A short YouTube interview clip in which Paddy Gower explains why he gave up alcohol: he drank to mask long-standing feelings of being 'ugly' and to unlock a confident, larger-than-life persona, but realized alcohol was a harmful crutch he no longer needed. He decided to stop drinking and reports he has been sober for three and a half years.
Three and a half years.
The psychologist really wanted to find out why I drank down the bottom in deep was the real reason. And the real reason was that I had grown up thinking that I was ugly. And I had found that drinking alcohol brought out the class clown that we were talking about earlier, brought out the Patty, the big personality Patty, and made all of that sort of feeling of ugliness disappear here when I realized that Patty Gower does not have a self confidence problem. You know, I don't care how I look or anything like that anymore, but this crutch was there called alcohol. It was destroying my life and I didn't actually need it for the thing that I'd got it for, which was this feeling of being ugly. And as soon as that happened, it was like my relationship with alcohol shattered. And I just said to myself, you know, Paddy, life is for living and I don't want to waste it anymore. And that was that. And I've never drank a drop of alcohol since three and a half years ago.
