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

by Catherine Gray

Recently, my housemate came home from work saying that she’d had a bastard of a day, and that ‘all I want to do is drink bubbles and smoke fags’. She then got a bottle of Prosecco from the fridge. As she was opening it, she looked at me and earnestly said, ‘Sorry’. I said, ‘Please, don’t apologize!’ It was bizarre. As if she thought I was gutted I couldn’t join in. I really do not feel that way, ever. ...

People are their true selves when they are drug-free.

MYTH You’re either a normal drinker, or an alcoholic

REALITY It’s a spectrum of dependence

As Jason Vale writes in Kick the Drink...Easily!, ‘On the whole, people just don’t realize they are addicted. In fact, many drinkers have lived and died without ever realising it...what happened with prohibition, when all alcohol was banned? It resulted in organized crime because it soon became clear that people were not choosing to drink, they had to drink. Would the same have happened if they had banned bananas?’

‘I choose not to drink. So, please don’t make me into a victim or a tragic figure, because I’m not one. Please don’t pickpocket my greatest achievement to date by saying I didn’t choose it. I did. And so does every other sober person out there. They should all be given credit for making that life-enhancing choice. Now, do be a dear and bugger off out of my personal space.’

MYTH The person is to blame. They have an addictive personality

REALITY Alcohol is addictive. It is the villain of this piece

THIS

As Annie Grace says, ‘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.’

She goes on to point out that the personality traits most exhibited by alcoholics, are actually positive things; including openness to experience, extroversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness and neuroticism. Indeed. Save the final trait, these are all excellent things, no? Also linked are: experience-seeking, decisiveness, impulsiveness and no...

‘Sobriety deserves a medal, not a stigma.’ – ANNIE GRACE, THIS NAKED MIND: CONTROL ALCOHOL: FIND FREEDOM, DISCO...

ZAC EFRON ‘What I found [in being sober] is structure...I’m much more comfortable in my own skin. Things are so much easier now.’

DAVINA MCCALL ‘You can be quite hedonistic completely sober, you know. Everybody else was absolutely hammered, and I’m leading the conga round this nightclub to mental rave music, and we’re all going completely mad, and I’m just as mad as everybody else, but I’m stone-cold sober.’

BLAKE LIVELY ‘I don’t drink. I’ve never tried a drug …It’s just something that I genuinely don’t have a desire for…I grew up with the mindset that after work you go to dinner and watch a movie. I don’t want to go to a club and not wear panties.’

LANA DEL REY ‘At first it’s fine and you think you have a dark side – it’s exciting – and then you realize the dark side wins every time if you decide to indulge in it.’

COLIN FARRELL Quit drinking in 2005. ‘There was a lot of partying. I had a good time, but I paid a heavy price. I just wanted to stop. I was done with it, I was tired of it. I wanted to get off the treadmill. Giving up alcohol has put more focus on my career. I’m a lot more appreciative over what I have...I’m really grateful. It’s really lovely to be present in my life.’

STEVIE NICKS ‘I learned that I could live my life and still be beautiful and fun and still go to parties and not even have to have a glass of wine.’

CHRISTINA RICCI ‘I went through a normal kind of late teens, early 20s drinking, but it [sobriety] was a choice I made, because I didn’t think it was very good for my life. I don’t go out very often. [When I do] I drink Diet Coke and dance.’

KATE BECKINSALE Sees being sober as a ‘smart move, face-wise’. ‘Drinking just doesn’t make me feel well. I find wine very depressing. I get into a kind of despair the next day.’

NAOMI CAMPBELL ‘I have more energy and I have more fun than when I was drinking and I can hang out really late and get up early in the morning with no hangovers and still smile.’

BEN AFFLECK ‘I want to live life to the fullest and be the best father I can be.’

CALVIN HARRIS ‘My live shows are a million times better now. If you drink, you can’t even remember if it’s a good show or not – and that’s probably for the best, because it would have been rubbish because I’d have been drunk and not making any sense.’

JADA PINKETT SMITH Said in 2005, ‘I found myself drinking two bottles of wine on the couch and I said, “Jada, I think we’ve got a problem here”. I had problems with alcohol and I really had to get in contact with the pain, whatever that is, and then I had to get some other tools in how to deal with the pain. From that day on I went cold turkey; I haven’t had a drink in eight years.’ Husband Will Smith doesn’t drink either.

DANIEL RADCLIFFE ‘I’m a fun, polite person and it turned me into a rude bore....[My life is] a lot better and less chaotic. I just felt like I was chasing chaos and making my life difficult, all the time thinking I was having fun. So it feels very nice to not be putting myself in danger, to be waking up in the mornings and not thinking, “Oh my God, who am I going to hear from? What did I do?” It’s a life lived without dread and fear, and it is lovely.’

DEMI LOVATO ‘“Sober is Sexy” is my new motto, and it couldn’t be more true! All you need to have fun in life is a great attitude and good friends. I’ve made a commitment to myself to live a happy, healthy life the best way I know how, and I want to spread the message that you don’t need to drink or do drugs to have fun.’

THE WILLIS SISTERS Demi Moore and Bruce Willis’s three daughters are all sober.

Rumer said of her six months sober: ‘It’s not something I planned on but after the long journey of getting here I can honestly say I have never been more proud of myself in my entire life.’

Scout honoured her one year sober by writing: ‘One year of being fully present with ma self, no filters, no chemical relaxation, no short cuts. I am meeting the best version of myself every day.’

PRO-CHOICE RECOVERY

‘When you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You appreciate it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way…The minute you get near humans, you lose all that… That judging mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.’ – RAM DASS

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about being sober, it’s that what works for me will not necessarily work for someone else. Hitting upon the right mix of tools is like chancing upon the correct combination that opens a safe door.

I know successfully sober people who did ten-plus years of AA, decided it wasn’t for them, and swapped it out for yoga and meditation; I know people who mix up Smart Recovery and AA; people in Refuge Recovery; people who do straight AA five times a week and yet have never done the steps or gotten a sponsor; people who rely exclusively on CBT therapy; people who simply read a lot about recovery.

Before I found my unique sobriety combination, I had been told that ‘AA is the only way’. So, I went to thrice-a-week AA meetings for six months. But, given the choice of a lifetime inside AA, or drinking, I kept choosing drinking. That wasn’t AA’s fault, it was just my reaction to it. I needed a third door. It was only once I stopped going to AA and started designing my own sobriety, that my sobriety started sticking. AA helped me get to sober, for sure, but staying in AA was not the right decision for me. I went to more than 75 meetings before deciding that.

JUST AS TWO PEOPLE CAN LOOK AT THE SAME PAINTING, WATCH THE SAME FILM OR MEET THE SAME PERSON AND HAVE VASTLY CONTRASTING REACTIONS, RECOVERY METHODS ARE THE SAME. WE REACT DIFFERENTLY TO THE SAME STIMULUS. BECAUSE WE ARE DIFFERENT.

‘Human beings are a social species,’ says neuroscientist Alex Korb. ‘We need each other to survive and be happy. Feeling disconnected from people gives us distress. If trying to connect with others without drinking brings anxiety, it makes sense to find social support in sober groups instead, until you get used to socializing without alcohol. Social interactions stimulate the dopamine system. We know that when rats are given dopamine, their addictive urges reduce. So, it’s a win-win. The more you feel connected to people, the less you will feel like drinking.’

The best thing about sober tribes? They’re the antithesis of Fakebook or Insta-brag. People drop all of that fakery and are utterly imperfect, real and flawed. Your tribe will celebrate and honour your milestones in a way your regular friends won’t. They’ll know that clocking up 100 days deserves a unicorn parade, a gown made of glowworm silk or having a star named after you.

CHOOSE NOT TO DRINK A 2013 Boston College study showed that people who say ‘I don’t’ are more successful than those who say ‘I can’t’. Which is why I say ‘I don’t drink’ rather than ‘I can’t drink’.

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,’ says neuroscientist Dr A...

I know plenty of long-term sober people who don’t say they were or are alcoholics. They know they were addicted, but refuse to define themselves by that addiction.

For instance, there’s the ‘teetotaller’ trend, spearheaded by Holly Whitaker of Home podcast. She decided that sobriety needed a re-brand; something I vigorously agree with. Cue hordes of women using the word ‘teetotaller’ rather than ‘recovering alcoholic’.

This shift is being reflected in the press too. The 2017 Associated Press Stylebook, which is basically the go-to guide for journalists, now recommends that magazines and newspapers ‘avoid words like alcoholic, addict, user and abuser’ and ‘instead choose phrasing like he was addicted, people with heroin addiction or he used drugs’.

The lead author of the Stylebook was interviewed by Slate magazine as to why he implemented this subtle, but powerful change. He said it was because of a paper he read by President Obama’s chief advisor on drugs, Michael Botticelli, named ‘Changing the language of addiction’. In it, Botticelli cited a study that found that doctors were slightly more likely to recommend harsher measures for ‘substance abusers’ as opposed to ‘people with substance abuse disorders’. That small shift in focus, from the person, to the problem itself, is huge. After all, we don’t describe ex-smokers as ‘smokeaholics’ for the rest of their lives.

A scientific study showed that it takes a minimum of 66 days to bed a new habit in. To create that new pathway in your brain. So, if you want to give sobriety a whirl, I advise at least three months off booze.

‘Whatever works’ is one of my favourite recovery slogans. I would love to see a sober sphere that is pro-choice. After all, our common goal is sobriety, not matchy-matchy recovery choices.

‘You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way and the only way, it does not exist.’ – NIETZSCHE

This message was a proverb about when people try to get us to stop drinking, before we’re ready. The story goes thus: the wind blew and puffed and raged to try to get the man to take off his coat. And the man kept his coat on, stubbornly. He wrapped it around his body in staunch refusal. But then the sun rose and shone and gently warmed him. And he removed the coat of his own volition.

FEEL THE SOBER FEAR AND DO IT ANYWAY

I’ll level with you. Back in 2013, I was not overjoyed about getting sober. Nuh-huh. Not a happy camper, whatsoever. I only chose it because I could see that if I continued to drink, my life was definitely going to spiral out of control. I felt like I was in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t spot with drinking. At a conundrum of a crossroads, where either choice was totally undesirable. I took off down the ‘sober’ road with all of the enthusiasm of a condemned inmate trudging to their cell. ‘GREAT.’ *Dramatic sigh.* ‘My life is going to be lame.’

But, I was gobsmacked to discover that I became happier than I had ever been. Like, not just a little bit happier; a million times happier. Trading in my drinking life for a sober life felt like trading in a wizened spider plant and being given a giant greenhouse crammed with sunflowers.

I know that sounds melodramatic, but it’s absolutely true. And the reason I’ve written this book, the reason I’ve revealed immensely personal things, is that I wish more people could also discover the wonderment of that trade-in. You don’t even have to be addicted, like I was, to choose sober. Even threes on the addicted-drinking scale have hangovers of Dementor soul-sucking proportions (hey, Harry Potter fans). Even fours do and say stuff they acutely regret. Even fives feel that ‘I want wine’ scratch once the working day is done, like a cat relentlessly scratching at a door. If there’s one iota of your being that suspects that the minuses of boozing might outweigh the pluses, I urge you to give it a whirl.