When Mark first came to see me, he was drinking around twelve cans of lager a day. Not in a pub with friends. Not at a party. Alone, in his work van, parked near his home, every single afternoon after work.

He’d been doing it for years. He had a partner who didn’t drink, an infant son, a home, a job. From the outside, he was holding things together. Inside, he knew something had to change — and social services had made the timeline very clear.

What followed over the next few weeks was one of the most honest pieces of work I’ve done with someone. This is that story.

“I don’t even like the taste of it”

The first thing that surprised me — and that I think surprised Mark too, once he said it out loud — was this:

So why was he drinking twenty-four units a night? Not because he craved it physically. Not because he loved it. Because finishing work had become, over years, a trigger. The van. The seat. The cans waiting there. A ritual that masqueraded as a reward.

Understanding that distinction — between a habit and a physical addiction — changed everything about how we approached the work. When I asked him directly: is it in your body, or is it in your head?

That’s not a small thing to hear when you’ve spent years wondering if you’re broken.

The van was the bar

In therapy we talk about triggers — the places, times, sights and smells that set off a behaviour before your conscious mind has had a chance to weigh in. For Mark, the van had become his pub. Park up, sit down, open a can. His brain had wired those things together so tightly that one led automatically to the next.

So the first intervention was almost laughably simple:

A few sessions later, Mark told me he’d started to find sitting in the van boring. That might not sound dramatic. But it was huge. The pull was weakening. The wire was loosening.

What the plan actually looked like

We didn’t go from twelve cans to zero overnight. That’s not how this works, and pretending otherwise sets people up to fail. Instead, we built a structured reduction — week by week, with honest conversation about what was realistic.

But it wasn’t just about the numbers. Each reduction came with practical strategies we’d built together: only buying what he needed for that evening (no stockpile, no temptation); changing which shop he used so the journey took longer; pouring his drink into an opaque cup so the can wasn’t sitting there as a visual cue; taking his dog out in the afternoons as something to replace the van time with.

Small things. Deliberately awkward things. Things that put a bit of friction between the impulse and the action, and gave his brain a moment to catch up.

The part nobody talks about: not minimising progress

One of the most common things I see in this work — and Mark was no different — is the tendency to downplay how much has changed.

Shame has a way of swallowing progress whole. Part of my job is to make sure it doesn’t.

What really drove the change

Mark had a deadline — social services, pre-proceedings, a court timeline. And yes, that created urgency. But I’ve worked with a lot of people who have the same external pressure and don’t change. What made the difference for Mark was something more personal.

His son. A little boy who needed a dad who was present. And a version of himself he recognised and respected.

That shift — from “I have to” to “I want to” — is everything. It’s the difference between white-knuckling through a rule and actually building a new life.

What I took away from this work

Mark’s story isn’t finished. Twelve weeks is a beginning, not an ending. But what I watched happen in those sessions — a man start to believe in his own ability to change — is why I do this work.

If any of this resonates with you, or someone you know, please reach out. You don’t have to have everything figured out to ask for help. You just have to be willing to get out of the van.