On Wednesday 23 June, I’ll be 28 years sober, one day at a time. It's always at this time of year as I approach my sobriety birthday that I reflect on what it was like before I got sober.

One word that would describe that time would be insanity for one definition of insanity is doing the same old same old and waiting for a different result.

I remember my many previous approaches to try to drink socially.

Never drinking in the house

Never drinking during the week.

Changing my drinks: going from beer to wine then going from from wine to spirits.

Pure madness. What I needed to do was stop because the truth is that I can’t drink. I have an allergy to alcohol which triggers the craving for more alcohol and when that is triggered all bets are off, all diary appointments cancelled.

The good news is on getting sober, we discover the reason why we drank. We discover it wasn’t the drinking, it was our thinking. We learn to listen and listen to learn. We are able to open to new ideas, new possibilities and new ways of living.

We discover that we our not our thoughts. We wake up to who we were meant to be —it’s not that I was a bad person wanting to be good. I was a sick person wanting to get well. The medicine for my recovery was being able to talk to others about my condition as alcoholism is a disease that tells you that you haven’t got the disease.

I was never at ease when drinking. I was always on edge waiting for something great to happen or something bad to happen. I had a perpetual sense of impending doom. Alcohol is a depressive and it does what it says on the label: it depresses us. When I say us, I’m referring to folk like myself who can’t drink but who, unfortunately, think that they can.

My alcoholism was a disease of perception. I didn’t view the world the way others did. I would have felt lesser than others; that I wasn’t good enough.

I had never enough and always needed more. My thinking told me that I was the victim.

When I was drinking, my insatiable alcoholic's appetite convinced me that it was okay to have just one drink. That triggered craving and the craziness of drinking again set in. The upshot: I ended up in some scary places.

I know that there was a way out. I was told by others who were alcoholics that there was a way out but I couldn’t or didn’t want to listen to them.

Until the day I did listen to this simple advice: It’s the first drink that gets us drunk. Don't take that first drink and you are on the road to recovery.

I remember in my early days of soberiety how my thinking was clouded and how I couldn’t see what I needed to see or couldn’t hear what I needed to hear. Then that fog settles and your perception clears. Things start to appear as they are not as you imagine them to be.

You wake up in to the mystery of your precious life and realise the gift of living.

I got sober 28 years ago at Clonard Novena.

if you told me then that my life would change for the better and that I would enjoy life without booze, I would not have believed you.

But here I am now, a couple of days from my 28th year of sobriety, living a life beyond my wildest dreams — one day at a time.