Reflections on friendship without alcohol

How I came to prefer connecting with people outside of the pub

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Before I quit alcohol, I worried about what would happen to my friendships. How could I catch up with my oldest pals without splitting bottles of wine? Where would I meet friends if I couldn’t hack the pub? Would I be a dullard now I no longer cut loose with booze?

These fears were rational - some of my friendships did suffer in the short term. Other friendships faded away entirely, as friendships can do when circumstances change.

Something I couldn’t imagine when I contemplated a different life was the new friends I might make, and how my existing friendships might blossom.

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I tried to moderate for a long time before I got sober, twelve years or so. More, if you count the many times I swore off booze after a particularly torturous hangover.

I started drinking so early, and so uncontrollably, that by my late teens, I was ready for a less hedonistic lifestyle.

Landing in a seaside town to study English Lit, I found it. I met a sensitive, arty kind of crowd who liked to get high, but did other things too: surfing, photography, playing guitar. These young people had hobbies, and I set about getting some of my own. Revolutionary!

After graduation, the wholesome crowd left, and I fell in love with someone who liked to drink even more than I did. Old habits returned, and the nights we both drank to blackout were unpredictable in a way I couldn’t deal with. So began my sincerest quest to moderate.

I stopped doing shots. Trained myself to switch to water or tea at parties. In our boozy friendship group, I was seen as rather moderate.

Eventually, I split with this boyfriend, partly because of his drinking, and my alcohol intake ramped up again. I was delighted to be free of the restrictions I’d placed on myself because he had no off-switch. Rather than just binge-drinking, I started drinking wine at home every night, as well.

I was studying for an MA by now, and making new friends again. I met lovely and hilarious writers galore, but their socials made me uncomfortable. Quiet music, amazing food, and just a little alcohol. I played pool and drank pints with my new love interest and his mates, instead. Or sat around kitchen tables where the wine felt unlimited.

Most of my drinking, post-university, was with men. Boyfriends or potential boyfriends, occasionally male friends who liked to drink the same way as me

I had female friends I was closer to, but some of them had families by now, and weren’t able to meet in the pub, others lived in different towns and cities. Sitting in pubs with men just seemed easier.

By my thirties, my drinking seemed better, and from a distance, so did Original Heavy Drinking Boyfriend’s. We decided to get back together. Immediately, it was just like it had been before. Our combined drinking issues were unbearable to me, and a drunken New Year’s Eve with him spurred me to do my first Dry January. Moderation was no longer working, if it ever really had, and I tried AA.

So began my sober friendships.

First was my sponsor. Spiritual and calm, in my first weeks of sobriety, she invited me to Stone Henge for the summer solstice. We stayed up most of the night, before attempting sleep on the dew-gathering grass while pagans, druids and wreckheads worshipped, drummed and danced around us. We got up to watch the sunrise over the stones, and I took a selfie of this New Me who found unusual ways of staying entertained and never had a hangover.

Next was a young woman even fresher to abstinence than me. Her life had been scorched by alcohol, same as mine, and we drove around the city together, attending AA meetings, releasing shameful stories and laughing at the insanity of the past. We were consistently amazed at our growing capacity to do things and connect with people, to enjoy life without alcohol.

For a year at least, I was more comfortable with my new sober friends than the friends who had known me Before. Looking back, I can see I needed the validation my sober pals conferred that my drinking was Bad Enough to quit.

My Before friends were supportive, but they said things that threw me off. “I don’t think you’re 'really an alcoholic’’’ or “Maybe one day you can drink again?” I got the impression that my commitment to AA seemed extreme in response to the drinking they had witnessed.

But my life was improving. And feeling challenged on my decision threatened this hardwon sobriety I had achieved. As I still hadn’t learned to ask for what I needed, I stepped away from my friends, trying to have faith that everything would become easier in the future.

I heard from other people my age that making friends at this stage of life was difficult, but I found myself with more friends than I knew what to do with.

I signed up for a course in permaculture, where I made a new circle of nature-loving friends, and we spent our time at allotments or forest gardens or sitting around campfires. In all of these new connections I was learning more about the kind of friend I wanted to be.

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Eighteen months after I quit, my life looked completely different. It no longer centered around writers, artists, and alcohol, and I felt like a new version of myself. I had a full-time job as a gardener, had fallen in love with the ultimate unicorn, i.e. a man who didn’t drink, and become a person who exercised.

Gradually, I grew secure enough in my sobriety and the consequent life decisions to reconnect with my older friends. Not the heavy-drinking ex-boyfriends I’d drunk so many pints with in beer gardens around the city, but the friends I’d made outside of those boozy relationships.

I’d discovered a lot about myself, and the sort of person I wanted to be going forward, and so I set about trying to be a more present and consistent sort of friend.

I tried to answer my phone more and return calls I missed, and check in with people about things they were going through. I did my best not to cancel or change plans, unless I really, really needed to. We had dinner or camped or walked, and I realised how much better my life was when they were more frequently in it.

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Something I didn't expect as I contemplated sobriety was for my friendships to improve because of it. I learned how to be a better friend in the process of learning to live sober, and my friendships benefitted as a result.

Sobriety became a kind of litmus test for my friendships. Those who supported me - even if they didn’t entirely understand why I felt the need to abstain - became even more precious than they had been before. After a break where I worked on changing my infuriating relationship with alcohol, we picked up our relationship and nowadays our bonds are stronger than ever.

So if you’re considering making a change, remember that fear can only tell you what you stand to lose. It has no capacity to tell you what you might gain.

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Chelsey Flood is the author of award-winning novels Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers, and a senior lecturer in creative writing at UWE. She is currently working on a literary memoir about getting sober and then finding out she’s autistic and a new YA novel.

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