At the end of 2019 I made a decision to be consciously sober for a year.
I don't think I had any real reason to make this choice other than that I found myself amongst friends and really cool people partying on New Years Eve, completely comfortable with my own sobriety. Maybe for the first time in a social setting where everyone else was drinking I was not questioned, or pressured, or stigmatised, or accosted by people who were drinking for my decision not to. It felt really good.
It's a pretty rad thing to be amongst other humans in celebration, dancing and singing, and to be your own self. I've long mourned living in a culture where this is denied us without the culturally sanctioned dulling buffer of alcohol. No more.
Choosing to enter into a new decade sober made for an unusual 2020. The next day dawned with a sun ominously orange. Long ago our ancestors would have looked upon such an omen and consult the wise or spiritually connected amongst them for its meaning. We, fully aware of the why of this ill portent, chose to ignore it. No one else I've talked to seems to remember that sun, maybe everyone else was hungover, or maybe a climate catastrophe smokescreen obscured celestial body became hazy in our memories amongst problems that seemed more pressing in the months that followed.
A cultural moment occurred where we all faced uncertainty and isolation. Memes that joked about the necessity of alcohol to withstand extended time with kids peppered my social media. I always hated that sentiment. A clever and deliberate marketing trick. It both punches down in it's "humour" directed at the perpetual acceptable modern scapegoat - children, and preys on the isolation and vulnerability of new mothers creating consumers with alcohol as a defining part of their identity.
But soon I began to see welcome ripples of dissent in the alcohol-centric cultural hegemony. People had been confronted by their drinking when they were cut off from the wider world and perhaps found that it was the community experience and not so much the alcohol they enjoyed all along.
Sobriety is an act of rebellion.
How did we come to accept that we needed to spend money, five billion dollars a year in fact (vs the nearly eight billion of alcohol-related harm) to participate in activities that are fundamental to the human experience?
How many can only know the joy of dance after drinking?
Why is it far more or even only acceptable to open up to each other about important issues after a few drinks?
How did advertisers grift us into believing that we can't enjoy our ritual celebrations, our physical endeavours, or even nature without drink in hand?
2020 churned on and I faced the stabs of emotions whose edges it would have been easy to smooth with alcohol. It felt important to sit with my discomfort, my grief, my rage and my loneliness and experience them honestly. I was acutely aware that this made others uncomfortable and that it would have been more acceptable to stifle these feelings, shoving them tightly down until they exploded in an understandable gush involving alcohol and the cloak of night. Human emotion in broad daylight is confronting in our culture.
The year passed and I saw no reason to start drinking again. To be fair I never really enjoyed it, I reckon if all possible intoxicants were laid out on a table before me and legal, alcohol would be the last one I'd pick. It really is an unpleasant experience and the vast majority of my regretful interactions with people have come under its influence. Spirits were always my go-to unable as I was to stomach the enormous quantity of non-water liquid needed for inebriation.
My stretches between drinks had been longer and longer and the one hangover I've had since having children was so awful I didn't have any desire to ever have any serious quantity of alcohol regularly. It wasn't a case of me needing to stop drinking because it was a problem it just seemed a natural conclusion to a gradual process.
It's been over 18 months now with little fanfare. So why do I feel the need to talk about it now?
I actually initially just wanted to ask if anyone had tried the non-alcoholic spirits replacements (seedlip etc)? I miss the ritual and complexity of flavours that a decent cocktail can provide and an email for Dry July reminded me that these products existed. They seemed stupid when I first heard about them and still drank but I can see the appeal now. I'd love a cold drink that wasn't cloying and had more sophistication than a squeeze of lime in my soda water.
I was also asked by my GP last week how much I drank. Not if I drank, how much. And to be honest that made me kind of annoyed and sad. I don't believe that I should be anything special or deviant from the norm for not drinking but the reality is that I probably am. And it's not just that it's been a long time since my last drink, it feels important for me to have the clarification that I am a non-drinker.
I can't and won't judge anyone for their choices relating to their own bodies. But I can and will call out the toxic culture that expects and rewards drinking. I can and I will call out an industry simultaneously profiteering off and causing a raft of societal problems while it monetises the moments that make us human.
It's really fun to drink and be with others. It's pretty fun just to be with others too. And there is still the option of snacks. Snacks are the best no matter the occasion.
Awesome! I got sober in 2019 too, and you have articulated beautifully our shared experience. I live life now, not just witness it passing by. Go you.