Sean O’Rourke noted this morning that some listeners might be trying out 'Dry January', a month without alcohol, to reset their livers and their bank accounts after the festive season. But what about making it more permanent?
Catherine Gray decided she wanted to live a sober lifestyle in 2013 and has written a book about the experience, The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober. She joined Sean on Today with Sean O’Rourke to share her experience and offer advice to anyone thinking of doing the same.
Catherine is a writer and editor. She told Sean that alcohol was a part of her life from a young age.
"I started drinking when I was 12 and I quit when I was 33 and yeah, I really went for it. I drank all the booze."
Part of the problem, she explained, was the nature of her job. As a magazine writer, she found herself "invited to free drinks parties every day of the week". And she went to a lot of these parties. Before getting sober, Catherine was drinking a "dangerous" amount of alcohol.
"Towards the end, I was drinking 7 or 8 bottles of wine a week. So, given that the recommended limit is a bottle and a half, I was in really dangerous territory. And I was only taking one or two nights off and those two nights were really difficult. I really felt deprived."
Things got so bad, Catherine said, that she was having symptoms of withdrawal if she didn’t drink.
"I became physically addicted to it so I was sometimes waking up and having the shakes. And spirits are a lot quicker to drink and they have the effect much quicker. So, it was purely just to get it into my system to stop shaking and start feeling human. Because I’d got to the point where I felt appalling if I hadn’t had a drink."
Sean was curious how this affected her personal life and career. Catherine was working freelance at the time which allowed her to drink during the day. She remembers "raging rows" with loved ones and said she "basically wasn’t a very nice person to be around." At 27, Catherine experienced a low point. On the way home from a work party, she was arrested for being drunk and disorderly.
"I didn’t remember any of this. I just woke up in a police cell with no recollection of what had happened. When they handed me back my belongings, they handed me this plastic evidence bag and I had no wallet, no keys, no phone. The only thing in the bag was a tiny, pink child’s hairbrush that I’d never seen before in my life. So, yeah. That was a real low point. But I still continued to drink for 6 more years."
See this eejit in a child’s bear hat? She’s now officially the author of a Sunday Times Bestseller. 🤩 #unexpectedjoy #sundaytimesbestseller #grrrr pic.twitter.com/H6yTU2l9FD
— catherine gray (@cathgraywrites) January 14, 2018
Sean queried why it took her so long to quit after this incident. What was holding her back?
"Sobriety is presented as so boring and I really felt like I was going to have no fun if I quit drinking…I kept trying to wrestle it back under control. And I would find success short-term. I would find a technique that would work for a few months or a few weeks and then it would slalom out of control again."
Catherine credits her late father, who himself was 24 years sober at the time of his death, as a motivating factor in her decision to live without alcohol.
"Ultimately, we found the same thing, which was that we were much, much happier sober."
Listen back to the whole interview with Catherine Gray on Today with Sean O’Rourke here.
