On staying sober, and a habit I use to simulate the big, wild feelings I sometimes miss about being drunk
One of the hardest things about giving up drink is losing the peaks of big feeling alcohol takes you too, but I've discovered a special way to get there without it
I’ve been sober for four years this August. Taking alcohol out of my life has felt like lifting a kind of barrier that existed between me and the rest of the world. I can only write about my own experiences of sobriety, but what I personally feel is that without alcohol, I’m more deeply connected to the world around me, to the people I love most, to the feelings which drive me, to my creativity which satisfies me, to the constant beauty of life, like the way an arc of sunlight catches the dust swirling in the air as I sit at a kitchen table writing this, to the exact shape of an orange in the bowl in front of me, to the way I respond to the sound of Pete’s voice, as I hear him talking on a phone in the next room, to the slightly irritating but lovely sound of windchimes on the verandah of the rental house where we are staying right now.
So in many, many ways, getting totally sober has been good for me. My emotional and creative life is much richer for it. I am more interested in the world. I understand my feelings much more clearly, since no feeling is muddied or confused by the toxicity and chemical confusion of alcohol. I can identify joy, or depression, or exhaustion, or anxiety, pleasure, lust, whatever, any of these feelings, more clearly when they happen. My relationships with my children are stronger, and that’s gold. I’m fitter and a bit thinner. My skin is a lot better (vanity definitely comes into it.)
And I’ve written about all the good feelings sobriety has brought me here. I love my life without alcohol.
And yet, and yet and yet... its high summer, and joining all those folk now cracking an extremely cold bottle of white wine is an extraordinarily lovely idea in all this endless heat. There are different *moments* in the year when alcohol can feels like an important guest at the party of life, and this moment, high summer, is definitely one of those times. People are drinking together, and I can just sense the bottles of beer chinking at a nearby barbecue (or cookout, since I’m in America), red wine sloshed into enamel mugs on a beach at dusk, Pimms like a sherbert fruit lollipop that smells of mint and strawberries in a long tall glass, vodka, oh yes really strong vodka mixed with elderflower cordial and a tonne of ice or even just, you know, strong vodka neat, and sometimes I feel I’m missing out.
Often, at these special moments in the year, when I feel everyone else is brought together through a shared love of alcohol, sobriety puts me on the outside. Because although being sober is genuinely, really lovely, it can also be lonely. Drinking brings people together, at least in the first drinks, and there’s also the question of, if at all, you can reach those big, bold, wild feelings that come with being drunk and having a bloody good laugh. When everyone else is having a laugh together because alcohol has taken them to that heightened, how can you get the kick of feeling a bit other, a bit high, but also remain sober? Because I can take all the hot baths, and read the best poetry and go for all the power walks and meditate like hell, but reaching that special, heightened place that feeling a bit drunk takes me to is, mostly, pretty elusive.
Until now. Because for a while, I’ve been doing something which is as close as I can get to feeling high, while remaining entirely sober. It involves no artificial stimulants, no herb or mushroom or plant oils, no potions or pills and is totally natural, totally free, and you can do it absolutely anywhere. It’s a trick I use regularly, and no, it has nothing to do with breathing, meditation or sex. Let me share it with you. I’m also going to share a bit more about the way sobriety has profoundly helped me understand and manage my feelings.