After two decades of hard drinking Phil Hoye had accepted alcohol was going to kill him.
"I thought, 'This is what I'm going to die of,'" he told ABC Radio Melbourne's Jacinta Parsons.
"I'm already too far in — I've already stuffed my body."
Mr Hoye says he enjoyed being drunk at first.
Then it got to the stage where his first drink was at 10am and he'd have polished off a bottle of whisky by 3pm.
"And that's at work," he says.
"Then I'd knock off and go buy some beers and pretty much be unconscious in bed by eight o'clock at night."
The next morning he would call his wife to ask what had happened the night before.
For a period of time, Mr Hoye stopped going to work altogether without letting his wife know.
"One morning I can remember looking at a bottle of whisky thinking I really didn't want it, but I knew I had to have it," he says.
"That's when I realised the [impact of] withdrawals."
Mr Hoye thought giving up alcohol would be too hard.
He has now realised other people had given up on him becoming sober as well.
"People just thought, 'Well, that's Phil,'" he says.
"No-one was shocked to see a can in me hand at any time of the day."
A life-changing invitation
Then last year Mr Hoye was invited to a gig in Geelong, a city about two and a half hours east of his home in regional Victoria.
He really wanted to go but knew he couldn't stay sober long enough to get there.
The person who invited Mr Hoye to the gig suggested he try being sober – just for one day – to experience what it would be like.
They connected him to Rich, a postgraduate qualified psychotherapist specialising in substance use disorder.
Rich also has lived experience and is in long-term recovery from alcohol dependence.
"Rich rang up and told me he'd been through exactly the same thing," Mr Hoye says.
"He said it sounds like alcohol has nothing left for you."
Sick of missing out, Mr Hoye made a visit to the doctor.
Initially he didn't admit the true extent of the problem to the general practitioner.
"Then I picked a random GP that I didn't know and I went in and I spilled my guts," he says.
"I tried to go 24 hours [without drinking] — I couldn't.
"Then I went back and tried again, got some medication, and it worked."
On his third day sober Mr Hoye called Rich and told him he couldn't believe how good he felt.
"I'd forgotten how good life was and how good I could feel," he says.
"I've replaced me beers now with baths."
With moral support from his wife and Rich and medical support from a GP and counsellor, this May Mr Hoye is celebrating a year sober.
In a few months he plans on taking up that invitation to go to a gig in Geelong.
'The most important step'
Rich treats people with substance use disorder.
He says regardless of how deep-rooted alcohol addiction might be there is always help available.
"If you can identify with Phil's state of desperation and hopelessness a year ago, I hope you can identify that there is hope," Rich says.
"If you can just reach out to the right resources, you'll find that people are there ready to listen free of judgement and free to set you on some type of path to a recovery journey that's your own."
Rich says tackling alcohol dependence is different for everyone, but it's "the first step that is the most important step".
He recommends getting on the phone to Turning Point's DirectLine, Alcoholics Anonymous or making an appointment with a health professional as a first step.
"Once that initial action is in place then we can gather momentum and support that aligns with what we're looking for," Rich says.
