When I decided to stop drinking in 2017, it was considered a very odd thing to do.
Odd enough that it required extensive interrogation when you refused a glass of wine at a party. Odd enough that invitations for said parties dried up quicker than the time it took me to say ‘make mine a lime and soda’. Odd enough that I considered going out in a T-shirt that said, ‘No I’m not pregnant, just an alcoholic’, so that I wouldn’t have to explain myself every time I waved away a waiter bearing a tray of champagne flutes.
When people did make the effort to cater to my strange lifestyle choice, they inevitably offered me a lukewarm glass of elderflower cordial, as if I was a wood sprite, and not a problem drinker with a pickled liver.
In 2024, things are thankfully very different, in part because it’s now accepted that you don’t have to be an alcoholic to embrace a sober lifestyle. There are all sorts of options available to people who – for whatever reason – have tired of drinking.
Take Nozeco, a brand of zero-alcohol prosecco (whose name makes me want to heave almost as much as the thought of the benders I used to subject my body to) which is popular amongst my friends who aren’t addicted to alcohol, but no longer want to parent with a hangover.
They’re also partial to a booze-free G&T – a concept that would have been unthinkable to mums a decade ago, who got through the day thinking only of ‘gin o’clock’. Thanks to the rise in ‘botanical’ spirits, these alternatives are all the rage (even Aldi and Lidl do their own versions).
NHS statistics show that more and more young people are choosing not to drink; in 2022, 19 per cent of adults in the UK said they did not drink, compared with 16 per cent in 2011. Then there’s Sober October, launched in 2014 by Macmillan Cancer Support as a fundraising challenge and now, in its tenth year, as ubiquitous as Dry January.
Today, of course, is the first of November, and I want to appeal to anyone who’s woken up, fresh-faced and energised from doing their own Sober October. You may be thinking about the delicious bottle of wine you’re going to have with your dinner, or the cocktail you’re going to savour every sip of when you meet up with friends this evening.
But what if you … didn’t? What if you carried on, and decided to do a No-Booze November and a Clear-Headed Christmas? What if you joined the alcohol-free masses and just stayed off the grog all year round?
I don’t know a single person whose life has been made worse by going teetotal. Friends who fear they are drinking too much report feeling better both mentally and physically, whilst ‘moderate’ drinkers who imbibe alcohol only occasionally will tell me that their sleep is radically improved by forgoing their evening glass of wine.
This is all backed up by heaps of research. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classed alcohol as a Group 1 carcinogen many decades ago, grouping it alongside substances such as asbestos and radiation, whilst the World Health Organisation last year declared that there was ‘no safe’ level of booze consumption. In short: if alcohol was invented now, it wouldn’t be allowed.
And yet, still we turn to this legal drug like an old familiar friend (the back-stabbing kind). And when I find myself fantasising about an ice-cold glass of rose after a hard day, I remind myself of this even icier truth: alcohol is a depressant that masquerades remarkably well as a relaxant, and any problem I try to banish with booze will only come back the next morning, bigger and badder and far less biddable.
With more than seven alcohol-free years under my belt, I’m often asked for tips on trying to quit booze. My biggest piece of advice is to keep everything to a day. It’s vaguely terrifying to announce that you’re giving up alcohol forever, and it puts way too much pressure on yourself. Concentrate on the 24 hours in front of you, and worry about the 24 after that when you get there.
Be aware of the sugar cravings, which were one of the most surprising parts of my sobriety journey (that and the realisation that I wasn’t a gregarious party girl, just socially inept and shy).
I’d always thought of myself as a savoury kind of person, but it turned out I’d just been getting all my sugar from wine – and when I stopped drinking pints of that, I started craving pints of Ben & Jerry’s instead.
I hear this all the time from people who go teetotal. They become horribly ashamed of the sugar they can’t stop eating, without focusing on the benefits they are bringing to their bodies by removing alcohol from it. They then try to quit sugar too, and put themselves on diets, which only makes it harder to stay off the booze. This is why so many people end up stuck in cycles of either restricting or bingeing on alcohol. You don’t have to give up everything at once, and you’ll find it easier to remove unhealthy things from your life if you focus on one vice at a time.
Focus on what you’re adding to your life, as opposed to what is being taken away. The Chancellor may have cut the price of a pint of beer, but drinkers still face high alcohol prices. There are apps that not only tot up your teetotal days, but also how much money you’ve saved; when I started my sobriety journey, I downloaded one of these to my phone and treated myself to a massage at the end of each month with the cash I hadn’t spent.
But most of all, remember that quitting booze brings a richness to your life that can be seen in much more than just your bank balance. And, as the sober months turn into years, you’ll begin to witness the immeasurable value of a life that isn’t soaked in booze.
Joy of an only child
Bryony with her daughter Edie – her only child whom she says is ‘perfection’
A lot of people are upset about the drop in the birth rate, with it falling to a new low of 1.44 children per woman. As the mother of only 1.0 child, I have to defend those of us who refuse to bow to the pressure of having more kids.
As lovely as a big brood might seem to some, it shouldn’t be inconceivable that there are women who treasure the idea of an only child. When anyone makes the mistake of rudely asking if I am disappointed I didn’t have more after my daughter Edie, I tell them the truth: that we didn’t want to try to improve on perfection!
Three cheers for Saoirse Ronan, who said what every woman was thinking, as Paul Mescal and Eddie Redmayne joked about the idea of using a phone to defend themselves in the event of an attack.
‘That’s what girls have to think about all the time,’ remarked the actress, 30, on The Graham Norton Show a week ago – to a huge round of applause.
She’s right. How sad that even the most progressive of men are so out of touch with the reality of women’s lives, especially as the clocks go back and our thoughts turn to the dangers of walking home alone in the dark.
These things shouldn’t need explaining in 2024 (nor should we still be worrying about them), but kudos to Ronan for doing so.
Emma’s right, the bus beats a Porsche!
I think Emma Raducanu is just being sensible in her transport choices, says Bryony
Photos of Emma Raducanu getting on the bus have caused consternation amongst fans who are more used to seeing the 21-year-old driving around town in a £125,000 Porsche. But apparently Raducanu’s deal with the flashy car company has now ended, and so she’s been ‘forced’ on to public transport.
I think the young star is just being sensible. In London, you’re far safer from traffic wardens and Sadiq Khan’s much-hated Ulez scheme on a double decker than you are in a top-of-the-range sports car.
Ever feel like life is a bit…too much? Bestselling author and journalist Bryony Gordon is here to ditch the shame and dive headfirst into life’s messier bits. Search for The Life of Bryony wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes released every Monday and Friday.