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

by Catherine Gray

‘Drinking steals happiness from tomorrow’ – UNKNOWN

I suffered from Wishful Drinking. Tonight would be the night I cracked it. The night I would have two drinks in the pub, laugh with my friends and go home, rosy-faced and aglow with wine, to make a stir-fry and have an early night. Tomorrow would be the morning I would actually get up and go for the 7am run before work, rather than groaning and stabbing at the alarm to make it stop. Like the desert spring the dying man crawls towards endlessly, but never reaches, I was never able to locate that oasis.

I was the architect of my own destruction every single time, along with my trusty sidekick, wine.

‘Trying to have “just one drink of alcohol” is like trying to knock just one domino down in a huge line of them.’ – CRAIG BECK, ALCOHOL LIED TO ME

My life was just a string of ‘next time’ moderation attempts.

For me, I found that zero drinks were a lot easier than the ever-elusive one or two. ‘If you’re failing to moderate, then abstinence is the best option. It’s easier to be abstinent than moderate,’ says neuroscientist Alex Korb.

‘I tried to drown my sorrows, but the bastards learned how to swim.’ – FRIDA KAHLO

And I really believed that if I couldn’t drink my wine, life wouldn’t be worth living. It would be bleak, joyless, insufferable.

PEOPLE THINK THAT THE HARDEST TIMES IN EARLY SOBRIETY MUST BE AT PARTIES OR PUBS. WHILE THOSE ARE UNDOUBTEDLY TRICKY, I’M ACTUALLY FINDING THAT THE MOST CHALLENGING TIMES ARE WHEN I’M ALONE. WHY? BECAUSE I CAN DRINK WITHOUT ANYBODY KNOWING.

‘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.

Beginning to trust myself to take care of myself has been a really amazing process. I’ve stopped eyeing myself suspiciously, as a toddler would an unpredictable parent, and started folding into myself with relief.

There is, of course, a brief burst of relief in the first glass of wine.

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.

Addicted drinking is a very slow suicide.

For me, I had to stop hating myself and start liking myself in order to find sobriety. I had to replace self-loathing with self-soothing. I had to start to believe that I was worth something. That I deserved better than drinking.

A very important one, this. No matter how much ‘I want a drink, I need a drink, I could have a drink, there’s a drink, pick up the drink’ echoes in your head, a thought cannot make you pick up that drink and put it into your mouth. Did you know that? I didn’t, before sobriety.

To be an addict is to have a disembodied voice in your head. A voice that is constantly chat, chat, chatting at you about why it would be a great idea to have a drink right now. A voice that takes your ‘I’m not drinking tonight’ sworn promise to yourself and dismantles it piece by piece. The voice is illogical, persistent, relentless, wily.

When we make a clear-cut decision, rather than engage in the debate, our brains quieten down, says neuroscientist Alex Korb.

I realize that ruining two full days for the sake of an hour or so of Party Girl ‘wooo’ is not worth it.

‘Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.’ – ST FRANCIS OF ASSISI

You’re going to need to dismantle that fantasy before you sit in a beer garden. Fantasies of being able to moderate? Get down and give me 20 examples of when you tried moderation and utterly, irrevocably failed. It’s a mental muscle which is steeled by fighting fantasies with reality.

your decision to not drink isn’t something you have to explain in depth to others. They’re on a ‘need to know’

If I drink one, I want five. So now, I just don’t have any. *Cheery shrug*

‘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.’

GIVEN A BOTTLE OF WINE IS THE CALORIFIC EQUIVALENT OF TWO CHOCOLATE BARS, I WAS EFFECTIVELY PUTTING AWAY 14–16 BARS A WEEK.

I’ve swivelled my focus from ‘likemelikemelikeme’ to ‘do I like you?!’ It’s not about if they want to see me again. It’s if I want to see them again. Saying no to unworthy men is the same as saying no to booze. It’s a muscle.

talking about alcohol as a villain is socially taboo.

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.

Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget,

Choosing not to drink, rather than being forced into it, is a subtle but powerful mental shift. ‘When our brain actively chooses something, we release more dopamine than when something is thrust upon us,’