An alcoholic who began his path to sobriety during lockdown soon set up Tenerife's "first" dry villa.
James Roberts, 46, said that he first noticed his problem with addiction when he was "as young as ten", and would casually gamble during visits to a nearby golf club frequented by his parents. What started as innocent games on the putting green for money against "professionals", would go on to develop into an addiction to work by the time he was 29 and running his own business, and then subsequently, into an addiction to alcohol.
James realised alcohol "did a different thing" to him than his friends and family, and from when he started his travel business in 2005 until before lockdown in late 2019, his dependency on drink got worse. Yet, as a "successful businessman" running his own business and who seemed to have his life in order, "nobody" would say to him that he had an issue.
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It took lockdown and the sheer pain and stress of travel restrictions "destroying" his hard-built business for him to finally challenge his dependency which had become an addiction. And in May 2020, James entered the Delamere rehab clinic in Cheshire, near the town of Lymm where he was raised and less than an hour from Liverpool.
The four-week programme he used was a resounding success, and since exiting rehab James has not relapsed a single time. He told the ECHO: "I have zero willpower. I couldn't even give up smoking.
"But with alcohol I knew I had to [give up], otherwise I'd be dead. It was that black and white, and it is to this day as well".
"I had never been to a rehab before and I was scared. Out of everyone there, I was just a quivering wreck.
"I came out a different person but it took me six months of working on it still. I still work on it everyday now, it's just that the volume is different".
James' journey with alcohol was always one entwined with his work. His first business in the travel industry operated an ahead-of-its-time working-from-home model, which he said only enabled his drinking by allowing him to conceal it within his home.
His sobriety has been entwined with work also, though in a much different way. On leaving rehab James would go on to set up what is believed to be Europe's first "dry casa" in Tenerife, where recovering addicts can enjoy the sun, silence and the sights without pressure to party with the help of drink.
He said: "We're the only dry vacation rental that we know of in Europe. I know hand on heart that someone just coming out of rehab will be absolutely fine coming to stay with us here.
"This dry vacation method is for people like me who still want to go on holiday, to Ibiza or wherever, but want to be assured that it's in a place safe for alcoholics, that's been tested by alcoholics."
James' business is uniquely positioned to help those in recovery thanks to his own experience with alcoholism and he is now expanding that business to provide holiday opportunities to those who need the space away from drink.
dryHOLIDAYS, the name of his business, has other locations in popular holiday destinations, including one in Scotland near Loch Inchmahome, and James is looking to add more to their portfolio in the future.
You can find out more about James' journey and his work to provide safe holiday destinations to recovering alcoholics at dryholidays.com.
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