During the hour before my guests arrived for my 30th birthday party, there was a blackout and I had to apply my makeup under the dim glow of a flickering candle. By midnight, long after the electricity supply had returned, there was another blackout – this one in my head. I was so drunk that I had to be carted off to bed with a bucket strategically positioned beside my pillow, leaving all my friends downstairs to celebrate my birthday without me. This was not an unusual occurrence, as I had perpetually failed to realise that I couldn’t moderate my alcohol intake, no matter what rules I tried to establish: no wine (too strong, made me fall over); no midweek drinking; no daytime drinking. Despite these self-imposed boundaries, I would frequently get absolutely hammered.
The drinking didn’t always end in disaster. There was dancing on tables, lots of loud singing, meandering conversations that wound on late into the night, and much laughter. But there were also the darker repercussions of drinking so much that you lose your mind temporarily, and gradually, over the years, my self-esteem became badly damaged as a result of regular alcohol misuse.
In April 2011, I woke up in hospital after a heavy binge that concluded with me collapsing on the pavement outside my house. The morning after, and somewhat reluctantly, I decided to stop drinking for good. The close proximity of serious injury (or worse) that evening imbued me with a fear sufficient to curb the cravings and battle through the first few months of sobriety. But becoming a non-drinker was never how I perceived myself – people who chose to not drink were either boring or do-gooders. I was neither. Drinking defined me; I adored its recklessness and its glamour. I loved the confidence it sprinkled liberally over my personality – a personality which, when dry, struck me initially as being quiet and boring. My life stretched out in front of me like a tiresome, repetitive treadmill of work and sleep, with no more injections of fun and hedonism to brighten things up. For at least a year, I was like a sullen teenager who had been grounded.
But slowly, things began to change. After about 18 months, I noticed that when I spoke to people with whom I wasn’t overly familiar I could easily hold their gaze without feeling self-conscious. I had begun to appreciate in detail the world around me, and was struck by the magnificence of things that I’d always taken for granted: a heron fishing in a lake; a beautiful sunset; a friendly conversation with a stranger. I realised that I was taking far more interest in people and what they had to say, as opposed to the old version of me who always had one eye on my companion and the other on what was left in the bottle. I felt relaxed, and woke up feeling energised and happy. The panic attacks, which had plagued me for years, vanished, and my mood remained on a steady plateau, with none of the turbulence that characterised it as a drinker.
Up until the time I made the decision to cut alcohol out for good, I hadn’t given much thought to what life without it would be like. I’d never really considered myself to be an alcoholic, regarding my habit as still being on the right side of the line (just) that divided “responsible drinking” from “problem drinking”. But I was very familiar with the common perception of becoming sober, that each day would be a battle of wills to stop that dangerous first glass ever approaching your lips.
Surprisingly, I gradually came to acknowledge the unthinkable – I actually liked being a non-drinker. I was different without alcohol. I wasn’t a bad person who hated her own reflection and woke in the middle of the night being eaten alive by regrets and shame. I felt as though I’d discovered a magic solution to all that had been wrong with my life, and it was so simple: just don’t drink alcohol. Four and a half years later and I find it remarkable that I spent more than 20 years of my life getting drunk, as these days I don’t miss a single thing about it.
As someone who chooses to not drink, I have become acutely aware of how alcocentric the UK is, and how drinking is consistently tied in with having fun and being happy and relaxed. The predominant message is that alcohol is a prerequisite for letting your hair down and living it up. I know I have sacrificed the old version of me in exchange for life as a non-drinker, in that I am no longer the loud-mouthed party animal I was pre-2011. But the person who has stepped in to replace her is one I am much fonder of. She’s less wild and more reserved, but she knows her own mind, fulfils her potential, meets her responsibilities and feels the full extent of her emotions without any cushioning.
For many years I carried around a deep-seated fear that when I died, it would be beneath a black cloud of regret for all that I despised about myself as a drinker. Without alcohol in my life, that worry has disappeared and I’ve discovered a freedom and lightness that I never knew existed. As a drinker, I never understood people who were teetotal, but nowadays I thoroughly enjoy not drinking. For me, it’s not about making it through one day at a time; it’s about living the rest of my life.
