MEET CATHERINE GRAY
Why do you think going sober/ drinking less has recently increased in popularity?
I think it was something largely driven by social media. When I quit drinking in 2013, the notion of being ‘out and proud’ about sobriety on socials was unheard of. All the ex-drinkers I knew hid away in private groups (either physically or virtually) and talked in hushed whispers. They hid their recovery from workmates, friends, even family in some cases. I even used a pseudonym while chatting in a private Facebook group made up entirely of such ex-drinkers! There was still an enormous amount of shame and stigma around it. At that point, quitting drinking was only a path for extremely addicted drinkers; it wasn’t remotely a positive lifestyle choice.
2017 was THE pivotal year. Not only was The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober published, many other sober books were too (The Sober Diaries by Clare Pooley, for instance). It was the year when handles such as ‘soberandhappy1979’ (entirely made up handle;-) became the norm on Instagram et al. This was like subliminal marketing in that it crept into the micro-, and then the macro- consciousness. Individuals looked at posts saying ‘I’m 3 months sober and I’ve never been happier!’ then considered whetherthey might be happier without alcohol too. More people gave up, or took on extended alcohol sabbaticals such as Sober Spring or One Year No Beer. More happily teetotal people edged out of the shadows. Communities like Club Soda were born. And thus the press around sobriety started to reflect this tectonic shift. Ergo, even more people quit. And repeat.
By 2019, ‘sober-curious’ and ‘mindful drinking’ were buzz terms everyone had heard of. People stopped saying ‘Oh no, what happened?! Poor you‘ when I told them I didn’t drink. They said ‘Good for you!’ instead. It inched in, bit by bit, and was driven by every brave human who stepped out of those shadows and into the sunshine. And so, with each generation, we now see the rates of drinking dwindle. Baby Boomers have been nicknamed the booziest generation, with my generation (X) snapping closely at their heels. Meanwhile, 29 per cent of Millennials don’t drink at all; and Generation Z drink less again (20 per cent less than Millennials). Drinking is ebbing away, just as smoking did.
How has going sober improved your life?
Too many ways to possibly write here, but I’ll give it a stab nonetheless. In the first few months, the unexpected bonuses came thick and fast. My cystic acne, something I’d battled for over a decade, receded. The 4am ceiling stare became a thing of the past, as I started luxuriously sleeping through the night. I had ‘spare money’; a foreign concept before. With which I could do something called ‘save’ (anathema to the pre-quitting me). I became a responsible human being who people felt able to leave their children and animals in the care of. I no longer chucked sickies and alienated work colleagues.
Mid- and long-term, the anxiety that had spiked in early sobriety (as it is wont to do, when you quit an anxiety anaesthetic you’ve been using for two decades) started to quieten. Nowadays, very little makes me panic, simply because I have learnt real confidence, rather than confidence co-created by alcohol. I was able to buy a flat aged 40, which I believe I never would have done as a drinker, given I was so intent on literally setting light to my money and throwing it down my neck (flamin’ sambuca, anyone?!) My relationships with friends and family, while not perfect by any stretch, are now better than they’ve ever been. And best of all, I no longer feel like I have to lie about anything, because my behaviour matches my morals. I no longer kiss people who are not my partner, or wake up on a random sofa at 9am on a work day, or siphon off a flatmate’s vodka sneakily. My conscience is luxuriously clean.
How do you manage social situations when there is pressure to drink alcohol?
This hasn’t happened to me for years now, because all of my friends and family (and some of wider society!) are aware of my non-drinking. However, I acutely remember what those first few years were like. The moment when you have to refuse a champagne flute during a toast, and feel like a great big galah for toasting with a clumsy tumbler of water instead. Or walking into a pub with people who don’t know and having to undergo the ‘just a juice for me. No, honestly!’ bum-clencher conversation. My best advice for the newly hatched sober is to tell people you don’t drink / are not drinking tonight before the event itself, to lessen the likelihood of the booze-pushing in the moment. Exercise beforehand to flush adrenaline and cortisol from your system (and give you an endorphin glow). Prep some one-liners that are as close to the truth as possible for any pressure that might occur. And if all becomes too much, simply do an ‘Irish trapdoor’ (also known as a ‘French exit’) and just – leave. You can always explain afterward that you felt enormous pressure to drink and so you needed to skedaddle.
What advice would you give to someone who is trying to go teetotal?
The number one advice I would give is to immerse yourself in the teetotalin’ world. Listen to every podcast you can, read every book, follow sober influencers, join Facebook groups, find alcohol-free role models in the shape of great thinkers, artists, writers and actors who are ‘out’ (there are lists of these in both The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober and Sunshine Warm Sober). A good rule of thumb, and advice given to me very early on, is to spend as much time thinking / talking / reading about sobriety, as you did drinking. As time rolls on, the ‘immersion’ time you’ll need will become less and less. But in the beginning, I treated learning about being alcohol-free much as I did studying for a degree.
Is it better to go cold turkey or slowly reduce volume?
If you find yourself at this dilemma junction, you’ve probably already spent many years trying and failing to ‘reduce volume’. Drinkers who don’t struggle to ‘moderate’ (ie. those who drink one or two and then stop) don’t really contemplate quitting booze. Why? The negatives of their drinking have probably not outweighed the positives yet. It’s hard to experience many negative offshoots from a few glasses of wine over the course of a week. So by the time people arrive at the notion of potentially quitting altogether, or ‘harm reduction’, they’ve most likely already established that they are not a moderate drinker anyhow. Few people are, as it happens. They’re rare. I can count the ‘moderate drinkers’ I know on one hand. So by all means, try a moderation experiment, many do before alighting on quitting altogether. It’s often the final ‘convincer’. The irony is; none is far easier than one. Cold turkey sounds petrifying, but it’s easier overall.
Have you found an alternative to the habit of drinking?
Drinking hoovered up my time, energy and money like an anteater on ants. Now, I spend these precious finite resources on things such as yoga, living in different countries, writing books, (very) amateur photography, parenting a puppy, running, art galleries, paddleboarding, reading about psychology, cycling on the seafront in Brighton. When people ask me, ‘What have you replaced drinking with?’ I find myself confounded. There’s no singular answer. Because the answer is – everything that is pleasurable about my life. I’ve replaced a kind of half-life, where I limped along constantly hungover or jonesing for a drink, with a full-life.
How has the process of writing about your sober journey been and have you found it helpful to be open about your personal experience?
Writing both The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober and now Sunshine Warm Sober, has been a twofold process. On one hand, it’s been akin to removing the pin from an old military grenade and chucking it on the ground to see if it’ll go kaboom. And on the other hand, it’s been like alchemy; transforming something base and worthless into spun gold. ‘Take your broken heart, make it into art’ Carrie Fisher once said. I followed that advice. And it has been the most healing, unsettling, comforting, scary, exquisite, disarming process I’ve ever undergone. Here’s the thing about being vulnerable; we think people will like us less, but it often makes them like us more. Just as ‘stone cold sober’ often ends up feeling ‘sunshine warm’ instead, the reality is often the polar opposite to that which we expect.
THIS IS A Q&A WITH CATHERINE GRAY, THE AUTHOR OF SUNSHINE WARM SOBER
