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

by Catherine Gray

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.

‘Drinking steals happiness from tomorrow’

judged people who left wine on the table as harshly as I judge people who leave dogs in hot cars.

I was like a house that looks presentable enough on the outside. But when you open the door, you’re engulfed by a cloud of dust, unseen inhabitants scurry around, none of the lights work, and there’s unopened mail all over the floor.

The first few days of sobriety are an almighty slap around the face. It’s like waking up in a trashed hotel room, which now happens to be your life. Welcome! You stare around in horror at the torched embers, the ransacked wreckage, the bottles, the fag butts, the mysterious stains. Did I do this myself? Motherfuck. Yes, yes I did.

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

In a way, dedicated drinkers have many of the same qualities as athletes. A tolerance for physical pain, a monolithic stubbornness, an all-or-nothing leaning towards the extreme. Once we find an activity that gives us an endorphin rush, maaann, we embrace it. We don’t hold back! Which is why so many newly sober people discover a tiny athlete tucked away inside their drunk self. The

is that beyond just giving people a different outlet for cravings or urges for alcohol, exercise might also help to repair the damage that may have been done to the brain,’

one study found that just ten minutes of exercise can zap a booze craving.

Thirdly, drinking raises our skin’s temperature. I was always too hot. Even in winter. Slipping into a steaming bath was the last thing I wanted to do.

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.

People who don’t understand addiction think it’s self-indulgent. That you inhale that bottle of wine because you are a reckless, selfish, pleasure-chasing lush. It’s not like that. While

Addiction is all about seeking external relief from mental pain; whether you use cocaine, online poker, shopping, sex, razors, cake or exercise. Addictions are all the same ultimately. You seek to treat an internal pain with an external substance or activity. You pursue a once-pleasurable activity to the point of self-sabotage. Alcoholics often lose their jobs, houses, relationships, friends, everything; how can anyone call that self-indulgent? A self-indulgent person seeks to hang on to the things that make them happy. A self-harming person finds themselves torpedoing them. Addicted drinking is a very slow suicide.

www.hipsobriety.com

‘It’s not finding gratitude that matters most; it’s remembering to look in the first place. Remembering to be grateful is a form of emotional intelligence.’

Richard Wiseman, a psychologist and author of 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot, says, ‘When you gossip about another person, listeners unconsciously associate you with the characteristics you are describing, ultimately leading to those characteristics being transferred: to you. So, say positive and pleasant things about friends and colleagues, and you are seen as a nice person. In contrast, constantly complain about their failings, and people will unconsciously apply the negative traits and incompetence to you.’

I’m really learning that if you just sit with the discomfort and trust it will pass, it always, always does. And then really great times roll in. It’s as if the universe rewards you.

would say that the fear of What People Will Think keeps millions of us drinking. Whenever you don’t smoke, drink tea or eat Doritos, nobody gives a damn. Nobody asks you ‘why not?!’ huffily, as if they have a right to know.

WHENEVER YOU DON’T DRINK, PEOPLE SEEM TO FEEL THEY DESERVE AN EXPLANATION. AS IF YOUR STORY IS PUBLIC PROPERTY. IT’S WEIRD AND AT TIMES, VERY ANNOYING.

The only people who think recovery should come with a side order of shameface tend to be the same people who think immigrants should all go back to their own countries, or think women who don’t want kids are ‘unnatural’, or that a dress size says something about a person’s worth. They are gobshites. So why would we care what they think?

‘Something I wish more people would realize, is that addiction is not the brain being irrational,’ says Korb. ‘It’s the brain doing its job. When you have anxiety, your brain says “alcohol is the solution to that”, because it has worked in the past. With many years of repetition, that sticks, so that the brain then automatically suggests it. Your brain is merely trying to solve your problem.’ Marc

The booze becomes centre stage in your mind. Your ‘I want’ drive to succeed at work, to shower, to work out, to make your partner happy, dims. ‘Dopamine decreased in relation to other formerly pleasurable activities like sex, food, and watching your kids grow up,’ he says.

When people become addicted to alcohol, it’s seen as their failure. They didn’t pass the ‘moderate use of an addictive drug’ challenge. They failed at drinking! Society expects us to regularly use an addictive drug, without becoming addicted to it. Alcohol is the only drug where, the second you stop taking it, you’re seen as being too weak to handle it. It’s truly bizarre.

But heroin is darkness and filthy mattresses in squalid hotel rooms, and alcohol is celebration and party streamers descending from the ceiling (or so the movies say). Heroin is estrangement, and alcohol is inclusion.’

If you can’t live without something, it’s an addiction. The inconvenient truth that we conveniently ignore is this: it’s practically impossible to drink alcohol without it getting its hooks into you. Because it’s addictive.

They scored each drug out of 100, with 100 being the most harmful. Alcohol rolled in at 72 on the harm scale, heroin was a distant second at 55, crack rolled in at 54, while crystal meth came in at 33, cocaine was scored as 27 and tobacco hit 26. Professor

Saying you should drink alcohol for the resveratrol is like saying you should swim a swamp filled with alligators. Because swimming is good for you.

doctors are twice as likely to be alcoholics, compared to members of the general public.

Meanwhile, the strongest predictor of whether someone will become addicted to alcohol, is a traumatic childhood. A high number of adverse experiences during childhood makes people seven times more likely to develop an addiction to alcohol in later life,

It seems that for many, drinking is less a pursuit of pleasure and more of a hunt for pain relief.

‘We protect alcohol by blaming addiction on a person’s personality rather than on the addictive nature of alcohol… The concept of addictive personality lets us close our minds to the fact that alcohol is addictive, period.’