me deciding to stop drinking was the single best decision i've ever made bar nothing there

is nothing in my life that has come close no career decision no path that is the single best

decision i've ever made everything else that follows on was because of it yeah i suspect it will be

for a long time.

That was the voice of Dr. Alex George, an A&E, doctor, a reality star, turned a mental health advocate, a podcaster, a youth mental health ambassador, and now an author. But behind all of those

campaigns and all of that incredible work, behind his public face face was for so long a man medicating his

life with alcohol. So December 4th, 22, sitting in a hairdresser's chair, Alex was at rock bottom,

20 stone drinking to suppress the grief of losing his brother to suicide. And it was at that

moment that he took an honest look in the mirror

and it was the catalyst for transformation. He gave up alcohol. And as you've just heard at the start of

this episode, it changed everything for him. And we're about to explore why so many of us are

auto-enrolled into drinking, why it's the only drug you have to explain that you don't take,

and the three groups of people that Alex believes should never drink at all.

Please make sure you hit subscribe and share this live recording with Dr Alex, George,

with someone that you think may well benefit from the amazing wisdom that he's got to share,

as we welcome Alex to high performance.

Alex, thank you so much for coming and talking to us.

It's really nice to see you again.

Before we sort of get on with the structure of the conversation,

I just think the way that your journey and your career has gone since Love Island

has been absolutely fascinating to watch on the outside. What's it been like to actually be in the middle of it? Because you seem to be doing a different project and a new thing every single time I talk to you. Maybe that's ADHD, I don't know. I think it's been an interesting experience. There's many kind of lows and highs and everything in between, to be honest. I think, you know, people often ask me the question, like, has it made your life better? Are you happier? And I couldn't honestly say, I think my life is better off because of everything that has happened. I think I've experienced so much. And I think I've probably contributed more. Yeah. And I think I've done more because of it. But actually when I look at it in many ways, so I used to work, we're obviously recording this in Central and I used to work at King's College, London which is not far away. And then I eventually went over to Lewisham to work. I loved that, love that hospital. I worked at A&E. It was a dopamine heaven with ADHD, kind of running around this, you know, you've got You, you've got a stabbing here and something else going on there. It was chaos, but I loved it. And I used to cycle to work every day. I'd do my job. I had a good group of friends. Life was kind of good. And then I got persuaded to go on the show, literally dragged on the show, actually mostly. Thought it was a two-week holiday, which was perfectly aligned. My contract was ending at the hospital. And turned out things went very differently. But I'm very grateful. I managed to do lots of different things in my life. But I don't think that doing lots or being externally successful actually makes you happy necessarily. It's always going to be within. It's interesting, isn't it, as you get older? There was a period where I thought, like,

happiness is the goal, right? But actually, the more that you live, the more that you do things,

...