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

by Catherine Gray

Joan Didion, the super-cool American essayist, said, ‘I don’t know what I think until I write it down.’

See, ‘stone-cold sober’ needs a re-brand. It should be called ‘sunshine-warm sober’ instead. Because that’s what it feels like. The loveliness of daylight, clarity and authentic social connection. Yes, you can no longer drink that magical potion to take social situations from level-two ‘insecure’ to level-eight ‘pogo-ing around a dancefloor’. You need to learn how to chug through levels three to seven for real, rather than using the dark art of an addictive drug. But once you learn the superpower of socializing sober, it never leaves you. And you’ll never want to go back.

There are, of course, things that I can’t do now I’m sober. Bummer. Those things are: snog people I don’t fancy, spend time with people I don’t like, do the Macarena in front of 90 people, dance to music I hate and laugh at jokes I don’t find funny. Hmmm. Not such a great loss, is it?

Once you see the world through sober eyes, it becomes clear that after one drink, most people are indeed looser, quicker to laugh, unclenched. However, at drink three that social alchemy begins to tarnish and rust. The looseness turns to sloppiness, the laughs become too loud, the jokes become muddled, quiet confidence turns to arrogance, mascara starts to smudge, cuddles become inappropriate. You’ll wish you could hoover the wine out of their system and return them to being sober. People feel like they’re more charming, more sexy, wittier and socially invincible after a few drinks. I know I did. But it’s a drug-induced illusion. Just because we feel that way, it doesn’t mean we are that way.

We’ll hear from experts on how putting booze into your brain and body is like filling a petrol engine up with diesel.

We’ll muse on how common it is for introverts to drink their way into acting like extroverts, rather than embracing their quieter, more thoughtful selves.

Yep!

The first time I got drunk I felt like I’d finally unzipped my ‘wrong’ skin and slipped into a slinky new one. One that felt ridiculously right. One without the spiky inhibitions. It was like taking off chainmail and slipping into a heavenly silk gown.

Life was too sharp, too painful, too real and too loud when I was sober. Drinking softened the edges and blurred the clarity. It turned an intimidating Andy Warhol pop-art world into a misty Monet watercolour. Sober, nightclub dancefloors were about as appealing as the Mad Max Thunderdome. Drunk, they were my domain. It made me party-ready when I was party-meh. But, it wasn’t real. That me was not me.

Blackouts were commonplace right from the get-go. I thought everyone experienced lost hours of nights out – turns out they don’t. I thought everyone felt jangly-nerved and ill-fitting until they’d had a drink – turns out they don’t. I’d always felt like I was on the outside, looking into social situations, never quite able to fully shed my inhibitions and engage. Booze opened the door, beckoned me in from the cold and thrust me into the thick of the party.

Alcohol unlocked my true self, I thought. I was willing to pay for that luxury. Sober, I just felt wrong. What I didn’t know was how terribly high the price was going to be. It was going to cost me friends, familial love, many boyfriends, the respect of my colleagues and all of my self-esteem. It was going to place me in dangerous situations – scenarios in which it was amazing I wasn’t killed.

I would say I have had hundreds of tiny rock bottoms, mostly imperceptible to others. They were the moments when I realized that my actions were not mirroring my values in any way. The night my best friend stormed out of a club and texted, ‘when did you become such a bitch?’ after I literally just stole the guy she’d been cozying up to. The look on a boyfriend’s face when he found out that I’d unceremoniously drunk the wine he’d been ceremoniously awarded with, for starring in a play. I was wrong, and I knew I was wrong, yet I couldn’t seem to stop behaving in ways that completely contradicted how I wanted to behave, or expected others to behave.

For me, each rock bottom was what recovery people call a ‘convincer’. They added fuel to my desire to get sober. Without them, I would never have stopped drinking. They’re pitch-black moments in my life, but they serve a bright purpose in the long-term. It’s because of those blood-chilling moments that I finally scraped together the wherewithal to start swimming as fast as I could for the sober shore.

‘For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.’ – CYNTHIA OCCELLI

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.

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.

‘A couple of days ago I was at the beach and I ordered two virgin Pina Coladas. The bartender said, “That’s exciting.” As if we need ethanol and booze to have an exciting life. Silly her.’

‘Making decisions includes creating intentions and setting goals – all three are part of the same neural circuitry and engage the pre-frontal cortex in a positive way, reducing worry and anxiety.’

‘Our brain likes definite decisions,’ Korb continues. ‘When we’re torn between two possibilities, such as “do I drink tonight or not?”, the limbic system is amped up. The uncertainty of indecisiveness means our limbic system has to sort through all the different possibilities of this dilemma. Once you make a clear-cut decision, you eliminate the uncertainty, and the multiple outcomes, meaning the limbic system calms down. The act of making a decision feels scary, since you may fail, but once you make a decision and set a definitive goal, the brain likes it more.’

SURPRISING SOBER BONUSES

4. NO MORE ‘CAN WE CHAT’ PARANOIA ‘I have a bone to pick with you’ was like an icy dagger being plunged into my heart. Jumpy ‘beer fear’ has been replaced by a luxuriously clean conscience.

7. THE REVELATION OF ‘SPARE’ CHANGE I used to spend every last £1 rattling around in there on wine. ‘Spare’ money was a foreign concept.

14. BEGONE UNEXPLAINED BRUISES I was constantly finding mysterious ink-blotches on my thighs or, even more creepy; fingertip-shaped stains. I used to tell myself that I ‘bruised like a peach.’ Nope. I don’t. I can’t remember the last time I had a bruise.

18. I DON’T KNOCK OVER PINTS OF WATER IN THE NIGHT In fact, I don’t need any water beside the bed. Because I’m actually hydrated, rather than waking up at 4am with a raging-inferno thirst.

20. I TAKE MY MAKE-UP OFF EVERY SINGLE NIGHT No smoky eyeshadow on my new seersucker sheets, or skin clogged with foundation. I even floss (sometimes).

23. I NEVER, EVER WEE IN ALLEYWAYS AT 2AM. (You know you’ve done it too.)

27. THE LEVEL OF MY FRIEND’S GLASS IS NOT A FIXATION Funny thing: I never ever feel like ripping my friend’s head off when she pours herself a centimetre more elderflower cordial than me.

DEATH OF PARTY GIRL

We are in the living room. Susan has hijacked the music and put some obscure German happy house on. She’s dancing around in the middle of the room, despite the fact nobody else is dancing. Everyone is looking at her with shiny-eyed admiration, or at least, that’s what I interpret it as. She is so cool, so free, so unshackled.

I’m not used to being the boring one. If I was drinking, I would be up there with Susan, and everyone would be regarding me with shiny-eyed admiration too. I have long been the dancefloor-starter. But dancing sober feels impossible. I feel supercharged with ‘flight’ adrenaline. Simultaneously frozen and electrified with anxiety.

I’m ready to leave the party at midnight, since that’s what happens when you don’t have booze coursing through your veins, but I succumb to their ‘don’t leave! It’s early!’ pressure pleas and stay until 2am. I am exhausted and feel like a total loser.

On the night bus home, amid drunk people scarfing junk food and shouting at each other, I pretend to nap and secretly have a silent cry, my face turned to the window so my boyfriend can’t see. I am no longer the Party Girl, and I’m now mourning her death.

THE NEXT DAY

I wake up feeling happy again. Last night was rough, but I did it, and I feel a swell of satisfaction. I go on a bike ride, see a wildlife photography exhibition, make a big Sunday roast and write. I reach out to some sober frie...

They remind me that I haven’t been to a party sober for oh, about 20 years, and I need to give myself a break. That the challenge shouldn’t be underestimated. That we are relearning how to navigate the world without Party-Girl-transforming tonic. Which is hard. We feel the way we feel. If we don’t feel l...

I tell them that I felt like everyone was staring at me, like I was the epicentre of anti-fun. They remind me that I’m only the centre of my own night; not everyone else’s. That it’s likely that no one else even noticed my...

Susan emails me later in the week, saying she couldn’t remember the end of the party and that she didn’t recover until Tuesday. So. Swings, roundabouts. I realize that ruining two full days for the sake...

We’re programmed by society to look up to the Party Girls of this world. It’s a key scene in any coming-of-age movie (She’s All That, Clueless, Dirty Dancing, Save the Last Dance) whereby the gawky, mousey girl manages to peel herself off the sidelines after a shot or two, and join the party. Yeah! Watch her go! She’s finally cool! These messages burrow deep into our brains.

And the way I tried to get there, to that arms-in-the-air dancey place, was by drinking. Now that I don’t drink, I rarely get there, unless it’s a magical trifecta of the right music, the right friends, the right vibe.

And that’s OK. Because it’s real, when I do get there, rather than a chemically induced sham. I’m now completely chilled about being the girl who’s in her PJs by midnight, rather than a hot mess on the dancefloor. The price tag of being the Party...

When I told my sober tribe about my crying-on-the-bus departure, they said I stayed at the party way too long. That I should have left when I wanted to leave. That the most triggery thing a newly sober person can do, is to stay at a party too long and feel like a Debbie Downer. That’s when we’re most likely to reach for a drink.

Alcohol ups our social stamina. Without it, parties are louder, brighter, more tiring. We fade more quickly. And we get tired at the normal time. Like, midnight. Why wouldn’t we? We’re not jacked up on anything, other than tonic, elderflower or a diet cola. A canapé doesn’t give you the ability to party until 3am.

Imagine a Russian doll. Those wooden dolls-within-dolls. When I was drinking, all I knew was my outer doll. The drunk, shouty, glitter-eyeshadowed party girl, who’d been belligerent at parties since 1993. Who threw birthday parties of 20-plus people and peacocked around them in a too-tight dress. That was me. Or, so I thought.

When I sobered up, I got a shock. My painted outer shell fell away, cracking wide open, and inside her was a surprise doll. A socially awkward, bookish, introverted doll. The likes of which I hadn’t seen since I was 12. I eyed this hidden doll with bewilderment. I didn’t recognize her. I thought she’d buggered off 16 years ago and here she was, back in my life. She was a lot nicer than my party-girl doll, who could be a bit of a wanker, but she was also startlingly different.

Instead of beelining to the nearest party and strutting around, my new self wanted to write, curl up with a dog, hang out one-on-one with people in parks or read a book and go to bed at 10pm. Big, ...

So, I was an introvert now. Huh. I started researching it. Turns out it’s all about blood flow in our brains. Extrovert brain blood flow is directed to the regions of the brain concerned with interpreting sensory data – making sense of the outside world. Whereas introvert brain blood flow is more pronounced to the frontal lobe, which deals with the internal processes of decision-making, memory, solving problems – our inner landscape. Introverts often appear to be daydreaming, but that’s because their internal landscape is a buzzy metropolis, which takes up a lot of their energy. They’re not zoned out, they’re just attending to their inner landscape. Introverts turn inwards, while extroverts point outwards. Another study found that extroverts’ brains get a buzz from human faces, whereas in comparison, introverts’ brains are indifferent to them. Introverts like looking at flowers as much as faces. Basically, introverts can pretty much live without people. They’re happy to sit in a field with some daisies. They’ve already got a hive of activity in their head to attend to. Which is why masses of external stimuli, say a packed train station, can give an introvert ‘Overwhelm’.

CONFIDENCE CHEAT CODE Here’s what I realized. It was a sun-breaks-through-the-clouds realization for me. As a teenager, I was painfully shy. So guess what I did? I drank to manufacture fake confidence. I used alcohol as if it was a computer game cheat code. I didn’t need to learn how to motor through levels three to seven. All I had to do to take me from level two (terrified) to level eight (bouncing around a dancefloor to Blur) was to drink. So I did. With gusto. Until I was utterly reliant on it for any sort of socializing.

When I sobered up, I found that I had to relearn how to relax at parties, how to carry small talk with strangers and how to venture onto a dancefloor. How? Simply with patience, time and some grit. Just as you would crack a computer game. It’s trial and error.

You’ll learn how to party sober, just as you learned how to crush a job interview, or to give a presentation, even though you were a nervous wreck the first time around. I wish I could offer you a shortcut, but there isn’t one. That’s the thing. We were looking for a shortcut in alcohol, but we got lost by taking it.

It’s my responsibility to guard my energy and use it wisely. So, I never schedule in more than four social things in one week. Otherwise, I’m frazzled.

I need to not talk to people for chunks of the day. That’s just how I am. What about you?