Things I’ve learned while being sober-curious

Because when was the last time I went for a long period of time without a drink?

When I interviewed Ruby Warrington in December 2019, about her new book The Sober Curious Reset: Change the Way You Drink in 100 Days Or Less, I was defensive at first. There she was: open, funny, friendly, with a calming energy— and I’d arrived severely hungover with a sore throat and I was run down. My voice on the podcast recording was husky, and I sat in my coat in the podcast studio because I felt cold. Around that time, I was drinking about half a bottle of wine a night, sometimes more, thinking it was nothing but a chic wind down part of my routine, having a glass of red (or three) on the go as I cooked dinner for Paul and I. Something occasional had slowly turned into a nightly habit, and I couldn’t pinpoint when that exactly happened. I just remember placing a huge red wine order on Top Cuveé, thinking it was fine, because I was ordering organic wine with a trendy East London label on it. Then taking a big bag of clinking bottles out to the recycling bin every week and thinking: hmm.

On the podcast, I asked Ruby about the term she invented: “sober curious”. It means turning a curious eye to your drinking habits, and/or the role drinking plays in society, but I didn’t really ‘go there’ in the interview. I wasn’t ready. I was curious, but I was still pretending everything was fine. Almost a year later, when I got the book down again from my bookshelf, I decided to be genuinely curious and take a deep breath and admit I did have a bit of a problem. I reached out to Ruby on Whatsapp. She was friendly and encouraging, and wrote lovely things with exclamation marks. I felt supported.

“A bit of a problem” sounds woolly, doesn’t it? Because it was. I was probably drinking the same amount as a large percentage of people all around the UK.