It’s been a whole 5 years since my last hangover. A wild milestone.

I wanted to quit drinking for a long time before I actually managed it. I’d get the worst anxiety and wake up with palpatations, often be black out after only a few and never ever capable of just one glass. I didn’t drink that often over the last few years as, working mostly as a wedding photographer and being primary care giver for my kid, I barely socialised anymore. But when I did I couldn’t not get hammered.

A year before I quit we lost our pal Scott, the cause of several of my worst hangovers in the couple of years before he died. Realising all five foot one and a half of me often tried to match six foot maudlin indie musicians whisky for whisky, gin for gin, drink for drink for most of my adult life hadn’t been great for my mental or physical health. Most of the times over that last year that I got drunk it was one on one with a friend, a glass of wine being the plan and several sunk, along with a few chasers would always be the result. I was relying on the alcohol to numb some of the grief that had surfaced for everything ever after he died and I went into grief therapy. Alcohol had started to make me feel suicidally depressed.

I had a few false starts to sobriety. I read The Artists’ Way, a 12 week programme for creatives who let the fear stop them from creating. Turns out that it’s basically the 12 step programme the AA uses, re-written to focus on creativity over addiction. I struggled with the ‘god’ element throughout the writing but it actually helped me to find a connection with nature and I started to swim regularly in the sea, make cyanotype prints on the beach with the sun. It’s true what they say about swimming in baltic water giving you a rush of the good chemicals. It definitely helped me to stay sober doing that and forming some little healthy rituals. I also kept up the ‘artists pages’ element of the programme which is essentially journalling 3 pages of A4 a day. I think you’re meant to keep them to refer back to, to see how far you’ve come or where you get stuck but I’d just let out all the darkest things and rip it up, which felt like releasing it.

The first wee while after you stop drinking is difficult for a bunch of reasons but most of them are other people. Anyone you see socially makes it the topic of conversation. Nobody can just grab you a soft drink, no questions asked. It makes it really hard work going out and spending time with anyone. Then, a couple of months or so into it, all the big feelings you’ve been numbing out start to surface and that’s the hardest bit all together. I think I’m lucky that I’ve always needed to process those alone or through talking it out with friends and that’s easy enough to do through sending them depressingly long personal podcast voice messages on whatsapp instead of in a pub with a bunch of alcohol.

If someone you know is trying to quit, don’t make it about you and your drinking habits. Nobody that’s quitting drink is asking you to change your own habits around alcohol or judging you for them, they’re too busy trying to manage their own anxiety and the social pressure to succumb. If they were struggling with how you drink then they wouldn’t spend time around you.

I only knew I could stick to it when I figured out how to sober dance and I’ve got a bunch of opportunities through wedding work to have a wee dance in a room full of drunk strangers most weekends so that made it easier for me to figure that out. I started taking myself to lots of gigs and driving home, maybe stopping in my favourite bar near home for a tea before going home (which wound them up but felt like a super power, although that place closed and I didn’t replace it).

Quitting drinking will cost you friendships that you thought were for life. I very much felt like a social leper for a good long while. I work most weekends or have my kid, I barely go out aside from gigs and as a single person and a weirdo neurodivergent I’m rarely invited to any social gatherings that involve couples or to any parties any more. I felt very isolated and I struggle to make new pals anyways. But time reveals who your folks are and there are plenty of people who love music, who love dancing, who love art, who have similar lifestyles and who don’t care if you are drinking or not. So now I go out a little more but it’s different to before. I take myself to gigs and have a lovely crew of folks who I often see at them, go to pals’ dj nights and a little bit of time with neighbours on the beach. I have good friends scattered in other cities and countries who I try to visit as regularly as I can and we rant and dance and overindulge in good food, dancing, art and hugs.

I miss restaurants a bit and I’d love more road trips but I’m still learning to juggle work and life. I think my own social plans always come last as I struggle with time management and exectuive disfuntion being inattentive adhd. I have to manage all that for each client booking and for my kid first and then my few of nights off a month I end up realising I forgot to make plans for myself. I’m working on that these days and I’m filling my time with things that bring me joy - making art, learning new alternative processing photography techniques, doing workshops with like minded folks, dancing with witches, making time with loved ones…

It takes time but you figure out who has your back and the folks who have similar interests that you can get overexcited with. I’m still learning to put my physical health higher up the list of tasks, I basically HATE routine and desperately need to figure some out at the same time. But my diary is different every day and I’m travelling around for work a lot and I’m thankful to not have a 9-5 type of life as it would make me miserable.

And folks who read this will already know that I spent a good solid year or so processing the big feelings about a lot of diffcult experiences through the lens of realising my brains are neurdivergent. Letting yourself feel all the feelings without numbing them out with toxic crap like drink, leaning into using healthy creative outlets instead feels huge and wonderful. I feel like a totally different person to the versions of me that used to drink. I enjoy dancing sober in a room full of drunk people cos they don’t remember anything anyways, just can get away with being your weirdo self and nobody barely notices, all the things I used to be so self conscious about don’t really matter at all.

Autistics and folks with adhd are typically more likely to binge drink. We are implusive and use alcohol to mask our traits and to try to fit in socially. For me, it was a really useful and unhealthy tool for helping to unmask socially, self medicating to manage struggles with exhaustion and bad decisions. Alcohol just brought out the impulsiveness in me that often put me in physical and emotional danger with people. When you already struggle with things like executive dysfuntion and rejection sensitivity along with some sensory issues, adding your bodyweight in Glens vodka isn’t a great idea.

The only time in the last few years that I’ve really missed alcohol has been when I’ve felt really worn out and down, or sometimes I missed a hot toddy in the winter. But I realise that it’s just not a drug that works for me at all. It’s so deeply ingrained in our society - bad day? take a drink, something to celebrate? take a drink, on a date? take a drink, weekend? take a drink, eating dinner? take a drink, sunny out? take a drink…it’s actually wild how much pressure there is to imbibe a specific poison. It hugely made me feel ill how booze shops were allowed to stay open over lockdowns while everything aside from food outlets were closed. It’s a con that we’re indoctrinated into as kids and that’s as close to preachy about it as I like to get. It’s just an empty way for folks with ADHD to chase dopamine, like any other addiction and there are way more fulfilling and creative ways to find that which enrich life instead of making you feel physically and mentally unwell.

For folks who are reading this cause they’re curious about quitting I cannot explain to you in words what a hugely positive difference to my life stopping drinking has made. I’m so much more aware of where in my body I hold onto tension and emotions, so much better at processing big feelings, investing in the things that bring me joy, saying no to things that don’t feel right, I have time to recharge and properly rest when I feel exhausted and overwhelmed and I know my social battery has limits. I consciously live from a place where I notice the little glimmers and appreciate genuine connections. Alcohol numbed out so much of the things that make me feel really alive and really myself. To figure out how to let it go is very much worth it. I’m happy feeling everything deeply. Find the things that the kid version of you loved to do that you gave up on and get stuck in about all of them to see which ones stick.