The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober: Discovering a happy, healthy, wealthy alcohol-free life

by Catherine Gray

Stigmas grow in the shadowlands. So, let’s floodlight the sober movement. Alcohol is an addictive drug. There’s no shame in not being able to use it moderately. You are not unusual if you can’t stop at one or two. You’re not broken. Or weak. You’re actually the norm. Two-thirds of Brits are drinking more than they intend to.

THE RECOVERY SAYING, ‘THE BEST THING ABOUT RECOVERY IS THAT YOU GET YOUR EMOTIONS BACK. THE WORST THING ABOUT RECOVERY IS THAT YOU GET YOUR EMOTIONS BACK’ IS SCORCHINGLY TRUE.

As Brené Brown sagely says, ‘We can’t selectively numb out emotion. Numb the dark and you numb the light.’ Ergo, when you numbed out the bad stuff, you numbed out the good stuff too. You will now swerve wildly between extremes of euphoria and wretchedness. You’ll find yourself floored by shame as a blackout corpse bobs to the surface of your memory, aargh, and you’ll frantically try to shove it back into the murky depths with your oar.

2. I LOADED UP ON VITAMIN B AND THIAMINE The other thing my doctor did was prescribe me a super-strength vitamin B complex and thiamine (B1). He had me on three times the regular daily allowance. Intrigued, I read up on it, and found that vitamin B is vital for energy, appetite and mood regulation. Drinking leeches your body of this lovely stuff. So, much of the dun-dun-dun (Jaws music) doom I was feeling, was simply a vitamin imbalance. Get your paws on some vitamins.

My top sober reads are: Unwasted: My Lush Sobriety by Sacha Z Scoblic, Blackout by Sarah Hepola, This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol by Annie Grace, Dry by Augusten Burroughs and Kick the Drink...Easily by Jason Vale. For podcasts, I love Home and The One You Feed.

THE CAVALRY DUO I found my answers in the blissful guided meditation app Buddhify, and a wonderful book that my psychotherapist aunt gave me, called Mindfulness: a practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world, by Professor Mark Williams and Dr Danny Penman.