I wallowed in booze for four decades. Here's what five sober years have taught me

The Guardian

a day ago

Everyone needs a hobby, and for 40 years mine was booze. I was 17 when I drank enough to throw up for the first time, and 57 when I stopped. In between I spent most nights, and thousands of lunchtimes and afternoons, with at least a gentle buzz on. One cheeky pint would turn into three, four, a binge. I blacked out. I had fumbling, regrettable sex. I vomited out of cars and on to lawns. I drank wine at 50p a bottle and £15 a glass – and a sea of lager, lager, lager. There was vodka flavoured with everything, from raspberries to rhubarb and bacon, plus gin and armagnac and amaretto and tequila and eggnog and crème de menthe and Baileys and sherry and blue curaçao and bourbon and cider and Kahlúa.
Some evenings I would laugh and laugh and laugh; other times drinking felt more like a grim duty.
I talked bollocks, I slurred my words, I lost the ability to speak, I had drunken arguments. I stole a huge block of cheese, a library book, a punt, a traffic cone. (I was arrested for the last one, and when I was being cautioned the officer said I seemed like a bright lad, and had I considered a career in the police?) I slept terribly, waking to a splitting head and a sweaty fear of what I might have got up to.
All this again and again and again and again. Account for inflation, and I spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on drinks I didn't particularly enjoy, meals I didn't need, clubs, taxis, all the crap you'd never buy if you were in your right mind. That's the price of a house down the drain.
Most of this happened in London, when I worked in an office and there was always someone to drink with, but in my 40s I lived on my own in deepest rural France, and that wasn't much better. Drop in on a neighbour, even at 10am, and you'd be offered a tumbler of wine. My little house in the woods had a cellar, and booze flowed in and out of it like the tide: beaujolais, bordeaux, bourgogne, côtes du Rhône, corbières, corbières-boutenac; Grimbergen, Blanche de Bruxelles, Leffe Blonde, Leffe Brune, Leffe Triple …
I arrived in 2003, and sat out that year's heatwave in a deckchair, drinking Pelforth in the shade of my favourite spruce, and using the bilberries that grew all around to flavour supermarket spirits. Every now and again, I would send photos of dewy glasses to friends back in Britain: look at me, I'm living the life, this stuff is practically free!
My home was in the mountains, on the side that caught the storms. On summer nights lightning would hit the power lines, plunging the house into darkness. One August, as thunder shook the forest, I sat under the tallest tree, thrilling to the flashes, knocking back the vodka and oblivious to the fact that the next bolt might be aimed at me. Most evenings, though, I would open a bottle of rasteau and sit on the terrace to enjoy the sunset. One night, polishing off a last few glasses by starlight, I spotted a man with a rifle lurking near the house – and decided it would be a good idea to chase him through the woods, while shouting that I had a gun of my own, which I didn't. Most shamefully of all, I'd been drinking with my grownup daughter, and I dragged her along with me.
I didn't wrong anyone so badly that I can't look myself in the face, but there are a lot of people I ought to say sorry to.
It wasn't all bad. I had some lovely drunken meals, drunken chats and drunken romances. I'm shy, and booze helped me unbend, make friends and meet women. Without it, I might never have got more than a hug from the woman who is now my wife. All the same, the more I drank, the more I tired of the crap that went with it – not just the misbehaving and the hangxiety but the knowledge that none of this was good for my health.
Ask Dr Jeevan Fernando, an associate at the charity Alcohol Change UK, how booze can damage your body and he'll mention liver disease, of course, and sleep problems, and osteoporosis and drunken falls. 'But one that I worry about most is the risk of dementia and cognitive decline,' he says. 'Heavy alcohol use is very strongly related to the decline and atrophy of your brain. There is a normal shrinkage that occurs with age, but alcohol can increase that – and the risk of dementia later in life. Then there's mental health. There is very, very strong evidence of a link to increased anxiety and rates of depression.'
There's more. 'Also, chronic alcohol use is related to cardiovascular issues. You have a much higher rate of heart attacks, strokes; your blood pressure is worse. Alcohol is also a known carcinogen – heavily related to breast cancer, liver cancer, bowel cancer …'
By my mid-50s, I had seen one close friend drink herself to death. Had I already pushed my own luck too far?
I would occasionally attempt to cut down, to have just a few drinks rather than a session, but never got very far. One mouthful was enough to get me in the zone and wash away my resolve. 'This is nice,' my mind would say. 'More will be even nicer.'
As for stopping completely, that wasn't on my radar. Booze was how I switched off after a stressful day, how I put a smile on my face. How would I relax without it? How would I fill the evenings? I could hardly become Teetotal Phil if I couldn't even visualise Teetotal Phil.
But then, five years ago, on 2 August 2020, I just packed it in. This may not mean much unless you're a hardened drinker, but I have got through Christmas parties sober, and office leaving dos. I have survived two wedding receptions on nothing more than alcohol-free wine and beer. Oh, and cocaine, but I never set out to give that up.
Joke! I have barely touched drugs in my life, apart from the liquid, legal, socially acceptable one. I'm not about to start now.
I'm not going to lie: I don't socialise as readily as I used to. Right now, as I write this, I could be at a summer drinks party with my workmates. But I know that as the evening wears on we'd drift apart, like radios that can't hold a frequency. I'd bring everyone down, the dry ghost at the feast. This is a me-problem, as other non-drinkers seem to cope. Practice would help – but, although I have never thought of myself as tight, the new me struggles with the idea of paying 30 or 40 quid for a round when I'd be knocking back Diet Coke.
How have I filled the hours when I would have been drinking? I watch more TV than I used to, and fuss over our two dogs, who soak up attention like hairy sponges. And I exercise – running, yoga, Hiit, calisthenics. A class here, a workshop there. I've set up some gymnastics rings in the garden. I'm studying to be a personal trainer. I'd like to learn to juggle. I meet more people than I ever did, and I can actually remember their names afterwards. I'm happier and more stable than I used to be, and now that I have learned there are other ways to handle stress, I don't worry that some disaster will send me back to the bottle.
I was struck – and inspired – by something that the personal trainer Tara LaFerrara posted on Threads last month, after the sudden death of her mother. The two had a 'tough' relationship, which left a lot to untangle. 'I could have easily drunk alcohol during this time of grief, family drama and loss,' LaFerrara wrote, 'but I have not. Not one sip of alcohol in almost 1,000 days. Proud of that.'
She gave up on her first wedding anniversary, almost three years ago. 'I just realised it wasn't serving me any more,' she tells me. 'I didn't like the taste or how it made me feel during or after. Now I sleep better, have more energy, more clarity, better relationships with my friends and my partner.'
How did she take her mind off her mum? 'Getting outside in nature, walks, meditation, and working out has helped more than anything else.' And drinking? 'I wasn't tempted. Sitting in this pain and really feeling your raw emotions is wild.'
The wild thing about my own journey, at least to me, is not that I gave up, but how easy it was. I had – still have – the occasional wistful longing for a cold beer on a hot day, or a glass of red when I'm cooking, but that's it. I didn't need hypnosis, medication or a support group, although I am not against any of those things. I didn't feel ashamed about taking antidepressants when I needed them, or getting therapy for insomnia and anxiety. I am aware of how very lucky I have been. Cold turkey will not be right for everyone. 'If you are a very heavy drinker,' Dr Fernando warns, 'abruptly stopping may cause withdrawal symptoms, so you should speak to your GP.' All that said, and without wishing to trivialise anyone dealing with addiction, not everyone will find abstinence an uphill struggle.
What helped me? Clearly – and miraculously – my dependency on alcohol was far more psychological than physical. Despite the amount I had been drinking, stopping didn't give me headaches, or jitters, or overpowering cravings. And I was lucky enough to have a good marriage, to a woman who had also drunk her fill. Hannah was the one who first decided to take a break from booze, and I just tagged along, partly to support her. She wasn't a world-class boozehound like me, but she did enjoy a drink. 'Ever since I was little,' she says, 'it has been the ultimate treat, the ultimate reward, the ultimate celebration, the ultimate commiseration.'
On the downside: 'As I got older,' she says, 'my hangovers were fucking biblical.' The day after my 57th birthday, 'absolutely annihilated', she announced she was taking three months off the booze. Ten days later, when I got back from a long-planned holiday, I followed suit.
When the three months were up, we both decided to carry on. 'After a while,' as Hannah puts it, 'the idea of going back becomes absurd. And you think, 'Well, I could maybe drink on special occasions' – but I don't know what occasion could possibly be special enough.' There have been no dramas, no relapses, none of that tension you'd get between a spouse who gets sloshed every night and one whose body is a temple. We're closer now than we were five years ago. The only fly in the ointment is that 10-day head start. Unless she falls off the wagon, she'll always be slightly more awesome than me. I'm trying to get over it.
A survey of British drinkers last year found 48% wanted to cut down or stop entirely. It's a similar story in the US and Australia. Do I have any advice for them? Nothing that would qualify me to open a detox clinic. But I will say that even if you think you can't give up, there may come a point when you find yourself pushing at an open door. And, however much you wish you had done it before, you may not have left it too late. I've had a lot of tests in the year or so since I started writing about health, and as far as I can tell my liver, brain, heart etc are all in good shape. My teeth are yellower than I'd like, which I blame on the wine, and there are broken veins in my nose and cheeks, but that's all the obvious damage.
Despite those 40 stupid years, I'm hopeful I dodged a bullet. Maybe I was staggering so much it didn't hit me.