Drinking hoovered up my time, energy and money like an anteater on ants. Now, I spend these precious finite resources on things such as yoga, living in different countries, writing books, (very) amateur photography, parenting a puppy, running, art galleries, paddleboarding, reading about psychology, cycling on the seafront in Brighton. When people ask me, ‘What have you replaced drinking with?’ I find myself confounded. There’s no singular answer. Because the answer is – everything that is pleasurable about my life. I’ve replaced a kind of half-life, where I limped along constantly hungover or jonesing for a drink, with a full-life. Phenomenal; only a 14 per cent falter rate. But hang on, pipes up the negative-seeking drone inside me; that’s not zero, is it? That’s still 14 per cent. And the central theme of my last few years has been about that number, if I had to be a reductionist. About casting around for ways to feel as protected from it as humanly possible. Not living in fear, but being productive in protecting this rainforest from deforestation. Ergo, many teetotallers have once been the last one standing at the bar. The one hounding their mates to go to a club. The ones who found it pretty easy to polish off a bottle of wine on their own. (The former two scenarios feel alien right now.) During the pandemic, many of you may have discovered that what you’d previously pegged as a ‘social’ drinking habit, became a runaway ‘at-home’ drinking habit. And no bloody wonder, given the impending doom we’ve been surrounded with over the past year, like a moat of snapping crocodiles. He spent two years studying the industry. In the U.S., “there was no belief in non-alcoholics as a business,” he told me, gesturing with his glass of Two Trellises. “It had been an eighty-to-one-hundred-million-dollar industry with zero innovation for thirty years.”

And that takes guts. Many drinkers go their entire lives imbibing on default without questioning it, or even trying the alternative. And here you are, examining your drinking life, rather than leaving it unexamined. We’re proud of you already. How has the process of writing about your sober journey been and have you found it helpful to be open about your personal experience?

A reflective, raw and riveting read. A beautiful book on what it takes to root for yourself' - Emma Gannon, Ctrl Alt Delete Those drinking more, and those choosing not to drink at all, have more in common than we think. Because it’s often after a period of drinking more (like, for instance, during a terrifying apocalyptic-vibed pandemic) that we choose to quit. And there’s absolutely no shame in that. That’s when we choose to quit most things, right? After a period of overuse, whatever that might look like.

Staying sober from year four on became, dare I say it, easy. But the less obvious yet more profound work began. I started finessing life skills that seemed like they were nothing to do with sobriety, yet they were totally related. I learned how to do things like say no (regularly), set boundaries (hate boundaries), ask for what I needed, preserve my energy for the parties I wanted to spend it on and learned how to open the chamber of shame (the things I’d done) in safe company. I’ll be frank, much of this was less fun, but ultimately more transformative. I think it was something largely driven by social media. When I quit drinking in 2013, the notion of being ‘out and proud’ about sobriety on socials was unheard of. All the ex-drinkers I knew hid away in private groups (either physically or virtually) and talked in hushed whispers. They hid their recovery from workmates, friends, even family in some cases. I even used a pseudonym while chatting in a private Facebook group made up entirely of such ex-drinkers! There was still an enormous amount of shame and stigma around it. At that point, quitting drinking was only a path for extremely addicted drinkers; it wasn’t remotely a positive lifestyle choice. This hotly anticipated sequel enlists the help of experts and case studies, turning a curious, playful gaze onto provocative questions. Is alcohol a parenting aid? Why are booze and cocaine such a horse and carriage? Once an addict, always an addict? How do you feel safe - from alcohol, others and yourself - in sobriety? The number one advice I would give is to immerse yourself in the teetotalin’ world. Listen to every podcast you can, read every book, follow sober influencers, join Facebook groups, find alcohol-free role models in the shape of great thinkers, artists, writers and actors who are ‘out’ (there are lists of these in both The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober and Sunshine Warm Sober). A good rule of thumb, and advice given to me very early on, is to spend as much time thinking / talking / reading about sobriety, as you did drinking. As time rolls on, the ‘immersion’ time you’ll need will become less and less. But in the beginning, I treated learning about being alcohol-free much as I did studying for a degree.Fromme’s students continue to use balanced-placebo-design methods to study the role that alcohol plays—and doesn’t play—in sexual arousal, domestic violence, and disinhibited behavior. (Most researchers, however, no longer study a group that expects tonic but receives alcohol, because few of the participants are fooled.) “Does alcohol really make you more aggressive, or do you think, I’ve been drinking, so I can be disinhibited?” Fromme said. “Does alcohol make people more flirtatious, or do they believe that drinking gives them permission to be more flirtatious? It’s all about what you expect to happen.” We looked at each other. I rushed into the kitchen and fetched the bottle. Nowhere on the label could I see the words Alkoholfreier Wein. I gave the bottle to Lisa, who had her glasses on. We know now that being teetotal for one, three, even twelve months brings surprising joys and a recharged body... but nothing has been written about going years deep into being alcohol-free.