When I stopped drinking four years ago, I had something of an identity crisis. Who was this version of myself who didn't drink?! Was I even me if I stayed in at the weekend? Had I essentially become a monk?
April 2025 |
9 minutes
Alcohol Change UK Ambassador, Michael Sargood, takes us into week four of Sober Spring. Struggling to build a fulfilling social life that didn’t involve pubs and bars in his early sobriety, Michael rose to the challenge created a local event network for connecting with other alcohol-free people. Read on to find out how he got to grips with the new, alcohol-free version of himself.
“I was a drinker. Except, now, I wasn't.”
We are what we repeatedly do," the great philosopher, Aristotle, once famously said. And I repeatedly drank. I had been repeatedly drinking every night for years. I was a drinker. Except, now, I wasn't.
Undeterred - and on a mission to prove that I was even more of a party animal sober - I continued hitting the pubs, clubs and parties but with a pint of Pepsi Max in my hand instead of a beer. In fact, in my first week of going out as a non-drinker, I guzzled my way through £45 of flat Pepsi at my local.
I'd been sober on nights out before when I'd heroically volunteered myself as nominated driver for fear of humiliating myself in front of colleagues again. Watching everyone get increasingly slaughtered, listening to them slurring the same incoherent anecdotes and peeling them off the pavement so they could be bundled into a car (via the chicken shop) just wasn't fun back then. But I remained optimistic that it would become more fun with practice. It didn't.
“…I was even publicly called out as a “party pooper” for suggesting I might go home before midnight.”
And what's worse, I was struggling to mask just how little I was enjoying myself. On one particularly harrowing occasion, I was even publicly called out as a “party pooper” for suggesting I might go home before midnight. The words pierced my heart like a dagger. So there I stood, pushing 40 years old and on the edge of tears for being called a mildly offensive name.
You see, it wasn't what they'd said that hurt. It's that it was true.
“They'd noticed that I wasn’t the same person despite my efforts to conceal a very obvious truth.”
“I am Michael and I'm a party pooper” I felt like saying.
Not long after this mortifying incident, another friend introduced me to some ladies he was chatting to as “Michael, who's hilarious when he's drinking but a boring bastard now he isn't.”
I reminded myself of the wise words of the great motivational speaker, Jim Rohan, who famously said: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” So I stopped spending time with these people, which meant I stopped going to the pub, except for the occasional quiz night or lunch.
I accepted that I didn't find watching other people getting drunk fun anymore. And no amount of practice would change that. No longer was I that party boy but, in fact, a party pooper. And that was fine. But what else could I be?
“I recalled there was a time before I was a drinker…I was only a teenager at the time, but it was proof that I'd been something other than a drinker previously.”
I thought of my old friend Aristotle. What could I repeatedly do, besides pooping parties, that would eventually become part of my new identity?
I recalled there was a time before I was a drinker. Sure, I was only a teenager at the time, but it was proof that I'd been something other than a drinker previously. So I could, logically, be something other than a drinker again.
“I’ve found I still largely love the same things, just with a little tinkering around the edges.”
The non-drinking, teenage version of myself was a total nerd. And not a very popular one at that. I liked playing the recorder, studying languages, gymnastics, cycling and bird-spotting in the woods… not exactly the hallmarks of the “sane and sorted” adult I wanted the world to see me as today.
But I decided to pick up where I left off with my old hobbies and see how it went. I’ve found I still largely love the same things, just with a little tinkering around the edges.
I still like making music and have taken up guitar. (The recorder playing is still strong, but I tend to keep that particular hobby under wraps.)
I've started reading German novels again. I've taken up calisthenics in a local gym, which is closely linked to gymnastics. And, as I can't fit a bike up the stairs of my flat, I have taken up running instead, which I'm still learning to love. And, without any shame, I bird-spot while I run.
The thing with identity is that it's not supposed to be fixed, static and immutable. It's supposed to change with time. We are supposed to evolve.
“Maybe the greatest thinker of modern times, Taylor Swift, has the right idea by dividing her life into different ‘eras’.”
My experience is that we each have discrete chapters in our lives, complete with their own distinct identity, yet all forming part of the same novel. None of us is just one story.
What and who are you without alcohol? The next chapter is waiting to be written. The pen is in your hand.
