I’ve never thought of myself as a boring person. But I used to feel certain I was my most confident, compelling self after a couple of drinks. It made me feel at ease in every social situation: my punchlines crackled, my listening skills shone, and everyone was charmed, I’m sure.
Whenever I thought of a life without drinking (which I would often do when facing the consequences of my elated actions) it just didn’t feel plausible. Drinking was fun! It was an essential social lubricant, the path to euphoric nights out and intense, feverish bonding with new friends.
Without it, I’d have way less fun, and definitely not be as fun to be around. I couldn’t imagine being the sober person on a night out or after work drinks who tempers the mood. And to be that person with strangers? Awful. I’m ashamed to say I judged people who weren’t drinking, secretly, to pre-empt their judgement in return.
But with the sudden onset of intrusive thought OCD in 2019, drinking became a major trigger for my most distressing compulsions. I’d power through, drinking (albeit less), searching for the escape and exhilaration I desperately needed – but the fun, if it ever appeared, never lasted. I’d spend days after a few glasses of wine in a state of panic, either convincing myself that I had done something terrible under the influence, or falling prey to other compulsions that dominated my life.
Stopping drinking in that sense was easy – I had so completely lost who I was that I was willing to try anything to get her back. I initially dropped alcohol because of new medication in 2022, and enjoyed it so much I never went back. Managing my OCD became easier and easier and my sense of self, which had been decimated, began to rear her head again. Life became easy, more graceful. I was even having fun.
I never thought not drinking made me boring until I was in environments I used to navigate with ease. Drinking made it easy to ignore the fact I actually didn’t enjoy going out as often as I had, but without it I simply preferred to spend time at home. It was only when returning to environments heavy with strangers or thick with noise that I realised I no longer fitted.
When meeting new people I can be quite loud, and I love nothing more than making people laugh. As a consequence I often will speak before I think. Without the lubrication of a couple of drinks I am far less likely to do this. I’m quieter. I feel less brash, a little less able to laugh off my own faux pas, and a little less forgiving of others’. I can still cackle like a banshee with the best of them, but I’m no longer lulled into laughing generously for people clumsily rehashing a TikTok they half-remembered.
Loud, crowded spaces are a struggle, too. They were no longer filled with the promise of a great night, but became oppressive and overwhelming. I feel far less relaxed when I’m straining to hear my friend over tinny bass lines or the roaring of a stag do. I’m unable to hide my distaste when a drunk stranger sloppily attempts to get by me and sloshes their pint over my shoes. And when the people I’m with start to tell me the same story they told me a few hours before, that’s normally my cue to head home.
And meeting new people where everyone is drinking can present a conundrum. Do I explain myself and therefore show that I’m aware I might seem uptight? Do I work harder to be charming even though this is no longer my comfort zone? Or do I just accept that these strangers just might misinterpret me based on one interaction and that’s… fine?
My close friends and loved ones made it easy to feel like I hadn’t lost, as embarrassing as this is to say, a part of my identity. I love being around them no matter how inebriated they get – and sometimes actively encourage them to do so. But I still get the occasional urge to outline how raucous I once was to people who’ve never known that side of me.
I asked a few of my sober friends how they handle this. Millie, author of Sober Girl Society and the upcoming Boozeless, says this is something she reckons with sometimes. “I like to think it doesn’t bother me when strangers assume I’m less fun, but we like to be accepted don’t we? So naturally it does sting a bit when I can tell, someone instantly makes an assumption based on the fact I don’t drink. I can tell that new people think I’m a bit uptight, or talk about things in a way that assumes I’ve never experienced it – like being hungover.”
Sid, who is incredibly socially active and was my first friend that stopped drinking, has long stopped worrying about it.
“I had to stop drinking when I was 20 – it was a life or death situation – but I worried a lot that my life would be over. My general feedback was that I am the most fun one at the party, I can stay up the latest, and the thing is, that’s still true.
“If anything, I now think people who are drunk or on drugs are honestly really boring,” they add. “They’re sloppy and chaotic. You can’t have a conversation with them and they can’t stop falling over.
“I know I was very boring as a drinker, always getting into scrapes, always hungover. There’s nothing more boring than having to cancel because you’re hanging.”
Jacob, a lecturer at Oxford and drag queen I know from university, has also long forgotten about it.
“I feared that stopping drinking would bar me from so many fun experiences, and a lot of that was tied up with access to the queer community – so much of everything I loved had alcohol involved. But the fears turned out to be unfounded; there are definitely times when I’d be having more fun (in the moment, not long-term) were I drinking, but normally it just means that it’s not such a fun situation to begin with.”
If anything, he’s found that being open about his relationship to alcohol, and why he won’t drink again, has made him the life of the party.
“I think because I’m so open and can joke a lot about my alcoholism I feel like people see me less as boring because I don’t drink but more as kind of chaotic because I once drank so much that I scaled a hotel in full drag in Ibiza to get a bottle of vodka from a stranger’s third floor balcony.
“Now I just have the fun stories of how I diced with death in the pursuit of drunkenness. Plus I’m all for people drinking around me, I love the contact drunkenness. I do know that I used to be more ‘fun’ for certain people – always the last one at the party, always the one willing to do more – but I don’t really mind being more boring to them now.”
I’m not here to tell you that you won’t be perceived as boring by some for not drinking. It will happen, inevitably, because humans greatly enjoy being judgemental.
But less than dampening your social light, I think not drinking draws out who you really are. If you’re a gadabout sobriety is not going to slow you down, if you’re undeniably glamorous you don’t suddenly become decrepit, if you can make it to 3am you probably still have that stamina. And if, for example, you’re an abrasive introvert, people will still find you charming and annoying.
As the most glamorous sober person I can think of, I asked Jacob about finding glamour in sobriety.
“I think it is in fact unutterably glamorous to have learned something about yourself, to have confronted one of the darkest sides of yourself, and chosen in the face of it all to cut out the most popular drug there is to preserve your own body and sanity,” he tells me. “That kind of self-knowledge is, to me, inexorably glamorous. Dewy skin, bagless under eyes, self-knowledge, and wide-eyed rather than wide-pupilled on a Sunday morning? Glamorous! Chic! A richer and richer life! It’s the thing I’m most proud of.”
The thing that really changes is not your willingness to embrace life but the way you embrace it.
In my case, I’m more reserved now. Not drinking has given me the clarity that I don’t really need or want validation from acquaintances and strangers anymore that I’m entertaining or making interesting choices.
Instead I move at my own pace, indulge in my slow, geriatric hobbies, and accept that I will feel awkward around new people.
The question of if drinking (or not) makes you boring is simply a question how much credence you give to other people’s opinions. But the beautiful thing about not drinking is that it makes it infinitely easier to no longer pay them any mind.
Distilled down to its basic parts, perhaps I am boring by some standards. Certainly by the standards of people who don’t know me, or only know me tangentially. But two and a half years in, and I say this with my whole heart, I simply don’t care.
