Begin Again with Davina McCall
Begin Again with Davina McCall

We Saved Each Other From Addiction | Sarah Hiscox “I Wouldn’t Be Alive Without You”

July 2, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Sarah Hiscox was eight years old when her mother took her to a doctor for nightmares and he prescribed Mogadon, a powerful sleeping pill. "It was like having a big blanket wrapped around me," she remembers. "It was delicious." By thirteen, she had found Palfium—a very strong opioid—in her father's bathroom cabinet and was already addicted. She did not connect the dots until she started writing her memoir decades later. "It was so normal in my house to just help yourself to pills," she says. "They were everywhere."

This conversation between Davina McCall and Sarah Hiscox is not a clinical addiction case study. It is a forty-year friendship told from both sides, and the central argument is quiet but firm: recovery is not a single dramatic turning point but a series of small, failed attempts that eventually line up. The episode's organizing question is why Sarah could not stop using heroin even when she was losing everything—her husband, her children, her home—and what finally made the difference.

The Void and the False Fills

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What you'll learn

  • 1 (00:01) **Episode Open & Host Introduction** - Davina McCall introduces the episode and her guest, Sarah Hiscox, her best friend of nearly forty years.
  • 2 (00:52) **Sarah's Childhood & The Void** - Sarah describes growing up with an alcoholic mother and a mantra of "laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone," which created a deep sense of not being good enough.
  • 3 (02:01) **Meeting Davina & The Car Crash Backstory** - Davina and Sarah recount their instant "love at first sight" meeting at a party when they were 19.
  • 4 (03:11) **The Car Confrontation: The First "Beginning Again"** - Davina describes the pivotal moment she confronted Sarah about her heroin use on the way to a Santana concert.
  • 5 (04:52) **The Void Persists: Bulimia & The Fallacy of External Fixes** - Sarah explains that getting clean from heroin didn't heal the internal void, which she tried to fill with marriage, success, and eventually, bulimia.
  • 6 (06:10) **Motherhood, Isolation & The Return to Heroin** - Sarah describes the overwhelming love she felt for her first son, Linus, and how it temporarily filled the void.
  • 7 (07:45) **The Spiral: Losing Everything** - Sarah recounts how her addiction progressed despite multiple rehabs, because she "wasn't ready" to stop.

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Guests on this episode

Show Notes

What if your ‘begin again’ moment comes after you lose everything your marriage, your children, your best friend, and almost yourself? Sarah Hiscox is Davina’s best friend of nearly 40 years, but this is a side of their story that has never been told like this before. In this episode of Begin Again, Sarah Hiscox joins Davina to talk about friendship, addiction, shame, motherhood, recovery, love, and the long road back to herself. Sarah opens up about growing up with low self-worth, an alcoholic mother, and a childhood where difficult feelings were pushed down rather than spoken about. She reflects on the early experiences that shaped her relationship with shame, food, pills, and eventually heroin. Davina and Sarah also revisit the moment their friendship changed both of their lives, from Sarah confronting Davina about her drug use, to Davina later having to draw a painful boundary when Sarah’s own addiction had taken hold. Together, they speak honestly about what it means to love someone through addiction, while also knowing you cannot save them unless they are ready to save themselves. Sarah shares the devastating reality of losing her marriage, her children, and almost her life to heroin addiction, as well as the moment she finally found a way to begin again. She talks about getting clean, rebuilding trust with her children, finding her way back to her husband Renshaw, and learning how to become the mother she had always wanted to be. This is also a conversation about creativity, self-belief, and finally finding your voice. Sarah discusses writing her debut novel, The Beginning and the End of Everything, and why becoming an author has been one of the most meaningful chapters of her life. At its heart, this is a story about love in all its forms: friendship, marriage, motherhood, forgiveness, and chosen family. Sarah Hiscox reminds us that even after shame, addiction and loss, it is possible to come home to yourself, and to the people who never stopped loving you. This episode contains conversations about addiction, eating disorders, overdose and recovery, please watch with care. 🌟 Like, comment, and subscribe for more honest conversations about identity, growth, and beginning again. Tap the bell to stay connected with new episodes of Begin Again. Follow us here: 📸 www.instagram.com/beginagain 🎥 https://www.tiktok.com/@beginagainpod ✨Follow Sarah Hiscox: https://www.instagram.com/popular/sarah-hiscox/ ✨Buy Sarah’s book, The Beginning and the End of Everything: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beginning-End-Everything-foreword-Davina/dp/0715656767 ✨Sign up for the Begin Again newsletter for all your behind the scenes access, recommendations and much much more at: https://linkly.link/2g2xm



















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Begin Again with Davina McCall