Every drunk thinks they can fix things and drink normally again. I know you can't - Euan McColm

Once we’ve identified each other, barriers drop. We know the sort of awful things each has done and the terrible things we’ve thought and there’s no point in pretending we’re anything other than we are. It’s hugely liberating.

Also, by talking to each other, we spare friends and family the agony of listening to us go on and on.

Sitting at a bus stop a couple of years ago, I saw a guy in his mid-40s clatter through the door of the pub opposite before throwing up.

“Glad that’s not me, these days,” muttered the older fella sitting beside me.

“How long for you?” I asked.

He told me he was 14 years in and, having correctly identified me as a fellow tribesman, asked how I was doing.

I said I was on a 23-year run and he asked whether I had kids.

“Aye, two.”

“And you were off it before them?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s beautiful, son.”

This stranger’s identification of something I’d lain awake thinking about, often – “Dear, God, what if I’d relapsed?” – moved me hugely. What an important thing to notice. What a loving thought.

Later, back at home, I was struck by the draining realisation that his praise for my achievement was likely also to have been an admission of his guilt. We recovering addicts make so many of these confessions to each other that some may be missed.

I lay in bed hoping everything had worked out for him and that, if there were grandchildren, they’d come after he’d started fixing himself.

A year or so later, I fell into conversation with a retired supermodel at a fancy party and, after finishing my mocktail, asked if I could fetch her something from the bar.

She replied “I don’t” with just enough hesitancy for me to clock her.

“How long?” I asked, a little too forward.

“Thirty years.”

“That’s f***ing amazing,” I said, “I’m on 24.”

Grinning, I offered a slo-mo fist-bump. She reached towards me and we acted out an explosive knuckle-on-knuckle collision, looking at each other as if we’d been friends for decades.

The retired supermodel and I babbled away for 10 minutes or so and then parted, unlikely ever to meet again but knowing the sort of things about each other some people might struggle to admit to a spouse.

I had my last drink in October 2001 and, since then, I’ve had more of these little exchanges than I can count and each of them has been, in some way helpful. Sometimes I’ve walked away feeling reassured, others feeling that I’ve done the same for someone else. Often, it’s just nice to speak to someone who, without the need for any explanation, understands some of the things that might make me behave like a terrible f***ing prick, sometimes (even if I am not behaving so in the moment).

More than a decade after I stopped drinking, it occurred to me that it might be useful in some small way to write about it all.

Not because I thought I had any answers to give on the matter – I did not, then, and I do not, now – but because I know shame is one of the most powerful emotions that stops addicts admitting to others and, more importantly, themselves, that they are in the shit.

The response to that first piece was hugely pleasing, with many readers getting in touch to say it had resonated.

Among those who contacted me was someone I already knew a little. This acquaintance fast forwarded our relationship to confidante status, explaining that, although he was holding things together at work, he was blacking out every night.

We met for coffee and he asked how I’d stopped.

“I just stopped,” I said, honestly but unhelpfully.

“I can’t just stop,” he said.

“I know,” I said, “I couldn’t just stop until one day I could.”

I did not provide the simple fix he was looking for but, instead, spent the next hour trying to persuade him that what worked for me was bespoke and that he needed to speak to an expert rather than an idiot.

Of course, we are all free to tell our stories and, if some people’s accounts of the drinking years veer towards the romantic or end in declarations of some learned wisdom, then I raise a glass to them. My own preference is for extreme caution.

None of us who has, to any degree, taken control of an addiction should consider ours the answer to others’ problems.

We should be very careful, indeed, about what we put out there.

In an interview published last week, the actor Brad Pitt revealed that, after seven years of sobriety, including 18 months of attendance at AA meetings, he was back on the booze.

But, this time, things were different.

Now, Pitt – who, in his younger days, had regularly drunk himself insensible – was all about the moderation. These days, he was in control.

My heart sank as I read the actor’s words.

Perhaps Pitt has, against all the odds, completely reordered his relationship with alcohol but the situation he describes is, to say the least, an unusual one. Indeed, it is so unusual that I’d be very keen on him looking me in the eye and explaining exactly how it works.

Alcoholism is a devastating disease that tears families apart. It can take years for people to break free from it. Many never do.

Every drunk tells himself he can fix things and start drinking normally again. This is never, in my experience, true.

If someone needs to stop boozing and he manages it, it’s best for him – and those who love him – that he keeps it that way.