Alcohol Freedom Coaching

You don’t have to hit rock bottom to know something’s not right.

Many men reach a point where alcohol simply stops making sense. They find themselves stuck in the familiar cycle, moderating for a while, slipping back into old patterns, and wondering why something that once felt straightforward now takes so much effort to manage.
That's not a lack of discipline. It's what happens when you try to carry the full weight of change on willpower alone, without understanding what's actually driving the habit in the first place.

Real change starts somewhere different. With understanding. How alcohol shapes habits, decisions and the quiet beliefs most men carry about drinking without ever examining them. That understanding is what eventually changed things for me, after years of trying to control alcohol the hard way and finding that effort alone was never quite enough.

What I found instead was a path built on curiosity and clarity. Seeing alcohol for what it actually does rather than what we've always assumed it does. That shift in perspective is what the SoberTides Academy is built around, and it's what I bring to every coaching conversation.
Through coaching and the Academy courses you'll develop a clear understanding of how alcohol affects the brain, habits and motivation.

You'll gain practical ways to navigate urges, stress and social pressure, and genuine insight into the patterns and beliefs that quietly keep drinking in place. All of it grounded in the experience of someone who has walked the same path rather than studied it from a distance.

This work isn't about forcing yourself to give something up. It's about gaining enough clarity to decide your relationship with alcohol consciously, on your own terms, rather than simply going along with it automatically.

For many men that clarity becomes the beginning of something they didn't expect.
A life that feels considerably larger than the one they had before.

My Alcohol story

What I learned the hard way..

Most men have a long and complicated story with alcohol. Mine stretches across nearly fifty years. Some parts were wild, some messy and much of it unfolded inside a culture where drinking simply felt normal.

I'm not sharing this because I want sympathy. I'm sharing it because if you're questioning alcohol in your own life, you may recognise parts of this journey and perhaps avoid some of the detours I took.

My earliest experience with alcohol was at nine years old, sneaking leftover drinks after one of my mum's neighbourhood gatherings. But drinking became a real part of my life when I joined the RAAF at sixteen. We were young, far from home and working out what it meant to be adults. Drinking was how people relaxed, celebrated, bonded and escaped. For a long time I wore that identity comfortably.

But slowly the consequences began to stack up. A DUI charge. A car crash. A motorbike crash. Broken ribs and many Mondays lost to hangovers and regret. From the outside life looked solid, husband, father, instructor, contract trainer.
But alcohol was always there in the background, waiting for the quiet moments.

Over time the losses became harder to ignore. Energy, memory, clarity, control. I found myself topping up my wife's scotch bottle with water to hide how much I'd been drinking, telling myself everything was still fine. Gout arrived. Anxiety crept in. Nights turned into 3am wake-ups and weekends blurred into long drinking sessions that sometimes carried into Monday. At one point I was building an aeroplane while slightly buzzed, then remaking parts later when I was sober enough to see the mistakes.

In 2007 I reached my own version of a turning point. It wasn't dramatic. There was no big scene. Just a quiet, exhausted moment of realisation that this couldn't continue.

I stopped drinking the only way I knew how, through willpower. I read the Big Book and explored AA, but the label never felt like it fit. What I wanted wasn't a diagnosis. I wanted my life back.

So I stopped. That meant stepping away from a lot of the life I knew. Fewer social events, no pubs, fewer laughs. I counted the days, stayed the course and slowly something shifted.

I remember driving through a roadside breath test one day and realising I felt calm rather than afraid. That simple moment told me something had genuinely changed. For the first time in a long time, I felt free.

But the story didn't end there.

After nearly nine years without drinking, a close friend died suddenly from cancer. The grief hit in a way I wasn't prepared for and I didn't have the tools to process it. For two weeks an internal argument grew louder and louder until one night I sat alone in my shed, opened two tall cans of Stella and cried harder than I had in years.

I kept it from my wife for weeks. When I finally told her, it broke something between us that took time to rebuild.

Almost immediately I was back in the same patterns I'd left behind nearly a decade earlier. The same habits, the same volume. I told myself I had things under control. I even convinced myself that switching to Peroni was an improvement. But stronger beer meant more alcohol, not less.
The drinking started earlier in the day. One carton became two. At one point I calculated how much alcohol I was actually consuming each week. The equivalent of more than a bottle and a half of whisky. It stopped me in my tracks, for a while, and then the drinking crept back into everything. Home life. Holidays. Even flying the aeroplane I had built with my own hands.

I always flew sober. But even that joy had begun to fade. Closing the hangar doors used to feel like an accomplishment. Now it felt like the countdown to the first drink.

In early 2021 I told my wife I needed to find my way back to the mindset I'd had when I first stopped drinking. So I started searching. That's when I came across This Naked Mind by Annie Grace.

Page after page explained things I had never fully understood before. Not rules or programmes or labels, just a clear account of what alcohol actually does and why the pull of it persists long after it stops making sense. I read it several times and eventually joined the Alcohol Experiment.

Something deeper began to shift. For years I had tried to control alcohol through effort. Now I was beginning to understand it. And once things became clear, moderation stopped feeling appealing. I didn't want more rules. I wanted the freedom I remembered from that morning at the roadside breath test.
So I stopped drinking again. But this time I didn't count the days. I simply lived them.

People sometimes assume a slip erases everything that came before it. But those nine years had already taught me something important — how to move through life without leaning on a drink. Birthdays, weddings, Christmas, New Year's. Even when it felt hard, those experiences had quietly built something that was still there when I needed it.

Today I don't feel deprived of alcohol. I don't miss it. My wife and I have since completed two major house renovations together, something that simply wouldn't have happened the same way if alcohol were still part of my life.

The real change didn't come from trying harder. It came from understanding. Once I understood what alcohol was actually doing, the desire for it gradually faded.

That's the perspective I now share with the men I work with. Because everyone has a story with alcohol. And sometimes recognising your own story in someone else's is the beginning of everything.

How this experience shaped my work as an Alcohol Freedom Coach

The work I do today grew directly out of that experience and the understanding that followed. Not from a textbook or a training programme but from living it, losing it and finding a way through that actually made sense.

If alcohol has started to feel confusing in your own life, a good place to begin is my free guide, When Drinking Stops Making Sense.
Coach Tony Richardson standing at waters edge on beach

What my clients have to say

Tony turned my life around. With our weekly sessions I learnt how to stop drinking and how to change my relationship with alcohol. I have a life, a good life. I no longer needed the walking frame and my wife and I have a happy relationship.


R HEARNE
I want to express my deepest gratitude to Tony for his support over these past few months. In just 3 months, I've transformed my relationship with alcohol - going from consuming 1-2 slabs weekly (2-3 drinks nightly and more on weekends) to being completely alcohol-free.
P EVANS
My drinking started as a teenager and has always been a problem for me.
Before I met Tony I was in a dark place with my drinking.
Within a 4 or 5 month period I have managed to kick this nasty habit, with the help of Tony.
I'm feeling better and thinking better for it.
Finally I'm getting my life back.
N DUNN
Working with Tony completely changed how I relate to alcohol. He helped me reframe the process, be kinder to myself and move away from the all-or-nothing mindset. I learned to treat the journey as an experiment, not a test I could fail. Through the course material and Tony’s guidance, I developed trust in myself and realised I didn’t need to rely on sheer willpower or feel like I was “giving up” anything if I wasn't drinking. I can now make intentional choices around drinking or not drinking and still fully enjoy the moment.
T ENGLISH

Words to be inspired by

“The secret to getting ahead is getting started”
MARK TWAIN

Make a start today!

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