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

by Catherine Gray

The improvement in your life may be less gargantuan than mine. Where you are on the spectrum determines how dramatically your life changes. I was a nine on the scale, or maybe even a ten, so it makes sense that my gains were juggernaut-proportioned. Yours might be more dinky. It might be that you appreciate having six more hours in your weekend, freed up from hungover lie-ins. It might be that you love your whittled-down waist, your fatter bank account and your pin-clear memory of nights out. The flipside of the smaller rewards, is that it will take less effort for you to get sober, I wager.

THE QUESTION TO ASK YOURSELF IS NOT: ‘AM I AN ALCOHOLIC?’ SWIVEL THAT FOCUS. THE QUESTION IS: ‘WOULD MY LIFE WOULD BE BETTER IF I WAS SOBER?’ IF THE ANSWER IS YES, THEN SHOOT FOR SOBER!

Here are the main messages I want to leave you with.

SOBER IS 95 PER CENT EXQUISITE, 5 PER CENT SAVAGE

IT’S AN END TO THE ‘SHOULD I DRINK?’ MENTAL SPIN CYCLE

‘Should I drink tonight, if so, how much should I drink, what if I drink too much, I’ve got that thing I need to do tomorrow, OK, so I drink, but not more than two, how do I make sure that happens, maybe I shouldn’t drink…’ Aargh. It’s madly draining. When you take drinking completely off the table, your mind is freed up to think about much more interesting things. Your life gets bigger as a result. You read more. You have more money.

MODERATION IS A MIRAGE

We’ve already heard about why it’s so crazy difficult to achieve and how few of us actually achieve it, and yet it’s held up as something we ‘should’ be able to do. Which results in us self-flagellating when we can’t. I think of moderate drinking as a desert mirage. Every time I tried to leap on it, I always wound up lying on the floor, stunned, dejected and with a mouthful of sand. Let’s stop chasing that mirage around.

I always thought it was the third or fourth drink that was the problem; actually, it was the first. Because that always led to a third or fourth. It placed me on the downward escalator into the tunnel. Trying to get off that escalator at the fourth drink was like trying to run back up the escalator, once I was nearly at the bottom.

WE GIVE BOOZE TOO MUCH CREDIT

As a society, we tend to drink when we do fun stuff. Skipping out of work on a Friday, going to a gig, eating at a Michelin-starred restaurant, playing Articulate with friends, lying on the sofa bingeing on American Gods, chilling on a beach in Ibiza.

We then assume that the drink was the fun-creator, the party-starter, the joy-giver. We Instagram the pretty cocktail, the tumbler of whiskey, the flight of ...

Here’s the thing: all of those things are fun, because they are...fun. The booze just so happened to be there. They will still be fun if it’s not in your hand. I promise you. They’ll be more ...

And guess what, as we’ve mentioned, alcohol numbs your taste buds. So it’s not imperative to your dining experience. (Another clever marketing strategy by the drinks industry that has absolutely no basis in actual fact.) The best dr...

DRINKING IS A TH...

As much as we try to separate alcohol from other drugs by saying ‘alcohol and drugs’ (which makes no actual sense: it’s like saying ‘foxgloves and flowers’ or ‘BMWs and cars’), alcohol is a drug. We already know it kills 24 people a day in the UK, that it’s a carcinogen that can directly cause eight different cancers and that it is activ...

When you’re sober, you are just drug-free. That’s all. It’s liberation, not deprivation. We are not meant to drink, despite what the world tries to tell us. We’re meant to eat, exercise, shag, sleep, love people, stroke anima...

Our natural, intended state is drug-free. We’re only losing something we never actually needed in the first place, but were told we did, and grew to rely on. Turns out we’re much more aerodynamic, efficient and graceful without the extra appendage. Run! Twirl! Enjoy how much better you feel without it.

SOBER WILL BECOME YOUR NEW NORMAL

A HANGOVER-FREE LIFE

Hangovers are the body’s way of telling us ‘please don’t do that to me again’. They are withdrawal from an addictive substance. Which is why Bloody Marys soften a hangover. They’re withdrawal. And as we heard here, they can last up to 72 hours.

NOBODY REGRETS GETTING SOBER

In the sober community, when somebody shows up who got sober in their 20s, the universal reaction is ‘I’m so jealous! I wish I’d done it back then!’ Once you’re sober, you see that you wasted so many years drinking your well-being away.

COURAGEOUS, NOT A COP-OUT

It’s traditionally been seen as ‘weak’ to order a soft drink in a pub. But the truth is, it takes serious balls to go against the grain. (Or serious vagina, as Betty White of The Golden Girls would say.

You’re swimming against the tide, rather than letting the current pull you downstream. Being sober takes effort, courage and indeed, vagina, even if you were only a two on the addictive spectrum.

The further down you sank into the abyss of addictive drinking, the more you appreciate the view on your ascent out. And once you’ve clawed your way out, you feel more than a little invincible. ‘If I got sober, when it felt impossible, what else can I do?’

ALCOHOL IS LIKE A CHALK HORSE ON A HILLSIDE

You have to put some distance between you and drinking before you see it clearly. It’s like those hill figures in the British countryside. When you’re next to one, all you can see is the white of the chalk: you’re too close to see what it is. It’s only once you’re airborne or at a distance that ‘ohhhh’, the horse appears. Similarly...

I’ve travelled from being distraught that I couldn’t drink any more, from wistfully glancing over my shoulder, to finally seeing drinking as a total waste of time, to being elated that I never have to drink again, and charging ahead into my sober future. The longer you’re sober and the better you feel, both physically and menta...

I remember that I used to say, when asked if I would ever drink again. ‘Well, obviously I have no intention of doing so, but perhaps something catastrophic will de-rail me...like the death of a parent.’ But, it hasn’t even occurred to me to drink on this sorrow. It’s not in my repertoire of reactions any more. I know drinking would not be self-soothing; it would be self-sabotage.