Warrington - Sober curious: the blissful sleep, greater focus, limitless presence, and deep connection awaiting us all on the other side of alcohol

When I first got Sober Curious, one persistent question kept blinking into view, like a lighthouse on a stormy night:

Would life be better without alcohol?

This inquiry began as a conversation with my body before the words fully crystallized in my mind. On Sundays when my head hurt from the drinking. And not just my head, but the contents of my head. When my gut roiled, my tongue was furry with forgotten words, and even my hair felt hungover, greasy and crispy dry at the same time. Smelling of cigarettes and sour breath. Sometimes, on days like these, it felt like there was a hollow where my heart was supposed to be.

Another similar question had also been stalking me, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays, spent mainly, when I wasnt buckling under the stress of what had been my dream job, counting the hours until the weekend:

Is this really all there is?

Back then, I thought of myself as a moderate to heavy social drinker. Meaning I drank no more than most of the people I did my drinking with, and never (except on vacation) more than two nights in a row. But still far surpassing standard government guidelines as to what was healthy. Seven units a week? Im pretty sure I burned through those with a couple of cheeky midweek pints of Stella.

Its impossible to pinpoint the precise moment these questions first began to demand answers. My memory is also fuzzy (funny that) about the circumstances leading to it. Was it something dramatic, like the time I fell, drunk, my friend and I each squished into a leg of an adult onesie, and bashed a bloody hole in my head? When instead of asking to be taken to the ER, I insisted that the best medicine would be a chunky slug of single malt whiskey? Or was it more mundane? One murky Monday morning too many hauling my woes to work like a sack of mildewed green potatoes. Since most of my Mondays used to feel that way, its very hard to say.

But whenever it was, these first questions soon led to other questions. As if theyd all been hanging around, like reporters outside a court of law, waiting for the first to get my attention so they could have their turn.

Would I be happier without booze? More productive? Would I feel more confident? What would it be like to never have to face another deadline half hungover? Would I be thinner if I didnt drink? Look younger? Would I have less sex? More sex? Would the sex be better? Would I have anything to talk about at parties? Where would the glamour go? Would people think I was boring? Exactly how boring would I/life become?

Since youve picked up this book, I suspect these lines of inquiry may be familiar to you, too. No? Then how about these:

Why is alcohol so... everywhere? How come I feel like an outsider, a weirdo, sometimes a problem, if I say I dont drink? Why do I sometimes lie about why Im not drinking? Where do I go to socialize without booze? How do I kick it with people who do drink if Im not?

If you drink like I used to, maybe youve even been confronted with the big one: Does the fact Im asking all these questions make me... an alcoholic?

Maybe.

I need to state up front that I am not a doctor, a brain scientist, or an addiction expert, and so its really not for me to diagnose your personal drinking habits. But whichever sorry Sunday or miserable Monday the questioning first began for me, it soon lit the touch-paper on a radical reevaluation of my relationship to boozean experiment that has expanded up and out to touch every part of my life, and which has meant Ive spent most of the past decade seeking answers to these questions, and more.

Doing so has completely changed the way I drink and the way I think about drinking. Has shifted my entire perspective on the ways in which we drink, and the role alcohol plays in our relationships, our creativity, our happiness, and our society. As a result, Ive also created a life for myself that is so exhilarating and rewarding, sometimes it feels like coming close to what they call having it all.

I have termed this questioning as getting Sober Curious. Maybe, for you, the questions are more focused on the possibilities of a life less sozzled. Ways to live your most vital life. What it might take to reverse the rules that somehow made drinking the socially acceptable thing to do. But in my book, if you have found yourself asking any or all of the above, then you are Sober Curious, too.

* * *

Since Im not a doctor, a brain scientist, or an addiction expert, what exactly qualifies me to be writing a book like this? With twenty years working in journalism under my belt, I could tell you that its my research skills and my nose for a lead. My well-honed ability to marry A with B to reach conclusion C.

But it begins with my telling you a little more about me.

I learned to drink at a late age, since I was a teetotaler all through college. But I got my first taste of alcohol at around age eight. Anyone? Its really not so shocking, if your parents, like mine, were of the mind that a childs curiosity sometimes deserves a grown-up response.

I have a vivid memory of swimming across my aunties carpet, having sampled my first few sips of sherry. Then there was the picnic when, perhaps around age nine, I discovered the curious effects of grapefruit soda mixed with wine. I can still feel the giggles contained in the bubbles of this bouncy new drink tickling my throat.

My first hangover hit at age fifteen, the morning after a messy, hysterical hard cider binge to celebrate the end of a high school drama productionthe bulbous, green 2-liter balloons of White Lightning supplied by our twenty-three-year-old professor (the one who also liked to tell his students how he got his inspiration drinking liquid opium). I vomited in the bathroom of my friend Bethias mom the next day before traipsing, head thrumming, back to school, feeling edgy and exotic, like Id stumbled into the plot of a Hollywood coming-of-age movie. My role? The quiet-yet-complicated one.

Which is where my fledging initiation into the grown-up delights of drinking falters. There was a new high in the hood for starters. The Ecstasy-fueled 1990s rave scene was already in full swinghalf a crumbling DIY tablet washed down with a handful of water in the ladies loos at the Camden Palace slaying inhibitions with a side of universal cosmic love. And the way it made the music feel. Oh. My. Goddess. Even better, there was no hangover. Only the yawning heartache of a lost love. Alcohol seemed so basic by comparison.

And then along came my first boyfriend, whom I shall call the Capricorn. A man six years my senior, to whom booze represented the root of all evil, having had his jaw broken in a drunken brawl. But who also smoked industrial-strength skunk weed from dawn to dusk. Forget wake-and-bake. This dude woke and then dedicated his entire day, every day, to getting as stoned as humanly possible. Alcohol would only... confuse matters.

Not to mention, it would perhaps incite the rebel in me. For the six years that we lived together, including the aforementioned college years, I was barred from imbibing. The Capricorns was the kind of love that demanded total dedication, and my having any kind of a life outside the fortress of his devotionespecially the kind of life that might involve cocktailswas punishable by extreme emotional blackmail.

Cannabis, on the other hand, kept me quiet and meek, locked in my own private padded cell. Where soon I also chose to subsist on prison rations. An apple here, a handful of crackers there. Endless mugs of milky coffee. Shrinking my body to 30 pounds underweight created the illusion that I was still the one in control.