Adrian Chiles Opens Up About His Relationship With Alcohol & ADD Diagnosis | Loose Women

we first paired off in 2007 to co-host the one show on BBC and I after all those years he's back on the loose panels yeah those were the days of our theater they were the days 13 years ago I think we aged about 10 years in those first two years but you know we got through it we've gone through it well you're very used to to being the one asking the question so I know this is unusual for you to be sitting here surrounding surrounded getting our own back now I'm in charge you were always in charge um but anyway yes your book The Good Drinker Adrian and this was born out of a documentary you made it called drinkers like me and indeed the response you got from people on the street afterwards because I'd say the vast majority of us gotten love to have a glass of something here and there it's at what point you realize that you need it as opposed to just being honest yeah and I think I think the issue is there's good and bad news in the book I suppose the bad news is that for a lot of people it will apply to them what applied to me which was you know I was drinking lots and lots and lots but without ill effects no time how many units a week I wasn't I was drinking I found out through making the documentary up to 100 units away I mean that's a little but without ever but you know without ever getting drunk without ever getting into trouble or anything and the point was that because we've got this idea in our heads of an alcoholic of a problem Drinker I.E waking up in a shop doorway sleeping on a park bench you know drinking Perino in the morning stagging around bumping your head being in hospital because we've got that image of it if you're not that you think well I haven't got a problem I'm not a problem drinker but then if it occurred to me like if I drink it every day and I'm drinking that much then there must be some dependency on alcohol there but then I suppose the good news in the book is that you can cut down I think a lot of people at some level think the only way of addressing it is to stop completely and for some people that is definitely appropriate and necessary for others they're probably frightened of addressing the problem because they think well I don't want to be told I'm going to stop completely because it's part of my life rightly or wrongly well you know I kind of found a way of doing it of just drinking less and actually enjoying it all the more shocked you into it though you make a change well just quite how much I was drinking um and also I had as part of the TV program did I had a liver scam where the fellas are yellow you got a bit of fatty tissue here it's starting to it's it's going to affect you healthier you know you could head towards the roads it's something's got to change so obviously that that focused my mind um and so I just set about sort of cutting down but was it hard to cut down no because I did a mental job on myself in the sense that I thought if I lined up all the drinks on drunk since I was 15 years old that line would be about three miles long right of the drinks well that's a lot to put through your system but the real tragedy for me is that when I think how many of those drinks did I really want or need or enjoy how many of all those but three miles of drinks I mean at least much less than half a lot of the time I'm drinking for the sake of drinking bad of habit because God was somebody that I've been drinking so I'm having a drink or you've got a bottle of wine to finish or it's nine o'clock the pub doesn't shut till you're 11. you know just so all I did really is cut out the unnecessary drinks and just focus on the ones I did really enjoy or later why do you think you became dependent on it you know you're getting into a cycle you were saying well it is an addictive drug there was a reason behind it you remember well I think I think in your in your head it you know I think the more you drink it stands to reason the more likely you are to get addicted to it I mean it is for me and maybe it's just part of life when you're 15. like my dad said oh you're too um you know you you're too young to stay at home all the time but um you're too old to stay at home all the time now but you're too young to go to the poll so the pub is like the be all and endorse it becomes only about getting served in pulps this is what I'm gonna do and then suddenly it's just it's on this like pedestal in your life you know have a drink everything will be everything little story when you had your first drink when you were very young yeah and I just yeah and I just felt something sort of I don't know I just it was just sort of thing experience it was cider I drank when I was it was fighter I drank as a party but it was I had a very bad time on a school exchange when I was 14 because my nan had just died my uh Croatian uh Croatian lemon but I had to go off to on this flipping School exchange to Germany and I've never been to homesick I it was it was awful it really was but halfway through the second week they took us to on a trip to this fact to this Brewery and at the end of it for some reason they gave us some lager and I just remembered drinking and drinking this lager and suddenly everything seemed fine I mean it was profound suddenly oh I'm just having a good time that'd be too bad I'll be home on Sunday just you know even got to like my pen friend again I saw one of the German girls looking at me all right and all that suddenly I saw the whole world through a different kind of prism and I think looking back and it's one of the revelations about I found about myself because it's turned into a kind of a drinking Memoir if you like but you know these little triggers are happening but before you know it you know it's in you know you know it's in charge of you rather than you're in charge of it um no that's valid alongside that in recent times you were diagnosed with ADD in and which attention deficit disorder um how much of that makes sense to you now on reflection and just talking about drinking and everything else was that all part of it I think that's all part of it I mean I haven't really talked about that in my book because it was almost too much to get my head right it's another book but it was certainly you know you self-medicate because if you've got add you're trying to do 20 things at once you get distracted and it just more than anything else it just becomes exhausting it just exhausted and so you know a drink would calm you down but you know when I first got diagnosed I looked back at my life and think I mean how could I've ever thought I didn't have ADD well I didn't know what it was and neither did my parents but at school could never concentrate and and I mean I went during the lunch I mean I'm joking about how many times did I just get distracted I'm gonna do exactly what I used to do in the lunch and tell you to shoot because we have to move on and I'm going to bring you back and we'll talk again thank you so much the good Drinker I tomorrow uh thanks for your company today

Channel: Loose Women

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Length: 7min 8sec (428 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 05 2022