NEW MATES AT ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS –
Jan. 9, 2026 – During the worst period of his alcohol dependence, Dr. Charles Knowles, 57, now a leading surgeon, was consuming ten times the recommended weekly limit after work or at weekends. That’s about 14 bottles of wine or 50 pints of beer. Yet he managed to remain high-functioning, eventually specialising in bowel disease and becoming professor of surgery at Queen Mary University of London. Now he hasn’t touched a drop in ten years and he says that as well as saving his life, giving up saved his 24-year marriage.
His wife, Annie, 56, a former sonographer and senior NHS manager, was what she calls a “grey area” drinker rather than an alcoholic. Nonetheless, after social drinking turned to daily drinking to cope with work and family stress, she too gave up in 2022.
Before that alcohol ruled, and nearly ruined, their marriage and their lives.
“We didn’t really communicate unless we’d had a drink,” she recalls. Charles agrees: “It did at least lock in some time together while we were sharing a bottle of wine. Or more than one bottle.” When Charles made his first attempt to stop drinking in 2008, after nearly taking his own life, Annie admits she found herself resentful as he swapped the pub for his new mates at Alcoholics Anonymous, withdrawing even further from her before falling off the wagon altogether.
