Drink Driving Course starts tomorrow

Convicted Driver Insurance
Mortifiedlady said:
Hi

Am staring my drink driving rehabilitation course tomorrow, any hints,tips or comments ?

Thanks
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Sure :)

Take everything they say in and make sure to enjoy yourself - I certainly did at mine.

Another really important thing to mention, not that I'm suggesting for one minute that you would do, don't smell of alcohol. A bloke on my course was absolutely hammered throughout the entire course. If that wasn't bad enough, he even had alcohol with him in his briefcase!

Edit: Unless they've changed the rules, you must not have any alcohol in your system whilst on the course. They had a breathaylser on the course I went on. If they find out someone has been drinking, they remove them from the course.

It's very informative and you'll likely learn things that you didn't know about.

Good luck :)
 
Xeronema said:
Sure :)

Take everything they say in and make sure to enjoy yourself - I certainly did at mine.

Another really important thing to mention, not that I'm suggesting for one minute that you would do, don't smell of alcohol. A bloke on my course was absolutely hammered throughout the entire course. If that wasn't bad enough, he even had alcohol with him in his briefcase!

Edit: Unless they've changed the rules, you must not have any alcohol in your system whilst on the course. They had a breathaylser on the course I went on. If they find out someone has been drinking, they remove them from the course.

It's very informative and you'll likely learn things that you didn't know about.

Good luck :)
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Thanks so much for your reply x
 
Mortifiedlady said:
Thanks so much for your reply x
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No problem.

I'd like to hear how your first day goes and whether they've changed anything or not - going from other testimonials, it seems like they cover the same stuff that I did on mine 18 years ago.

We did an exercise where you can choose from different glasses on a table. They then asked us to grab a glass and pour an amount of water into the glasses we had picked. We were asked to pretend that we were on a night out and were having a drink. You could choose the glass, what type of drink (beer, cider, wine or spirit) and then the quantity. I picked a pint glass and filled it up about half way and stated that it was vodka. I got a horrified look from the course leader. She asked how many units I thought it was and I said, "well I'd guess it's a good 20 units, but I wouldn't be taking the car and I wouldn't be driving for the next 24 hours either. That's why I used to try and stick to drinking little stubby bottles of 4% lager, because I knew that on average it would take 1 hour per bottle for my body to process the alcohol". The exercise is to show just how easy it is for people to not realise how many units are in a drink and the difference between what we call 'a shot' or 'a measure' and what an actual measure is. A 'house' measure is what I think they called it on my course. You always pour more when you're pouring your own.

So, a tip, don't be cocky like I was. It just showed me up as knowing exactly how much alcohol is in drinks and still getting done for drink driving.

I guess it's not really too much of a shock that I became a full blown alcoholic some 8 years later, after binge drinking like that.
 
I'd also be interested to know, from others as well, if they still tell people on the course that it's 1 hour per unit (on average of course)?
 
Xeronema said:
No problem.

I'd like to hear how your first day goes and whether they've changed anything or not - going from other testimonials, it seems like they cover the same stuff that I did on mine 18 years ago.

We did an exercise where you can choose from different glasses on a table. They then asked us to grab a glass and pour an amount of water into the glasses we had picked. We were asked to pretend that we were on a night out and were having a drink. You could choose the glass, what type of drink (beer, cider, wine or spirit) and then the quantity. I picked a pint glass and filled it up about half way and stated that it was vodka. I got a horrified look from the course leader. She asked how many units I thought it was and I said, "well I'd guess it's a good 20 units, but I wouldn't be taking the car and I wouldn't be driving for the next 24 hours either. That's why I used to try and stick to drinking little stubby bottles of 4% lager, because I knew that on average it would take 1 hour per bottle for my body to process the alcohol". The exercise is to show just how easy it is for people to not realise how many units are in a drink and the difference between what we call 'a shot' or 'a measure' and what an actual measure is. A 'house' measure is what I think they called it on my course. You always pour more when you're pouring your own.

So, a tip, don't be cocky like I was. It just showed me up as knowing exactly how much alcohol is in drinks and still getting done for drink driving.

I guess it's not really too much of a shock that I became a full blown alcoholic some 8 years later, after binge drinking like that.
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Thanks for the tips I will feed back you ! Are you in recovery now ?
 
Mortifiedlady said:
Thanks for the tips I will feed back you ! Are you in recovery now ?
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Yep, 6 years and 7 months since my last lapse :)
I had a few wobblers between 2015 and 2017 so I can't really claim that I was anywhere near stable at the time. It took me a couple of years to really kick it, but I eventually did. After a while you stop counting how many days or months you have been clean to just not thinking about it at all - well that's how it was and is for me. Everyone is different.
 
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I did my course back in 2006. I think it was 4 sessions over a month. We were told after the first meeting we would all be randomly breathalysed but it didn't happen.
 
snk7 said:
I did my course back in 2006. I think it was 4 sessions over a month. We were told after the first meeting we would all be randomly breathalysed but it didn't happen.
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They aren't allowed to do that, that's why. The threat of being randomly breathalysed is usually enough to make people think twice about having alcohol in their system whilst on the course!

If they strongly suspect someone has been drinking (can smell it on them), they'll ask if they can breathaylse that person. If they refuse, it's usually a strong sign of guilt. I suspect the person just comes clean at that point, and then hopes that they can stay on the course. That is how it was on our course, at the time. I have no idea if that has changed since.

It happened on my course. There was a guy that was banned for 4 years, so completing the course would shave an entire 12 months off his disqualification. Not only was he so drunk he kept falling asleep, he went to the pub every lunch break we had - I know this because the 6 or 7 other people on the course encouraged me to follow him (peer pressure and I guess general curiousity made me agree to doing it). I walked into the pub and he'd got what looked like an entire pints worth of wine. He also had a briefcase with alcohol stored in it. I'm not sure how he thought he could get away with it, given that he spent most of the time asleep. The course leader waited right up until the end of day 3 (was 3 full days for us, every Wednesday) before getting him in her office and telling him that he would not be receiving a certificate of completion.
 
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His story of how, what, why and when he was caught drink driving made no sense either. I'm sorry but no one gets 4 years disqualifcation after only drinking a 3 or 4 bottles of kronenbourg in the pub at lunch time with a meal, and then several hours later they were randomly stopped a few feet outside of the pub car park. We were all told to be honest on the course and that no one would judge us, and they didn't. We didn't judge that guy, we just knew he was talking b****cks.
 
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