Expand your horizons on a drink-free journey

While many of us will be feeling the excesses of Christmas, few will have taken things as far as Lauren Burnison did back when she was drinking.

- By MILO BOYD

After growing up in Belfast during The Troubles, Lauren "bounded headlong into a void of self-loathing and addiction".She left home and moved to Edinburgh and later Buenos Aires during years she describes as chaotic.

On New Year's Eve 2002, things reached a violent peak when her "testosterone-fuelled gang of twentysomething-year-old" friends clashed with strangers during a booze-fuelled bender in Argentina.

Today, life looks very different. Now 41, Lauren, from Perthshire, quit alcohol in 2016 and embarked on an epic world trip. "I'd done a lot of travelling, but this time it was different. I was seeing life through the clear lens of lucidity," she says.