Jill Stark - Higher Sobriety: my years without booze

Higher Sobriety

Jill Stark is an award-winning journalist, author, and mental health advocate, with a career spanning more than two decades in both the UK and Australia. She spent ten years on staff at The Age covering health and social affairs as a senior writer and columnist. She now works as a freelance journalist, speechwriter, media consultant, content creator, and public speaker. Her first book, High Sobriety , was longlisted for the Walkley Book Award and shortlisted for the Kibble Literary Awards. Her other books, Happy Never After and When Youre Not OK , are mental health memoirs offering hope and connection to anyone doing it tough.

Scribe Publications
18-20 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia
2 John St, Clerkenwell, London, WC1N 2ES, United Kingdom
3754 Pleasant Ave, Suite 100, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55409, USA

Original edition published by Scribe as High Sobriety 2013
This edition published 2023

Copyright Jill Stark 2013, 2023

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

Scribe acknowledges Australias First Nations peoples as the traditional owners and custodians of this country. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded, and we pay our respects to their elders, past and present.

978 1 922310 37 8 (Australian edition)
978 1 957363 39 4 (US edition)
978 1 922586 89 6 (ebook)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.

scribepublications.com.au
scribepublications.co.uk
scribepublications.com

For Jude, who taught me lifes too short to be wasted

THIS BOOK WAS written on the stolen land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, and I pay my deep respects to their Elders, past and present. Aboriginal people are the oldest continuous culture on Earth, and we owe a great debt to their enduring emotional and physical labour in caring for this beautiful country.

I also want to note that this book documents a period in my life when I became an Australian citizen on 26 January 2012 a date that I knew then as a national celebration called Australia Day. I have since come to understand that 26 January is a day of profound mourning for Indigenous people, marking the beginning of colonisation, invasion, and genocide. If I could have my time again, I would have chosen a different day to become a citizen, but I have decided to leave this section in the updated edition because its important we learn from our past. I acknowledge First Nations people as the first Australians, and recognise that sovereignty has never been ceded.

Contents

Authors note

THE QUESTION IVE been asked the most since this book was first released in 2013 is What happened next? The new chapters at the end of this edition attempt to answer that question. So much has changed in a decade for me and my drinking habits, and for the culture that gave rise to them. While the role of alcohol in our lives was once a topic we might feel apprehensive raising for fear of being branded a killjoy or a wowser, were now having open and honest conversations about the way we drink. Many people are embracing a different way.

Were witnessing a tectonic shift in drinking patterns, not just in Australia but all over the world. The sober-curious movement is on the march and the non-alcoholic drinks sector is booming, helping to normalise alcohol-free living and making moderation and abstinence more socially acceptable choices. Its an exciting time to be sober.

If youve picked up this book looking to make a change in your life, I hope that it offers some signposts to a road that was once less travelled but is fast becoming a popular path. Cheers to that.

Prologue

THE ROAR IN my skull sounds like waves battering a shore. My head, planted facedown in a sticky pillow, feels as heavy as a waterlogged sandbag. My body is a dance floor for pain. Welcome to 2011, Starkers: a new year, a new start; same old stinking hangover.

Last night was huge. Dawn had broken by the time I staggered home. I remember cursing the light and the chirpy birds. It was, like so many before it, a night that had got away from me. It had been a ridiculously hot Melbourne New Years Eve: dry and oppressive, with a blasting northerly wind. I felt as if I was trapped inside a fan-forced oven. As I sipped my first drink a stubby of beer with friends in their backyard paddling pool, the mercury crept past 40 degrees. It was 6.00 p.m.

As the night wore on, there was champagne with strawberries, more beer, more champagne, and then even more beer. There were sparklers, dancing, and high-pitched phone calls to Scotland, where it was still the last day of the decade before. I vaguely remember a fiercely contested drawing competition with crayons, and, for reasons I cant fathom, sitting atop a stepladder with a miners lamp strapped to my head.

Later, at another friends house, we had White Russians in tumblers, and tequila served in martini glasses. There was raucous laughter, and a Halloween mask, and Lemonheads songs played on a tiny pink guitar. I remember one of my friends vomiting in the kitchen sink, and the group blithely singing over it as if this was neither noteworthy nor unusual. I remember thinking, whens this going to stop? Then having another beer for the road.

I roll over onto my side, releasing a deathbed groan. The alarm clock comes into view, its illuminated digits stabbing my eyes. Its 2.00 p.m. Another groan; this one seems to come from my bones. My guts churn as a tribe of African drummers pounds out a rhythm in my brain, and I pay a grudging respect to a hangover that, having been almost a month in the making, has arrived with some fanfare.

Being conscious hurts. I gag as I think of all the booze I put away in December one long party interspersed with stolen moments of sleep and tortured days at work.

But covering alcohol is my job. Im the binge-drinking health reporter. During the week, I write about Australias booze-soaked culture. At the weekends, I write myself off. For five years Ive documented the nations escalating toll of alcohol abuse as a health reporter for The Age and The Sunday Age , so I know, more than most, the consequences of risky drinking. Ive even won awards for my Alcohol Timebomb series, which highlighted the perilous state of our nations drinking habits. But it hasnt deterred me. Im always first on the dance floor and last to leave the party. At the 2010 staff Christmas bash, I won the inaugural Jill Stark Drinking Award. Bestowed upon me for recording the least amount of time between partying and turning up to work, I celebrated the honour with a beer. When colleagues remarked on the irony of my role as health reporter, I told them it was gonzo journalism just immersing myself in the story. Then I danced into the next morning, breaking my own record by stumbling in to work after four hours sleep, my title safe for another year.

I stuck the beer-stained certificate on my fridge, ostensibly to show off to friends, but really to serve as a reminder that this was, or should have been, a line in the sand. Yet the festive season leaves little time for self-reflection. Theres always another party. I powered on, and on, and on, until the hangover of all hangovers brought me here.

An ungodly noise reverberates around the room. Its impossibly loud. I wrestle with the doona, unearthing my mobile from a pile of clothes. Its my friend and colleague Nat. I cant talk to her. The inside of my head is a graveyard for brain cells. Those that survived last night are clinging to life, resting on the backs of their fallen comrades, too weak to help me form words. I turn the phone to silent, waiting for the message-bank alert to vibrate.