7 Years 5 days Sober - Best Intentions7 Years 5 days Sober - Best Intentions
I'm Quitting Alcohol
David Boyle reflects on being seven years and five days sober while joking about ageing, overtraining, and getting lost in everyday distractions. The episode highlights how even with good intentions, life, family, and the internet can quickly derail the day.
7:28•20 May 2026
Best Intentions and Heirloom Flour: David Boyle’s Sober Chaos at 7 Years
Episode Overview
- Even years into sobriety, managing energy and physical recovery can be a major challenge.
- Trying to juggle too many priorities at once often leads to burnout and feeling dragged under.
- Focusing on one main goal and adding new commitments very slowly can reduce chaos.
- Social media and internet rabbit holes can easily derail a day that started with clear intentions.
- Honest humour about daily struggles can make long-term recovery feel more relatable and less lonely.
“You started your day with the best intentions... but the next thing you know, you're ordering fucking flour.”
Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This short, punchy episode of **I'm Quitting Alcohol** catches David Boyle seven years and five days sober, wrestling less with booze and more with everyday chaos, ageing bones, and his own wandering brain. Boyle kicks off talking about the heat, a brutal jiu-jitsu session that’s taken "four days to recover from", and his scabbed feet that "look like diseased feet" keeping him off the mats.
He compares his 30 minutes of rolling to LeBron James playing a full NBA season and wonders, deadpan, "What the fuck is that cunt doing?" It's classic Boyle: raw, sweary, and oddly relatable. From there, the focus shifts to balance – or the lack of it. Between late-night comedy gigs, his relationship with Claude, parenting, and trying to stay fit, he admits he feels "dragged under again".
His solution, half joke and half hard-earned wisdom: "Just focus on one thing and let the rest of your life fall apart around that one thing." The real heart of the episode is his tumble down the distraction rabbit hole. He starts with the best intentions: improve his Spanish, fix his jiu-jitsu, write comedy, chase gigs. Within minutes he’s side-tracked by Twitter, Moroccan geopolitics, memories of Marrakesh, and ultimately hunting for "organic fucking glyphosate free flour" for the kids’ pancakes.
By the time he’s ordered three massive bags of heirloom wheat, the day’s gone and it’s school pick-up time. Anyone sober or just trying to get their life together will recognise themselves in this chaotic mental ping-pong. It’s not a tidy self-help message, but an honest snapshot of a sober mind still battling overwhelm, distraction, and the weight of good intentions.
If you’ve ever ended the day wondering, "What did I even get done?" this one will hit close to home and might just make you laugh at your own madness too.
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