About James
Written by the one who made those calls.
James was the person ringing at two in the morning, not the person answering. That is useful for one reason and useless for several others.
The wrong way round
This site is written for the people who took the calls, by somebody who made them. That is worth saying at the top rather than burying.
James Roberts. Born in Manchester in February 1976. Drank daily from eighteen to forty-five while running a headhunting firm with twenty staff in travel and hospitality. Residential treatment at Delamere in Cheshire in June 2020, sober since the twentieth of that month, and never relapsed.
What that vantage point is good for
Knowing what was happening on the other end of those calls. Why the person furthest from the consequences got the truth. What the two in the morning promise was worth by nine. Why being quoted back to himself the next morning ended friendships, and why the people who stayed in contact without lecturing him mattered more than the ones who delivered speeches.
The second half is other people. From December 2020 he lived in Tenerife and spent several years around people in recovery and the friends and families who arrived with them, from a dozen countries. A good deal of what this site says about your position was said to him directly by people in it.
What it is not good for
He has never held the phone at three in the morning listening to somebody he loves. Anything here that reads as though it were written from inside your position is written from beside it.
He is not a clinician, a counsellor, a bereavement service or a solicitor, and this site is not supervised by any of those. He will also not tell you that because he stopped, the person you love will. That claim is prohibited across this network.
Declared interests
He was a paying patient at one private clinic in England in 2020. That clinic is named on this page and nowhere else on the site, it has never paid for anything here, and it is not recommended.
He ran a guesthouse in Tenerife used by people in recovery. It has been sold. It is not offered, suggested or bookable through this network.
No clinic, broker, fellowship or medication provider has ever paid for placement, mention or a link. No referral fee has ever been taken from anyone. The rules this site is written under are published in full.