The Cutprice Guignol

One of the questions I see thrown around most often when it comes to discussions of potential sobriety – and one of the ones I asked myself most often before I quit drinking – is how do I have fun without alcohol (/insert drug of choice here)?

Of course, I can hear the voice of a perennially-cheerful sober person at the back of my mind whenever these conversations come up – you don’t need alcohol or drugs to have fun! Which is both true and somewhat annoying, or at least was for me in the early stages of quitting drinking. Because yeah, I knew that I could have fun without drinking – I lived sixteen years without touching alcohol, after all, and had at least some modicum of a good time within that decade and a half – but so much of what I had come to deem fun in the years since had started to revolve around alcohol. Because there seemed little that alcohol or drugs couldn’t make better. All the good times could be better with a drink in hand or a joint or a pill or something to enhance it – to ease nerves, to heighten energy, to lower your standards. Everything that had been fun before could be twice as fun if I was drunk or high while I did it, and going back to the grey pallor of pre-substance-abuse entertainment seemed like a grim prospect. Sobriety was necessary, and, like so many things that are, seemed dreadfully un-fun as a result.

But I’m here nearly a decade out from quitting drinking, and let me tell you something – I have a great time, often. More importantly, I feel like actually being able to enjoy and not just endure life sober was ultimately what allowed me to figure out a way to stay alcohol-free. But it took a decent amount of time for me to figure out exactly what having fun looked and felt like post-substances, and I wanted to share a little of what worked for me in the hopes of pointing other people in the direction of establishing their own sense of fun post-sobriety.

I had a few run-ups at sobriety before I quit for good, and one of the things that often tripped me up was putting myself into situations and experiences that I’d already been in while drunk or high. And, no matter how much fun they might be, there’s always going to be that voice nagging at the back of your mind, reminding you just how much better it could be if you gave in and indulged. I don’t think sobriety means having to divest yourself of every part of your identity beforehand, but there’s something to be said for putting a bit of distance between yourself and the habits that went along a little too comfortably with substances.

The biggest impact this had for me personally was on socialising – so much of my social life had been built around drinking with someone else, getting pissed and spilling secrets, going out drunk-dancing till late into the night, all of it. But it stretched too into smaller things, too – like writing, reading, even the shows I watched. There’s a temptation to decry every bit of fun you had drunk or high, but I don’t think you have to deny that some parts of substance abuse were fun – I mean, you wouldn’t have let it become a problem if there wasn’t some part of it you liked at first, right? But what it came down to was that I couldn’t pretend to be the same person I was before unless I wanted to slip back into the habits that version of me had. I turned it into a challenge for myself – being open with my friends and family about my sobriety and only getting together for alcohol-free meet-ups for a while, picking new shows and books that wouldn’t remind me of substance abuse the same way, even making up a whole new playlist of songs that didn’t have the stink of a rum and coke and a cigarette clinging to them – so I didn’t have to let go of the source of the fun, but rather the parts of it entangled with substance abuse.

And when it came to finding fun in new places, I found it really useful to turn some of that obsessive energy that I’d put into drinking to more fruitful tasks – and what worked best for me was focusing on activities where I could see material change, results, and improvement. For me, this was stuff like crafting, baking, and running (and let me take a second here to plug my beloved Zombies, Run!, to which I credit at least the first year of staying off alcohol), but I think it applies to anything where you can track growth in a meaningful way. And not just because it feels good to do something practical (or eat a lot of brownies that you made to see yourself through a particularly fraught weekend), but using a substance for a long time activates a neural reward system that helps turn it from a habit into a problem – for me, replacing those rewards with the satisfaction of tangible improvement helped me hook in to sobriety in a way little else had.

Changing up these aspects of my life took time and wasn’t always easy, but a life where I couldn’t drink and would spend my time fantasizing and longing for all the fun I had drunk was unsustainable. Actually being able to enjoy life sober was instrumental to being able to stay off the booze for me. If you’re someone who’s got some sober time behind them, I’d love to hear how your take on fun changed after you quit your substance of choice – what worked for you, what didn’t, and what would you have done differently looking back? If you’d care to check out more of my writing on sobriety, you can do so here, and if you’d like to support my blog, please consider supporting me by buying my books or dropping me a tip via my Support page.