Sober on Shift

Sober on Shift - A Dad Between Calls

By Dave Chandler

What happens when the person trained to save lives is fighting to save his own?

Sober on Shift is a raw, unfiltered memoir of addiction, recovery, trauma and resilience told through the eyes of a veteran paramedic and father. Set against the relentless backdrop of emergency medicine, this book is not about heroism - it's about survival. It's about showing up when you're broken, staying sober when everything inside you wants to escape and learning how to live when the job teaches you how easily people die.

Dave doesn't write from theory or distance. He writes from the streets, the ERs and the quiet spaces between calls - the moments where the adrenaline fades, and the weight of what you've seen comes crashing in. From devastating tragedy at work and home to the long shadows of PTSD, from addiction and relapse to recovery and responsibility, this story follows a man learning how to stay present in a life that constantly pulls him towards numbness

But this is also a book about fatherhood and friendship. Carrying love alongside trauma. About staying sober not just for yourself, but for the children who are watching how you live. The calls don't stop. The memories don't fade. The losses don't disappear. But neither does the responsibility to keep going.

Written with honesty, humility and a little bit of humour, Sober on Shift refuses to glamorize addiction or romanticize trauma. It doesn't offer cliches or easy answers. Instead, it offers truth - messy, uncomfortable and human. It speaks to First Responders who live double lives, to people in recovery who fight quiet battles, and to anyone who had ever tried to hold themselves together while everything else was falling apart.

This is not a story about being fixed.

It's a story about staying.

Staying sober.

Staying present.

Staying alive.

Staying human.

Because sometimes survival isn't dramatic. Sometimes it's just choosing not to disappear.