When the life you lead is not an easy or very pleasant road to travel, you need a lot of support along the way. If you do a lot of crazy stuff when you are drinking, this will be one of the hurdles you have to jump in order to succeed. My uncle John used to say this to me. He was my uncle on my mother’s side and a respected elder in the community. I would visit him in the two-bedroom bungalow he shared with his daughter Katherine and her four children. John used to drink when he was young but had been a sober man for many years. He sobered up on his own without the help of outside treatment centres because he wanted to quit and alcohol was getting him nowhere. He felt that stopping drinking was the only way to survive.