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

by Catherine Gray

But the confounding fact was, I didn’t want to do it. Every time I woke up in a strange bed with a strange man, I lay there and felt tears sting my eyes as the slither of self-loathing set in. Not again. I didn’t want to. So why did I keep doing it?

To cope with my all-consuming regret, I would brag about my sexploits, turning them into funny stories.

The more my self-esteem and body-respect waned, the more I turned to the cause of it for comfort. Booze and men. Men and booze. Them wanting me meant I was worth something. I sought acceptance and approval in the very source of my wretchedness. Not unlike eating more cookies to feel better about eating too many cookies. And much of the sex I was having was during blackout. Which meant I didn’t remember it. At all.

HELLO SOBER SEX

I ran away at the end of dates. ‘Bye then!’ When men stared at me, I shrank away from it, rather than drank in the attention. Men edged closer to me on sofas; and I edged away. A hand would snake around my hip and I would clench. I felt clumsy in my sexuality, like it was an outfit I wasn’t comfortable in yet.

SOCIETY IS A DRINK-PUSHER

There’s a jaw-dropping scene in the film The Matrix, which sums up, for me, how it feels to unplug from our alcohol-centric society. It’s a swooping sci-fi shot which shows an endless field of people plugged into a fake reality.

It takes around a year to unplug from the world of drinking, but once you do, that’s what it feels like to look back at heavy drinkers. I...

But, as a sober person, you’re in the minority. And it’s a battle to stay sober, sometimes, because as social creatures we want to run with the herd. We don’t want to be different. We don’t want to peel off from the pack. We want to be in the middle of the throng, wind streaming through our hair, surrounded by our pals, thundering down a dusty savannah, whooping.

Why is it hard to stay sober long-term? Society is a drink-pusher. Everywhere you look, there is encouragement to drink.

NEWSFLASH: ALCOHOL IS REALLY ADDICTIVE

Nobody is surprised when people who start off smoking socially, progress to smoking in the morning. Nobody is shocked when an occasional heroin user becomes a daily heroin user. Because we openly acknowledge that cigarettes and heroin are addictive. We know they’re bad guys. Yet, talking about alcohol as a villain is socially taboo. You’re seen as a wet blanket, a joy-slayer, a party pooper if you do so. It’s a mass delusion of millions.

So, society pushes an addictive substance on us (sometimes literally chanting, ‘drink, drink, drink!’) and then, when we quit, is like: ‘Woah, you became addicted?’ *Backs away looking alarmed.* ‘You weren’t supposed to do that! You’re supposed to be able to take or leave the addictive substance, not become addicted to the addictive substance! We were only joking when we endorsed drinking in the morning!’ (Please note: drinking in the morning is acceptable when it’s mimosas on holiday, you’re getting ready for a wedding, or you’re downing Bloody Marys at a fashionable brunch spot. Got that? Cool.)

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 s...

IN 2002, 200,000 BRITISH WOMEN LANDED IN HOSPITAL DUE TO BOOZING. IN 2010, THIS MORE THAN DOUBLED. It’s an epidemic that everyone is trying to ignore. That we continue to sleepwalk towards.

The reason society wants to brush the ‘alcohol is highly addictive’ fact under the rug, is because most people are addicted to it to some degree. As we’ve already established, addiction is not a ‘normal drinkers’ versus ‘alcoholic’ division; it’s a spectrum.

Even drinkers that would be classified as ‘normal’ in the eyes of a doctor, would find it unimaginable and horrifying to never drink again. That, friends, is a sure sign of addiction. It may only be a thrice-a-week psychological addiction, or an ‘I have to drink at parties’ dependence, but it’s a bet-your-bottom-dollar dependence nonetheless. If you can’t live without something, it’s an addiction. The inconvenient truth that we conveniently ignore...

ALCOHOL IS NOT REMOTELY G...

A team of British scientists controversially announced in 2009 that alcohol is more dangerous than crack or heroin, and almost three ...

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 i...

Professor David Nutt, the British government’s chief drug advisor, and a key player in this report, was asked to resign the day after it was published. The British government were furious with him, for reasons that were unclear. He said, in the wake of the scandal, ‘My view is that, if you want to reduce the harm to society from drugs, alcohol is the drug to target at pres...

Consider the above figures for a second. Let them really sink in. Cigarettes are socially abhorred. Smoking is now banned in outdoor public places. Kids are shown terrifying pictures of people with holes in their throats. Cigarettes are hidden away in unmarked cupboards in shops, rather than display...

A big report published in 2015 showed why the government is so keen to silence the Professor David Nutts of this world. It showed that the total costs of alcohol use in England (including the NHS, police and welfare) amount to £3.9 billion. While alcohol taxation in England rakes in £10.4 billion.

Then there’s also the money we don’t know about; money exchanged in the corridors of power. ‘Let’s not forget that the alcohol industry contributes major funding to the government. The harmful effects of alcohol will only ever be muted,’ says addiction psychiatrist, Dr Julia Lewis.

PSEUDO RESEARCH ‘But, I saw a link on Facebook the other day that said gin is good for you!’, I hear you cry. What’s that all about? I don’t want to get all #Trump on you, but it’s fake news.

‘People don’t get a clear and consistent message about the level of risk around drinking,’ explains Dr Julia Lewis. ‘That’s partly because one side of the debate is able to shout louder than the other. The alcohol industry is a very...

Its reason for being? To flog booze. ‘So, what do they do if there is a new piece of research out there suggesting that your product isn’t a good thing to buy? They ...

In 2011, the World Health Organization announced that alcohol is the ‘international number one killer’, given it contributes to 60 different diseases.

You can guess how many papers ran with this huge story from the WHO. Not many. It got buried. Newspaper staff are notoriously hard-drinking, so they want to ignore these facts on a personal level, which then shapes the news content. And also, people don’t want to read that alcohol is the ‘international number one killer’ while they’re letting their nightly bottle of red wine breathe by the fire. They don’t want to know. They’d much rather read enabling headlines, such as ‘A glass of red wine is the equivalent of an hour at the gym!’

This particular obscure study got picked up and ‘woooo!’ exaggerated in practically every publication from here to Timbuctoo. Once you unpick the actual study however, you find that they’re only talking about one teeny tiny element found in red wine. An antioxidant called resveratrol. Which you’d be infinitely better getting from blueberries, peanut butter, red grapes or dark chocolate, given how dangerous alcohol is. 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.

In January 2016, a report by the Chief Medical Officer said, ‘There is no level of regular drinking that can be considered as completely safe.’ Also in 2016, the World Health Organization classified alcohol as a group one carcinogen, alongside tobacco and asbestos. We now know that alcohol directly causes eight different cancers. And that heavy drinking shortens our lifespan by between 10 and 12 years.

Meanwhile, a study published in the British Medical Journal, found that even two bottles of wine a week can shrink your brain. They conducted MRI scans on 550 people over a 30-year period, and found surprising results. Only 35 per cent of teetotallers showed shrinkage in the hippocampus, a region associated with learning and memory, over the 30 years. While 65 per cent of those who drank between 14 and 21 units a week showed shrinkage. This overturns previous claims that a drink a day can help ‘protect’ the brain.

Despite all of this ‘alcohol is a carcinogen’ proof, a poll showed that half of all British people still did not associate alcohol with cancer in 2016. Consider this. British people are five times more likely to die from an alcohol-related death than a car accident. We religiously wear seatbelts or buy cars with fancy air bags. And yet, we totally ignore the monster in the room that is five times more likely to kill us.

DRINKING IS THE NEW SMOKING Back in the 1950s, people were still smoking on planes, doctors were endorsing smoking in adverts, and it was normal to puff away at your office desk. In the late ’80s, smoking was banned on planes worldwide and, in 2007, lighting up became forbidden in British pubs and restaurants. It seems unimaginable now, a decade later, for somebody to spark up in a restaurant. Who would do that?!

In 50 years’ time, our grandchildren could be saying, ‘I can’t believe people used to drink for fun?! I can’t believe people used to booze on planes, on trains, in offices!’ *Grandchild widens eyes in disbelief and swigs their coconut water*

REAL GREETING CARDS Isn’t addicted drinking hilarious? These are genuine cards in a shop near you.

• ‘Alcohol kills brain cells...’ on the front. Inside, it reads, ‘Let the massacre begin.’

• ‘Drinking can cause memory loss... or even worse, memory loss.’

• Winking woman. ‘If I have two drinks, I can feel it. If I have four drinks, anyone can feel it.’

THE MYTH VS THE REALITY OF BIG DRINKERS

MYTH Heavy drinkers are on the bottom rungs of society REALITY They tend to be the big-earners

Re-adjust your stereotype, friends! Big drinkers tend to be the big hitters career-wise. Those who earn £40,000-plus are twice as likely to binge drink, when compared to those on lower incomes. Plus, doctors are twice as likely to be alcoholics, compared to members of the general public.

MYTH Sober people are straight-edge cowards

REALITY Sober people are rebellious non-conformers

Some see being sober as a lily-livered move. ‘They can’t handle it.’ Huh? It’s actually more of a gangster move to choose to peel away from the pack in a world that is super drink-pushy. It’s having the courage to say, ‘Er, I don’t want to run with you guys any more, because I ...

MYTH Sober people judge people who still drink

REALITY Nuh-huh. Not a chance

‘Sober as a judge’ is so misleading. In my experience, sober people are the least judgmental people ever. I don’t know about those who’ve never drunk, but those who are ex-boozehounds? Not judgy. There’s a saying in the sober community. ‘If you’ve shagged a zebra, I’ve probably shagged two.’ Sums it up, neatly. Basically, please never feel like an ex-drinker is judging you for dr...

MYTH Sober people feel constantly deprived

REALITY They’re relieved they no longer drink