I like myself better sober.

But do I like myself enough to keep it up?

Screenshot from my January 2024 on the (free) ‘Try Dry’ app

I’m not a ‘big drinker’ or a ‘problem drinker’. I have no shameful stories nor savage blackouts to report… But I decided to stop drinking for 2024, and mabye even for good.

The thing is, I’ve been experimenting with ‘dry months’ and ‘dry seasons’ for the last few years and I’ve learned something important from those experiments; I like myself better when I’m not drinking.

In @Madeleine Dore’s essay, The thing that helped in my first year of sobriety she quotes the late Irish poet John O’Donohue who said:

“I always think the secret of change is that there are huge gestations and fermentations going on in us that we are not even aware of. And then, sometimes, when we come to a threshold, crossing over, which we need to become different, we’ll be able to be different, because secret work has been done in us, of which we’ve had no inkling.”

It would seem that over these last few years of experimenting in a ‘sober curious’ way (a brilliant term created by the meme-machine that is Ruby Warrington), some ‘secret work’ had been taking place. For example, I’m noticing that right now I want to write about my drinking in the past tense, something I’ve never felt before. And when I look forward to my sixtieth birthday later this year, and imagine celebrating that without alcohol it feels… surprisingly okay.

There’s the health thing too. Post-menopausally, red wine (my drink of choice) just doesn’t seem to agree with me any more; if there’s such a thing as a ‘wine belly’, that would describe it, with my whole midsection swelling up after only a couple of days of drinking wine again; some kind of inflammation, obviously. And if that’s what it was doing to me visibly, what fresh hell might it be causing to the invisible bits? With science showing that so many diseases are, essentially, diseases of inflammation, this can’t be good.

And yes, I know about the long-living wine-tipplers of the Blue Zones, but it’s not just the booze that makes those lifestyles so healthy, it’s many other environmental and societal factors too, so even with my 2% Sardinian blood, something tells me it’s not likely to extend my life… And having done my due diligence (ie: a bit of Googling, I came across a New York Times article from January 2023 that tells it like it is: Even a Little Alcohol Can Harm Your Health as does

Louise O’Neill

here on Substack in her piece this month that led me to the article. My body knew this already, but it was an inconvenient truth my mind didn’t want to know; now they’re in agreement.

It’s not that I’m greedy for longevity, it’s just that as someone ageing without the unconscious backup plan of adult children, I need to stay as healthy as is within my power. Sobering statistics have shown that people ageing without children are 25% more likely to go into a long-term care facility, at a younger age, and a lower level of dependency than those with children.

For example, my brilliant, ninety-something mother-in-law is in great health and we live together. However, without our support in tasks around the house, and interfacing with an increasingly online world, she might struggle to manage independently - and that’s an important part of ‘care’. It isn’t always about intimate care, about feeding and bathing, it’s about having someone around, or at the end of the phone, who can help you get the car reinsured when it’s no longer possible to speak to a human about it, get the heating fixed when the boiler breaks down, sort out transport to and from medical appointments if you aren’t supposed to drive yourself, as well as some of the basic tasks of living like food shopping, cooking and cleaning.

And yes, I’ve heard the push-back that ‘not everyone’s kids are there for them when they’re old’ many times and it’s true; children might predecease their parents, have adult care needs of their own, live in another country, be out of touch due to estrangement or other reasons. But you’d be surprised how despite this most adult children are involved, and across Europe, informal, unpaid care is provided by family members 70-95% of the time. That’s something that’s never going to be an option for me.

So now we come to my intergenerational legacy as the daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter of alcoholics. Although I’ve never qualified as one myself, you just never know… addiction can sneak up on you like that. For me, it’s sugar I find hardest to control, which is perhaps why red wine is (was?) my drink, and I’d always find it harder to say ‘no thank you’ to a glass of Malbec, compared to a vodka and soda. And, having accompanied friends and family in their recovery journies from alcohol over the years, I know that bingeing on sugar is a very common response to early sobriety; alcohol is nothing but fermented sugar, after all…

So now I’ve laid out all the conscious stuff. But what about the unconscious stuff, my relationship with myself… Why do I like myself more when I’m sober?

At a talk once I heard that ‘self-esteem is about keeping promises to yourself,’ and that landed hard. I’m pretty good at keeping promises to others; most people would describe me as reliable. But promises to myself? Not so much.

I think back to those exhausting programs of self-improvement I used to commit myself to in my thirties and forties, all of which seemed to require that you undertake the new behaviour ‘first thing every morning’ - how long are these people’s mornings?! Meditation, self-massage, morning pages, gratitude journals, drinking lemon water, yoga, stretching, running, writing… it would take me all day! And anyway, mornings don’t always work for me. Since oestrogen began its disorderly retreat from my body 20 years ago, it took restful sleep with it. Each morning is an adventure in managing what energy is available to me that day…

But here’s the thing. Not drinking doesn’t require any effort. It’s not about adding yet another thing to my hefty to-do list, it’s about taking something off it.

So, my ‘Dry January’ is done and, during that time I’ve been to one lovely neighbourhood drinks party (where I think I was the only one not drinking out of about eight of us) and one local lunch party with eight brilliant women, and shared the thoughtfully provided non-alcoholic wine with one other guest. Coming up in February is my first holiday without booze and I notice that I’m curious about that, rather than worried it will be hard.

I’ve realised that being a non-drinker makes me like myself more because it means I’m more fully on my own side; I’m no longer letting down the part of me that didn’t want to drink any more, and that’s definitely boosted my self-esteem.

Being sober makes me optimistic that I’m capable of being a proper grown-up when it comes to taking responsibility for future me, that healthy, independent and twinkly old woman I aspire to be.

I like myself better sober because the tail is no longer wagging the dog.

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