Six years. It sounds like a prison sentence. Or the warranty on a new Mazda. To be honest, I stopped counting the days a long time ago (2,191 if you’re interested) but I like to mark the milestones. What’s the point of all this sensible behaviour if it isn’t to celebrate the achievement and give thanks that I’m here to do it at all.
Aside from losing nearly 30 kilos in weight since the bad old days, what have I learned? Good question. Some basics:
- I do not need booze to relax.
- I do not need booze to go to sleep.
- I do not need booze to deal with stress.
- I do not need booze to have a good time.
- I do not need booze to sit in a pub.
- I do not need booze to love and care for my children.
- I do not need booze as part of a calorie-controlled diet.
- I do not need booze as part of an out-of-control high-calorie diet.
- I do not need booze to have a fun and fulfilling relationship.
- I do not need booze to enjoy my job and do good things at work.
- I do not need to booze to baptise every fucking milestone in my life.
- I do not need booze to be the fittest I’ve been since I was a teenager.
So, I’ve found that happiness and relaxation are not tied to a bar tab. The above seems like a pretty solid list to me, but if you suggest the notion of giving it all up, many drinkers want more. People expect triumph and ticker tape. They want swelling strings and the close‑up of a man reborn. However, sobriety is not that cinematic. It’s more domestic. It’s the quiet, untelevised business of being present and fulfilling obligations. It’s remembering birthdays. It’s having a conversation that has a meaningful outcome. It’s waking up and recognising the ceiling.
But here’s the kicker, with all of that said: I miss it. I miss the good times. The Technicolor nights. The laughter with friends that felt like it came from the soles of my feet. Screaming shitty songs at the top of my voice; the crapulous camaraderie; the fuddled flirtation; the absence of inhibition – that superpower only booze can give you – I remember the heady glow.
Except, of course, I don’t. Not really. What I remember is the trailer, not the film. A romanticised, soft‑focus director’s cut stitched together from three genuinely fun evenings and years of carnage, a broken marriage, minor altercations, more serious altercations, a stalled career and whole lot of wasted money. It could have been worse, I admit – friends of mine had it much worse – but it was enough turbulence for me. Nostalgia is the drunkest part of sobriety. It slurs, it embellishes and it insists that I was the life and soul, when I was more of a cautionary tale.
But here’s the thing sobriety gives me that drinking never did: clarity without cruelty. I got bitter and nasty. Now I see the truth of those years, not the mythology, but the shape of the life I lived. Did I make good choices? No. Did I apply myself? No. Could I apply myself? Also mostly, no. Was I brave when I needed to be? Not really.
Why the inhibition? Why the fear? Why the doubt? Who fucking knows, I had it all to play for, but I was intent on missing the opportunities given to me and then drinking the guilt away when I realised what I had missed. Fast forward, I see the shape of my life. It is slightly smaller. Quieter. Less operatic. But it is mine.
I learned that this starts and ends with me and my decisions. The decisions I make every single day. You can pretend there is a higher power guiding you, but guess what, it is Muggins doing the not drinking every day. Take responsibility. Play the way you are facing. Do the work. Read your room. If you have been sat at the table for more than ten minutes and you cannot see the chump, then guess what, it’s you.
Stay present, lose the shitty ego, consider shared perspectives, practice tolerance – but do not tolerate shitty people – and do not accept bullshit. As Renton once said: “Choose life.” I have spent six years choosing mornings over hangovers; choosing clarity over chaos; choosing the version of myself unrecognisable from my drinking days. And tomorrow, I will choose it again.
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