A fitness coach who stayed sober for almost a year has revealed what happened the moment he broke his sobriety.
Dan Hancock, who goes by the handle @mentalhealth_pt on TikTok, gave up drinking in 2023 after years of alcohol-fuelled nights out.
Now a personal trainer and mental health advocate, Hancock said he is the "happiest and healthiest he has ever been" since going sober.
But at the 322-day mark of his sobriety, temptation crept back in.
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‘The sun was starting to come out…’
In a six-minute TikTok clip shared in 2024, Hancock revealed that he was "feeling great, happy, very healthy," and that being sober "was the best decision" he's ever made.
He said that while he breezed through the first eight months of not drinking, things changed with the arrival of warmer weather, and this led to him "forcing himself to not drink" for about eight weeks - a new struggle he hadn’t expected.
"The sun was starting to come out, there was a change in seasons... That was such a deeply conditioned relationship in my head with picking up a drink," he told his followers.
Convincing himself that ‘just one’ was fine
As the cravings grew, Hancock began rationalising a return to casual drinking.
"I've developed so many skills, I have proven to myself that I have an on/off switch, I now can go and enjoy nights out sober," he explained. "So therefore, I should be able to go out and have one drink or two drinks, because I can do the extremes. So, surely I could do something in the middle."
He even began questioning whether he’d ever had a real issue with alcohol at all. "All of these reasons popping into my head were guiding me and encouraging me to pick up a drink again... I was having this debate in my head, this back and forth, for quite a while."
"In my head, it was quite a logical conversation I was having with myself, weighing up the pros and cons... [alcohol] had already won," he said.
‘Like a switch’: The moment everything changed
Eventually, he gave in during a stag do with friends at the airport and got "wrapped up in the moment".
"For anyone who's been sober and thinking about picking up a drink again, I want you to hear what happened to me and how fast it happened," he said. "I had a drink and it was like a switch, honestly. It was like an on/off switch."
"That moment, as soon as I'd had that one drink, I knew where that night was going."
"Next thing I know, it's six in the morning the next day, and I'm sitting there with my mates on this couch," he shared.
Hancock said that he didn't "transport back into" who he was 12 months ago, when he decided to go sober. Instead, he went back to what he calls "the worst version of myself from six years before".
"I became that person again. Like that. That just shows you how quickly it happened," he told his followers.
The relapse and the lesson
Though disappointed with himself, Hancock said the experience ultimately reaffirmed his decision to stay sober.
"The positive was that [I decided] I'm not going to do this again," he said. "Now, I know that I can't stop. It's not for me, I should not drink, end of."
Even more surprising, though, he confessed that when he began to feel himself again after a few days of sobriety, he began to "crave a drink".
"How crazy is that? After not having that craving, impulse, or urge for a whole year. I immediately felt the craving again," he said.
Still, he isn’t beating himself up about it: "To realise and reinforce 100 percent that this is not for me. We can start fresh with a clean slate, knowing it's not for me, and also knowing that I've done it for a whole year before. And I can do it again."
Now, a year on from sharing the story, the personal trainer says he’s in a “completely different headspace” and remains fully committed to his sobriety.