The thing I was most worried about was who I’d be without alcohol. It’s been so much of my identity for my whole life, would I be a different person, a boring one? Would I be miserable without it?
I started drinking regularly at age 15. That’s the time my peers started hanging around the graveyard drinking White Lightening. I wasn’t allowed to wander the streets and my parents wanted me to have a healthy relationship with alcohol (not seeing it as contraband) so they let me drink at home.
It was 1998 and alcopops had launched a couple of years earlier so they were the go-to. I quickly moved on to Archers and lemonade. It was sweet and sticky and easy to drink. My Dad would buy me a 70cl bottle of a Friday night with his beers and I’d drink it over the weekend.
I then started going to the local Football Club on a Friday night (they had a disco) and the Working Men’s Club on a Saturday and actually getting served. We were all underage and looked it but no one cared. That was village life I guess.
At university, my nickname was ‘the alcohol pimp’. All I wanted to do was drink, and my friends could rely on me to always be up for a bevvy.
When my mum died, (and a bunch of other traumatic shit happened) I was 26 and living alone. Vodka had become my drink of choice and it carried me through. I drank a lot, my dad and I spent most weekends in pubs, pushing away our grief.
I’ve had a lot of great times drinking alcohol. It’s a social lubricant. It seemed to erase my anxiety (the anxiety I didn’t even realise I had). It made me brave, it lowered my inhibitions. I’ve had wild times, I’ve had meaningful times. Arguably I wouldn’t have been as close to my dad without it – we could speak freely with its help.
It’s not all been good. I’ve lost friendships because of my behaviour when I’ve been drinking. I’ve been angry and aggressive. I’ve had outbursts and been rude and vindictive. It made me jealous and paranoid. I’ve made bad decisions. Every bad interaction I’ve ever had (and there have been many) has been facilitated by a fuck load of booze. I’m not blaming the booze entirely. I own what I did. I made the decision to drink, I didn’t deal with my emotions and fucked up a lot.
Over the years I got slightly better and not had as many outbursts. So why bother stopping? Surely the mistakes of my 20s and early 30s are behind me? It’s time to move into the mature drinking era; it’ll be all merlots and 12-year-old whiskeys.
The thing is, it’s not fun anymore. The hangovers last days, the anxiety is sky high and I’ve started losing memory of sections of time when I drink. I also realised that it was masking how I really felt about people, situations and my own feelings.
So I stopped. 3 months in and I actually feel better. My anxiety has reduced, my emotions are stable and I feel clear. I still go out, I still dance and get a bit silly, I just don’t wake up with a hangover. It’s weird, it turns out I’m more me without alcohol. Who’d have thunk it?
I’ve got loads more I could say on the subject but for this post, I’ll leave it at that. I’ll report back on my experiences as I continue alcohol-free. It’s not to say I’ll never drink again – that’s far too much of a commitment, but for now, I’m carrying on without the poison.
