Man Shares Video of Exact Moment He Decided to Quit Alcohol

A man shared candid footage of the moment he decided he needed to quit drinking alcohol.

Graham Todd from Warwick in the U.K. took to TikTok posting under the handle thecontentcowboy to revisit the night he decided it was time to make a change. It's already been watched more than 745,000 times.

Todd told Newsweek that the start of the video came from a night of drinking in the summer of 2021 that followed from a daytime business networking event where he was representing the marketing company he runs, Spaghetti Agency.

In the clip, he can be seen downing a shot with a friend in the outside space of a busy bar. According to Todd, he "blacked out" pretty soon after.

"I got really, really drunk," he said. "I fell asleep in the car park, wearing branded gear. I was the face of my company and I was asleep behind my own car...I just felt really, really embarrassed."

Excessive alcohol consumption represents one of the leading causes of preventable death in the U.S., with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimating that it shortens the life of those affected by 26 years on average.

It is defined as incidents of binge drinking in which a man consumes five or more drinks (four or more for a woman) on any one occasion or heavy drinking, where 15 or more drinks are consumed per week (eight or more for a woman.)

Todd never considered himself an alcoholic but rather a social drinker. Even so, he said that 15 pints of beer represented a "conservative" estimate for how much he drank. "I could go to my local pub and easily drink four pints in an hour," he said. "Then go home and drink some more, so it was probably more than that.

"I was basically drunk every weekend, which affected by home life and my work life."

As well as being a dad of two, Todd found he was often essentially losing a day a week at work because of how hungover he would feel come Monday.

"I used to go out Sunday night and plan my week," he said. "I would have a drink while I was doing it, but it would end up being four pints rather than one."

The breakthrough came a couple of weeks after the night he got blackout drunk.

"I went to an event in London where there was a guest speaker, Ed Mylett," Todd said. "He shared a story about his alcoholic father. A really powerful story about how his father had got sober and then spent the rest of his life, literally to his dying breath, helping people stay sober."

Driving home after several days of drinking and networking in London, he decided: "I'm done."

"I wanted to have more control and do things because I wanted to do them," he said. "I wanted to have clarity of thought and realized I was planning my weekend around drinking and needed to remove it."

So as of September 2021, Todd quit drinking. He swapped out alcohol for water and filled the time he spent in the pub with things like reading, meditation, exercise and diet.

"It just became a case of putting other things in my life, almost obsessively," Todd said.

For some, taking that first step is the hardest, but Todd saw it differently.

"It wasn't difficult," he said. "People always ask me how I did it and my answer is always the same: When you are ready to do it, you'll do it. I was ready to make a change."

Even so, Todd admits he "still thinks about drinking now." He even recalls pulling up to a crossroads in his car on the way back that night and telling himself he would have "one more beer" before turning over a new leaf. But then he stopped himself.

Instead, he has continued to focus on himself and it's had a knock-on effect on the rest of his life. He's an active and engaged dad and is more focused and confident at work. Todd believes social media and the videos he posts have played an important role in his journey.

That's not to say he hasn't experienced skepticism and some pushback from those online who don't see drinking as a problem. Todd is not surprised by that, though, branding it a "cultural thing" where drinking in almost any situation is "seen as normal."

"It's absolutely normal to drink at a networking event, or to drink at a funeral or birth, or a wedding, or a christening like almost everything. There's a big thing in our world and in the U.K.," he said.

Ultimately, he said, he's sharing videos like the one of that blackout drunk night and what followed because "two years ago I needed content like this." In fact, in many ways, he thinks he still needs the outlet his content creation offers to continue to work through it.

"It's almost like journaling, it's cathartic," he said. "There are people out there who might watch and think, 'I'd like to do that.' Hopefully it helps people who are in a similar situation because that's what's in it for me."

Is there a health issue that's worrying you? Let us know via health@newsweek.com. We can ask experts for advice, and your story could be featured on Newsweek.