine a day and I was knackered Daniel Fincham