What’s life like without alcohol? You’ll save a fortune, really enjoy nights out – and even have better sex.
When I decided to give up drinking in the summer of 2015, I was convinced it would improve almost every important part of my life: my career, my health, my marriage. But would I be able to handle the boredom? I had been getting drunk pretty regularly since I was an adolescent and was completely inexperienced at having fun without booze. I wasn’t sure it was possible. Happily, I was wrong.
“It has been deeply ingrained in us by the media, culture and our peers that alcohol is the best way to have fun, and therefore sobriety must be boring,” says Veronica Valli, a psychotherapist, recovery coach and author of Soberful. She says: “The truth is, with 23 years of sobriety behind me, I can’t think of anything that isn’t more fun without alcohol. But there’s more to stopping drinking than just stopping drinking. We have to learn a lot of new emotional skills.”
The money I used to spend when I was drinking was obscene. It wasn’t just the booze itself; it was the collateral costs of a night out: the taxis, the late-night burgers and, towards the end of my drinking days, the drugs I would invariably buy after my fourth pint. Then there was the coffee, Coca-Cola, bacon sandwiches and painkillers I would buy in bulk the next morning to try to combat my hangover.
Once I calculated the rough amount all this was costing me every week, I felt a lot less guilty about treating myself in sobriety: from nice meals out to occasional massages and the odd weekend away. A couple of treats like this every month and sober me was still financially better off than drunk me by a long way.
I have always loved live music but I used to spend at least a third of every gig queueing for the bar or the toilet. At festivals, I would often miss half the acts because I was in a state of drunken disorientation. At Glastonbury 2008 (headliners, Jay-Z and Amy Winehouse), I can’t remember anything after Joan Armatrading at two in the afternoon.
“Alcohol is a depressant that makes you slower both mentally and physically,” says Dr Niall Campbell, consultant psychiatrist and addiction expert at The Priory, London. “When you stop drinking, you quickly gain better focus and concentration and even greater physical capability. Dancing, talking to people, being quick-witted – all the social skills you need are sharpened.”
Nowadays, I go to more live music than ever, engaging with the whole performance, absorbing all the little details that make seeing a band up close so special and even having a dance (yes, it is possible to dance sober) that doesn’t result in me stumbling into someone and spilling their drink.
“You may get pushback from people who feel like you giving up booze is somehow a judgment on their drinking,” says Valli. “They tend to disappear from your life organically. The other thing is that you come to realise that drunk people are pretty boring, repetitive and not fun.”
Personally, I am still happy to go to the pub with pals who are drinking while I nurse an alcohol-free beer. I simply arrive early, when everyone is in a good mood (the first drink is the one everyone seems to enjoy most, from what I have observed) and leave early, just as everyone starts to get repetitive and boring, as Valli puts it. I have become a master of the French exit (disappearing without going through a lengthy and tedious round of goodbyes). Nobody ever notices, cares or remembers when you left.
Find A Grownup Drink
Fizzy pop is for kids, water is for nerds and drinking more than three cups of caffeine a day will ultimately turn you into a nervous wreck. Find yourself a non-alcoholic drink that feels grownup and a bit of a treat to enjoy at the end of the working day. Over the past seven and a half years, I have tried the full array of non-alcoholic beers (a range that is constantly expanding and now has its own aisle at my local supermarket) and can honestly say that the most readily available options are the best. Heineken 0.0 is crisp, clean and tasty. Guinness 0.0 is rich and flavoursome. I wish I could recommend some more obscure brands but, in my opinion, the bigger breweries have been first to perfect booze-free-booze.
The most important thing is to change your perception of fun. If something seems fun only when you are a bit drunk, then it’s not really fun at all and you should stop doing it. For me, that included days at the horse racing, stag weekends in Prague and visits to Winter Wonderland. For you, it might be dreary after-work drinks or that book club that just seems to be a cover for unbridled midweek boozing. But you will be amazed by how many things that you have spent time and money on for years are, in the cold light of sobriety, rubbish.
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