Pick one repair and start it this week. For most people it should be money, because debt keeps generating fresh damage while you work on everything else, and free regulated advice exists: StepChange is 0800 138 1111, Monday to Friday, 8am to 8pm. Everything else, the relationships and the job and the reputation, moves at the speed of your reliability rather than the speed of your apologies.
First, the sequencing
The instinct once the fog lifts is to fix everything at once, usually with a long conversation and a list of promises. That collapses within a fortnight, and the collapse costs you more credibility than the original damage did.
Repair works in a specific order for a practical reason: some kinds of damage keep growing while you are not looking at them, and some sit still.
**Growing.** Debt, unopened letters, unfiled tax, missed appointments, anything with interest or a deadline attached. These get worse on their own.
**Sitting still.** Most relationships, most of the reputational damage, the sense that people expect less of you now. Painful, and not accelerating.
Deal with the growing category first, even though the still category is the one that hurts. Then give the still category time, which is the only currency it accepts.
Money, and the free help you are probably not using
Two things people do at this stage make everything worse: borrowing to clear a debt, and paying a company to do something charities do for nothing.
Free, regulated debt advice exists and is the right first call. StepChange is 0800 138 1111. They will go through everything you owe and set out the options, and the conversation is not a moral one.
Before you ring, do the part that most people avoid, because the call is far more useful with it done.
- **List every debt.** Card, overdraft, loans, buy now pay later, money owed to family, anything on a payment plan. The total is going to be worse than your estimate. Write it anyway.
- **Get the actual numbers.** Balance, minimum payment, interest rate, and whether anything is in arrears.
- **Note what is urgent.** Rent, mortgage, council tax and utilities are a different category from a credit card, because the consequences of ignoring them are faster and heavier.
- **Stop the leak.** Whatever routes were funding the drinking need closing before the plan is built, or the plan will be fiction. [Clearing alcohol out of the house](/guides/alcohol/clearing-alcohol-out-of-the-house) covers the delivery apps and the saved cards.
One warning worth repeating. Do not borrow from a high-cost lender, and do not take a consolidation product sold to you by someone who found you through an advert. Free advice first, always.
Apology and amends are not the same thing
The word people reach for is apology, and it is usually the wrong one, because an apology is an event and what is broken is a pattern.
An apology is words about the past. An amends is a change in behaviour plus, where it is possible, a specific act that repairs a specific thing. Paying back the two hundred pounds. Doing the thing you said you would do, on the day you said. Telling the truth about something you lied about, once, without a performance.
The test is simple. If it costs you nothing except a difficult ten minutes, it is an apology. That is not worthless, and it is not repair.
The most common mistake is the grand apology that is really a request. Long, emotional, delivered when you need to feel better, and ending with the other person having to reassure you. That transaction takes something from them rather than giving them anything, which is why it so often leaves both people feeling worse.
Relationships repair at the speed of reliability
Nobody rebuilds trust with a speech. They rebuild it with a boring accumulation of kept small promises, which is slower than you want and the only thing that works.
What that looks like in practice.
- **Make promises small enough to keep.** "I'll ring on Sunday" beats "things will be different from now on". Then ring on Sunday. Then do it again the Sunday after.
- **Be on time.** Unglamorous, and it is the single most legible signal available to someone who has spent years being let down.
- **Do not ask for credit.** Pointing out that you have been sober for six weeks turns your recovery into something they have to service. They have noticed. Let them mention it.
- **Accept that they may be angry after you got better.** People often hold it together while you are in crisis and fall apart once you are safe. That is not unfairness. It is the bill arriving late.
- **Do not defend the record.** "It wasn't that bad" and "you drank too" are true sometimes and useful never.
If you have not yet told anyone what you are doing, start there instead. [Telling one person you have stopped drinking](/guides/alcohol/telling-someone-youve-stopped-drinking) is the smaller version of this conversation and a better place to begin.
Work
Two different situations, and people muddle them.
If nothing at work has gone visibly wrong, you very likely do not need to tell anyone anything. There is no obligation to disclose your drinking to an employer, and for most people there is no advantage in it.
If something has gone wrong, or you need time for appointments, the conversation goes better when it is about what you need going forward rather than a confession about the past. Check your own organisation's policy before deciding anything. Many employers have occupational health or a confidential employee assistance line that sits separately from your manager, and a lot of people never find out theirs exists.
Workplaces vary enormously and no page can tell you what yours will do. What a page can tell you is not to have that conversation in a hurry, on a bad day, or drunk.
The repair you should not make yet
Some amends make things worse for the other person, and the instinct to feel clean is not a good enough reason.
Do not turn up unannounced at someone who has asked for distance. Do not disclose something that lands entirely on somebody else, purely to relieve your own conscience, without thinking hard about what it costs them. Do not reopen an old wound with a person who has moved on, because you want closure.
The useful question is not "would this make me feel better". It is "does this repair something for them". Where the answer is no, the amends is to leave them alone and change the behaviour anyway.
If the damage involves money owed to a person who intimidates you, or anything that has become a safety problem, talk to a free service rather than handling it alone. We Are With You offers ["free and confidential support to adults and young people facing challenges with drugs, alcohol and mental health"](https://www.wearewithyou.org.uk/help-and-advice/) across England and Scotland, with a webchat. Samaritans is 116 123 at any hour.
The part that does not get repaired
Some of it will not be fixed. A friendship that is gone, a year your children remember, a job that closed. Sitting with that without either minimising it or drowning in it is the hardest task in this whole stream, and the thing that makes it survivable is that you are now in a position to not add to it.
If facing all of it at once is dropping you into the shame spiral, come back to it. [You drank, what now](/guides/alcohol/you-drank-what-now) is written for that state of mind, and the four steps there apply to a bad day as well as a bad night.
Common questions
**Should I pay back money I borrowed while drinking?** Where you can, yes, and in a planned way rather than in a lump that leaves you unable to pay rent. Get free debt advice first so that repayment sits inside a plan rather than competing with it. Repaying somebody by borrowing from somebody else is not a repair.
**Is a written apology better than saying it?** It can be, because it gives the other person the option to read it when they are ready rather than having to respond to your face. Keep it short, do not ask for anything, and do not follow it up with a request for a reply.
**How long does it take to rebuild trust?** Longer than feels fair, and it moves on their timetable rather than yours. What speeds it up is consistency in small things. What slows it down is asking to be forgiven on a schedule.
**Do I have to tell my employer about my drinking?** Usually no. If it has affected your work or you need time for appointments, a forward-looking conversation may help. Check your own policy and any confidential occupational health or assistance line before deciding, rather than acting on general advice.
**What if the person I hurt will not speak to me?** Then the amends is behavioural rather than conversational: change, stay changed, and do not pressure them for contact. Leaving someone alone is sometimes the repair.
Sources
- [StepChange Debt Charity](https://www.stepchange.org), for free debt advice, on 0800 138 1111, Monday to Friday 8am to 8pm.
- [NHS, Alcohol support](https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/alcohol-advice/alcohol-support/), for the routes into free help and the Drinkline service.
- [We Are With You](https://www.wearewithyou.org.uk/help-and-advice/), for free and confidential self-referral support with webchat in England and Scotland.
