Ashton from Below Deck, Drinking Culture, and Rebuilding Your Life Without Alcohol
Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories
Brad McLeod
4.8 • 596 Ratings
🗓️ 21 January 2026
⏱️ 77 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode of the Sober Motivation Podcast, Brad sits down with Ashton to talk about sobriety, party culture, and what happens when alcohol becomes tied to identity, confidence, and belonging.
Ashton shares how growing up in Johannesburg, South Africa normalized drinking as a “rite of passage,” and how a chaotic childhood shaped his ability to adapt—but also made real attachment and emotional safety difficult. He opens up about using alcohol and cocaine to socialize, manage anxiety, and feel confident—until the consequences caught up.
This conversation goes deep into shame, anger, trauma, public backlash, mental health, and the moment Ashton realized alcohol wasn’t the real problem—it was the tool he used to avoid what needed healing. He also explains the recovery shift that made sobriety stick: rebuilding discipline, changing environments, and addressing the physiology of recovery (dopamine, nervous system regulation, gut health, blood sugar, genetics, brain fog).
If you’re sober curious, trying to stop drinking, stuck in “weekend-only” drinking, or rebuilding after regret—this episode is a real blueprint for growth.
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Links:
Ashton on IG: https://www.instagram.com/ashtonpienaar/
Support The Podcast: https://buymeacoffee.com/sobermotivation
Sober Motivation Community: https://sobermotivation.mn.co/
Sober Motivation Website: https://www.sobermotivation.com
Support the Podcast: https://buymeacoffee.com/sobermotivation
Contact me anytime: brad@sobermotivation.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to season five of the Sober Motivation Podcast. |
| 0:03.3 | Join me, Brad, each week as my guests and I share incredible and powerful sobriety stories. |
| 0:08.6 | We're here to show sobriety as possible. |
| 0:11.4 | One story at a time. |
| 0:14.2 | Let's go. |
| 0:17.1 | In this episode, I sit down with Ashton, and this is one of those conversations that goes deeper than just quitting drinking. |
| 0:24.0 | Ashton grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa, where alcohol was baked into culture, social life, and even identity, like a right of passage into manhood. |
| 0:32.6 | But behind the scenes, there was trauma, instability, and a lifelong chase for belonging. |
| 0:38.9 | We talk about using alcohol to feel confident how public moments of chaos became a wake-up call and what it really |
| 0:44.7 | takes to rebuild your life with a clear mind, mentally, emotionally, and physically. If you've ever |
| 0:50.0 | told yourself, it's just the weekends, or felt like alcohol is how you connect this episode will |
| 0:56.1 | challenge you in the best way welcome back everyone to another episode thank you all for hanging out |
| 1:02.4 | you had to get ashton's story out here i know i dropped an episode yesterday but we're going to go two |
| 1:08.1 | in a row i mean we didn't drop an episode for the first 16 or 17 days |
| 1:12.9 | into the new year. So things are back up and running sitting on a bunch of episodes right now. |
| 1:19.1 | So working on getting these out. If you enjoy the podcast too, um, yours truly does everything. |
| 1:25.9 | Me, um, from booking guests to recording the episodes, obviously, |
| 1:31.1 | doing the editing, doing the promotion, doing everything. |
| 1:34.3 | I mean, from start to finish, there's nobody else involved in this process. |
| 1:38.5 | And you guys have been incredible to me over the years of doing the podcast with |
| 1:41.9 | supporting it to help me cover some of the costs. |
| 1:44.1 | I love doing this podcast, but it is one of those things to where to have the tools to try to do it |
... |
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