So this will be the first sober Christmas I’ve had in 7 years and I fully intend to to spend every Christmas, New Year and day for the rest of my life - In a sober stupor.

Now please don’t think I judge anyone that chooses to enjoy alcohol. That’s their prerogative, and I hope they enjoy every single sip. I certainly did - the ones I can remember mindfully sipping, that is. The rest, is urm, a bit of a blurr.

My decision to give up booze rather than cut down was a long time coming. I’d been thinking about a life of sobriety for at least 5 years or perhaps longer. But my life seemed to evolve around booze. For as long as I can remember in-fact. My family have always boozed. Any excuse. A party. Yes! A pub lunch. Of course! Supper? Naturally. Lunch? Only at weekends (unless you’re going out, in which case, why not?)! One of my first jobs was working in a pub and then a club, behind the bar. It was all about the next party when I was growing up (standard, I’m sure), and as a singer, my life came alive at night entertaining and partaking all the way through my late teens and twenties.

Then came parenting. And the lovely mummy mates I met and still have and hold as regularly as I can. Our regular meet-ups would be coffee in the mornings and wine from 5pm (teatime madness). On Fridays we named our gatherings “grim n chronic Fridays”, where it was quite normal to hit the bottle from 4pm because, you know, we’d made it to the end of the week and Fridays were the start of not only the weekend, but for many of us, shared childcare. Saturdays were often hungover. Sunday’s riddled with anxiety about the week ahead.

Which brings me to my reasons. My why. And how I’ve finally managed to flip the coin and land on the side of sobriety. For good. Okay, so I’m just 100 days into my journey, but that feels like a milestone (my I AM SOBER app tells me this is a milestone to celebrate), so I’m celebrating by writing this blog. And it ain’t easy Mamma, not at all.

I’d say I was “dependent” on alcohol. Dependent on that glass of wine to ease the stress, and numb the pressures of, well, life with 4 kids, twins, trying to make my business work, financial worries, and living with PTSD. So that’s quite a list. And I know I’m not alone, because a HUGE percentage of people around the world are dependent on alcohol to avoid, numb or escape their daily grind/life/worries. It’s been going on for centuries. Touché.

The thing is, as a mother, wife, coach and therapist, well into my mid 40’s, I’m more reflective than ever. I feel like I’ve woken up. To so much. I blame meditation actually. The clarity, wisdom and inner peace it’s given me means that I find myself no longer needing alcohol to escape. I have another way now. A new path, that happens to feel better and last longer. The high I get from a loving kindness session where I feel my heart busting out of my chest and beaming into the world is quite literally like the rush I used to get on ecstasy (yes, I was a raver)! No kidding. And there’s no come down. Just a gentle rebalancing that naturally occurs. And when I need that high again, I meditate again. Bingo.

My main reasons to give up and not just cut back, are that I started to see my children reacting to and being influenced by our (hubby and me) heavy weekend boozing sessions. The arguments were fiery and the kids were hurting. I knew I had to break the pattern of alcohol related trauma that had run through my family for generations on both sides (my maternal grandfather was an alcoholic and died as a result), and my mother had witnessed years of sadness as she grew up, only to party hard herself. (Although, she can take it or leave it, unlike me). Not so much on my fathers side, but he is and was always a heavy drinker, often behaving in ways that left us all reeling.

I love wine. I love how it makes me feel. I love the drop in inhibitions and the social buzz it gives me. But I don’t love how it affects me, my family, my relationship, my bank balance and my mental wellbeing. This is my reality; It was ruining my marriage, my children were seeing it as normal part of life, I regularly over-spent by buying extra bottles and rounds for all my friends to justify having more, and my anxiety levels on a Monday were through the flipping roof.

Did you know that alcohol is the only drug in the world that if you don’t partake, you’re considered the one with the “problem”? I went to a party recently where it seemed that everyone was getting steaming drunk. And good for them. I felt like the odd one out. The only sober one in the room (I’m sure I wasn’t), and when people asked me how I was, I said “great thanks. I’m sober. I’m not boozing anymore.” And most said, “why? What’s wrong?” Because this is genuinely how we, as society have been conditioned. That if you stop drinking booze, you can’t cope with it or there’s something seriously wrong with your health - mental or physical. The pressure is real. I’ve also found that people avoid me more, and the invites have not been as forthcoming as usual, plus any parties I’ve been invited to have so much on the menu for all the boozers, but very little by way of excitement for the non-boozers. It’s like we are not as important suddenly. Our fun doesn’t matter anymore. Now, I know that’s not what’s in the mind of anyone hosting a party (they’d probably be mortified if they knew this), but it’s how the non-boozer may feel, and that’s why I’m raising it here. Sober people need love, support and understanding. They don’t need to feel like the leper at the party. We don’t love sober people any less because they’ve given up the booze (or do we?), so it’s probably worth noting that, if anything, they need to feel more special than before - after-all, while everyone else gets drunk around them, they will remember everything the next day!

So here I am. A sober mummy. Not mental, an addict or seriously ill. Just taking each day as it comes. Pledging every day at 4pm to stay sober on my app, and hoping that my children will grow up realising that they don’t have to partake just to have fun. I’m still a long way off reconditioning my mind to this fact, and expect the next few parties to be challenging, but I’m so grateful for the awakening I’ve had and the courage to have got this far.