Hey Reader,

You probably know the broad strokes of my story by now.

The drinking, the moment of clarity, the decision to change.

But there's a chapter in the middle that I don’t talk about enough.

And it's probably the most important one.

Because it's the part where I thought I'd cracked it.

But I hadn't.

On 1st January 2021, I committed to 90 days sober.

No alcohol. No drugs. No smoking.

And I did it.

Those 90 days literally changed the course of my life.

I started running obsessively.

10km a day, every single day. Rain, sleet, snow. It didn't matter.

I felt bulletproof, and the mental fog I'd been living in for years started to lift.

I read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.

I read it once, dog-earing every other page.

Then again, highlighting and scribbling in the margins. Then I got the audiobook and listened to it on repeat.

On my runs. On the train. On my morning cycle to work.

It began to reframe how I saw consciousness and my experience of the world.

I deepened my yoga and meditation practices.

Each morning I'd wake up, roll out my mat, and move.

I’d breathe, shift energy, and find stillness.

I began tapping into a well of internal wisdom I never knew I had.

I journalled. I reflected. I asked myself the big questions for the first time in my adult life.

Who am I? What do I actually like? How do I want to live?

By the end of 90 days, I felt like a different person.

I thought “I can moderate now”.

So I started drinking again.

And honestly, it was OK at first.

But slowly, it crept back in.

Within 3 months, all those familiar feelings were back.

The anxiety. The lethargy.

The sense that I was wasting my life.

Six months in, I was doing cocaine again.

And before I knew it, my life was spiralling out of control.

It took me another three years to get back on track and get sober again.

Three full years.

Three years wasted. Three years I’ll never get back.

I've thought a lot about why. About what I got right in those 90 days, and what I fundamentally missed.

The habits were there. The insight was there. But I hadn't done the deeper work. I hadn't understood what was actually driving the drinking at the level of identity and nervous system.

I hadn't built a life that made sobriety feel natural rather than forced.

When the structure of 90 days disappeared, the old version of me took back over. Because the internal wiring hadn't actually changed.

That realisation is the foundation of everything I teach now inside the Shift with Swindells programme.

Yes, the tools matter. The habits matter. Structure and routine are crucial.

But the real work is understanding what alcohol was doing for you in the first place.

And once you start to rewire your beliefs, identity and nervous system on a deep level, that's when sobriety stops being a battle, and starts feeling like total alignment.

Fast forward to today.

I live in Portugal. I'm almost two years sober. I'm a qualified yoga teacher. I completed my second triathlon in September. I'm building something I genuinely love.

And most of all, I'm excited for life again.

Not because I found the perfect morning routine. Because I finally stopped escaping, and leaned into the deeper work.

If any of this sounds familiar, that's exactly what we work on together inside the programme.

​Book a free 30-minute intro call here.

We'll talk through where you're at, what’s holding you back, and whether I genuinely feel the programme is a good fit. No pressure. And even if we decide it's not the right fit, most people leave this call with more clarity and direction than they had before.

Kev

P.S. If you've already tried 30 days, Dry January, or a sober streak but then slipped back into old habits, it doesn't mean you failed. It just means you haven't had the right support around the deeper work yet. And that's exactly what I’m here for.
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