Happy Without the Hooch ft. Michael

And once you've listened to that, you can jump right in and let's get back to it. What are some of the tools that you use to help yourself get and stay sober?

Once a week I acknowledged acknowledge for many years, since my friend passed away, I'd even acknowledged at that point that I had a problem with alcohol and went along to a few AA meetings, then decided actually I didn't have that much of a problem and stopped going. And then for the three, the last three years of my drinking, I was attending what's called smart recovery. It's not a 12 step program. It's it's a therapeutic program with, with peer support.

So there are meetings of a kind that it's run by addicts for addicts. They don't use the term, they don't labels of addicts and alcoholics. It's a structured program still, and it looks at four areas of your life. And a lot of it's based on cognitive behavioral therapies or CBT as it's more commonly known. And the first area that's looked at is building motivation for change.

So it's discovering what your motivations are because they're not always obvious to change your life and then solidifying those in your mind so that when you attempted to drink you remember why you decided you were going to stop drinking. The second area it looks at is managing out coping with urges and cravings. So sort of little tips on if you're getting a craving, how, how can.

If you're getting the urge to drink, or if you're thinking about drinking, how you can stop that thought developing into a craving where you're telling yourself that you need to drink. And there are some little tools that I found very, very useful. And then the third area that it looks at is, which was a real game changer for me actually was managing feelings and behaviors.

That's where the real sort of CBT came into place, the cognitive behavioral therapy so that you can learn to sit with your feelings. You can analyze them rationally and then maybe change your response to those feelings. I've always been somebody who acts very impulsively upon my feelings. I'd always been someone who thinks that feelings, aren't something that we can control.

And to an extent that's true, but we can change how we respond to our feelings and we can make ourselves feel less bad through changing the way we think. And so that was a really important area for me. And then the fourth area, which I didn't put enough work into the first time round was living a balanced life. And I think that's the part that is really important for maintaining sobriety.

So it's looking at what you do to look after yourself, yourself, maintenance, your self-development things that you do to stretch yourself and help yourself feel like you're developing as a human and that you're reaching or aiming towards your potential. And then the third area of that, which I think is hugely important is fun.

What you're actually doing to have fun, because if alcohol was your main form of bonding with other people and of socializing and all of a sudden that's gone, it can be very difficult to know how to have fun. Certainly at first, and I've, it's knitting all those areas together. Actually, I was tending for three years and I was too. Once maybe twice a week to meetings. And I was probably sitting there waiting for them to fix me and listening to everything people said, I quite enjoyed it.

It was quite engaging. And then I'd go home and I would do absolutely none of the homework I put none of what I was learning into practice. I thought it was in one ear and out the other. And then I'd wonder why I was making no progress. And it was a bit similar to the same relationship I had with my gym, where I'd buy the gym pass. I'd walk past my gym four times a day. Wouldn't go in and sort of be startled by the lack of process, the progress I'd made and wondering why I had no apps.

So that's it was a bit like that. And then all these things though that I thought I'd forgotten by going along to these meetings and not putting anything into practice when I needed it. When I was trying to sober up, it was all there. These things I thought I'd forgotten that it'd been. They were, they hadn't gone in one area and come out the other, when I needed them, I'd actually heard these skills. And then I started putting them into practice and I, I actually bought some sort of materials.

Like there's a smart recovery handbook that I, when I bought that to remind myself of them and I studied online as well so that I could help facilitate the meetings as I became more competent in it. And so once a week, instead of just attending the meetings, I was facilitating them, helping other people with their recovery. And that's when that's when it really sort of edit in for me.

And I am just really thankful that this service existed and free of charge near my house, because for me it was it was a real lifesaver. It comes to the point where. Often when I was drinking, I had suicidal ideation at the end of the night or when I was, or the next morning when I was suffering terribly from hangs it and I'd want to, I'd want to end it all. I became extremely suicidal and that's what the drink was doing to me.

And I think if I had not learned some of those skills and I'd not had the support of my, my parents, I, I'm not sure I would be here today. Yeah. I

And for me, I mean, I grew up in the nineties and a fairly conservative part of the UK in the nineties. The attitude towards homosexuality was certainly not as forward thinking as it is today, especially when I was in a small village, in a conservative part of the UK. There were some really quite backward attitudes. I was not, I knew I was gay when I, the first time I told somebody I was gay. I was 11. It was my last year of what we called primary school.

That was actually a really stupid time to tell people because I then changed school a few months later and I was at a school where I didn't really know anyone, so I thought I'd come out and then actually I've not come out to anyone that I now know. And then I decided not to, because I'd hear quite a lot of jibes being used homosexual sort of homophobic, blurs and sorry, slurs. And I realized pretty quickly it really isn't okay to be gay.

And so I tried to sort of hide it as much as I could, but I was, I was fairly flamboyant, I suppose. I'm not particularly matched. So I was rubbish at sports and I was sort of fitting into all those cliches and stereotypes of a gay person. So even though, even if I was trying to hide it, everybody had decided anyway that I was gay and I was being picked on for being gay. Even if I didn't accept that I was, I was always sent to the showers earlier after PE lessons.

Cause there were physical education lessons because. We had communal showers. So they're the ones that they decided were gay. They would have to go through the showers first so that we wouldn't be able to look at anyone in the showers. And I was always really worried about people. I didn't know. So knowing I was gay, if I didn't know someone and they, they might not like gay people. And if they didn't like gay people, they might be aggressive or violent.

And so when I was going out and trying to socialize at the age of sort of 17 and 18, if it wasn't a a gay venue and there weren't many near my house, because I was in a very you know, as I said, a conservative part of the UK, and I lived in a small village with sort of fairly small towns nearby, if it was a an, a non LGBT venue, I was worried how people might react. And so I'd enter a room for the people. I didn't know, feeling very nervous, looking quite feminine.

And I was, I was quite late to develop, like I didn't hit puberty until quite late. So I looked like I was about sort of 13, 14 when I was 18. And one way I found that I cared less about what people thought about me was I could have a drink after a couple of drinks. I no longer worried about sort of what people might think about me. What, where do I be accepted? And I wouldn't worry about whether I might be sort of somebody might be aggressive or attack. It just took away all my worries.

And it was that, and I suffered terribly from nerves. And so that was actually a real bonus. I'd never really realized. Until I gave up drinking how socially awkward I was. I always used to think I was the life and soul of the party, but that was only ever, I'd had a few drinks and mainly I wasn't being the life and soul of the party.

I was annoying people as a drunk, but, but, so I think that my sexuality played a real part in the volume that my trunk, just to feel comfortable around other people. And then I think further down the line there's in LGBT culture. It's that a lot of that is based around pups, if you want to meet. And this is before, you know, smartphones and things, and I didn't have a phone until I was 28. That was a choice. I just didn't want to be contacted.

So if I wanted to meet other gay men that would involve going to a bar, I mean, it wasn't like, oh, you can go, you can meet other gay men in the cafe, or that is that's how you met people and you had to talk to strangers. And so talking to strangers while I wouldn't talk to a stranger, unless I drink. So that perpetuated it really the fact that the whole LGBT community was based around socializing at bars. So that kept me going to the bar.

And then I think a third aspect of how sort of being gay has affected my drinking is that my, I mean, my brother still drinks, but he, he drank heavily, still does every now and then, but his drinking rapidly changed his relationship with alcohol rapidly changed when he became apparent. He had responsibilities and there to look after kids, he hadn't got the opportunity and he didn't want to be a drunk dad. And as a gay man, I'm never going to accidentally have children.

So I've never had parenthood thrust upon me in that way. And I've never, therefore, you know, being compelled to grow up, to make that huge lifestyle change. That parenting brings a lot of straight guys, I suppose, all of a sudden they've got this responsibility. I never had that responsibility. So there was nothing to stop me living as though I was still in the twenties that Peter pan syndrome that I think maybe a lot of gay men have because we never have those responsibilities thrust upon us.

So I think yes, actually being gay has, has impacted my relationship with alcohol in several ways. I drank to feel competent. And then I never had to stop drinking because I never had the responsibilities thrust upon me. And how has being LGBT affected? I suppose, my, my sobriety, I suppose, in a way. And it made it a little bit more difficult for the same reasons that maybe it made my relationship with alcohol easier. I still want to, I was, I was single.

I was living alone and I still wanted to meet other gay men. I wanted a relationship really. Ideally, and that is something that I found hugely difficult when I was in early sobriety is look okay. I live in a small towns, well smallish, it's a population of 180,000. We have a couple of, we have two gay men. And both bars, of course. And, and I've got Grindr, you know, sometimes there are people that are quite a long way away and, but I didn't want to meet people in bars.

I didn't want dates to be in apartments, like, okay, there's a small enough pool of men as it is, but I don't want to go. I don't want to be with someone who's drinking heavily and I don't want to go for dates and bars. And it's like, I've just narrowed it down. And I, at the moment, I think I'm the only person in the, this my radius on Grindr. Who's going to be meeting that that's sad. She's like maybe I'll have to pay for premium.

So I think effected all of a sudden I felt a bit of a disconnect with the local gay community because I couldn't meet them in the bar. It just wasn't safe for me. I convinced myself it wasn't, as I explained, I then had a big relapse. So I, I think there may be. Gay made it a bit more difficult to recover because I wasn't able to build those connections with other LGBT people. Like, as I would have liked because I wanted our calls have nothing to do with my life.

And almost every other gay person I knew wanted to be going up to the bar at the weekend. So yeah, I think it made it a bit more difficult. And in the end, I came to the conclusion that you've got to sort yourself out. You've got to learn to love yourself before, you know, trying to find a guy, just be single and learn to be happy in your own company. As RuPaul said, you can't love yourself. How are you going to love somebody else?

So I just sat with my singledom and I didn't specify like my friendships by age or sexuality. I just started socializing. People who wanted the same thing as me in life. And that was, you know, to have to enjoy the small things, to enjoy a sobriety, to build real friendships, not just, you know, friendships based around drinking. And I started organizing events in my own town. I couldn't find any sort of cafes that were open after 6:00 PM.

If you wanted to socialize in my town after 6:00 PM, especially on Fridays and Saturdays, when people were at work there, there were no options. Really. You could go to the cinema, which essentially involves sitting in silence next to someone. So that's not the best socializing after which you'd usually go to the pub. So you could talk cause he'd been sitting in silence for a couple of hours. So I started hosting my own sort of nights. On Saturday nights.

I put out a post in a local Facebook group saying, look I really I've stopped drinking. And since I stopped drinking I found that my social life has absolutely plummeted. Is would anybody else be interested in going. If I can find a cafe that's open going out and socializing with sort of live music and comedy, maybe on, on Saturday nights. And actually I got a, an overwhelming response. I thought maybe a couple of people would message me, but I'd had 12 people message me within an hour.

And then I kept on getting more messages to the point where I thought, okay, I'm going to just set up a Facebook group now because I'm not gonna be able to manage these conversations with all these different people. So I set up a Facebook group that within, within a week, 250 people that joined and within the month, I'd had a 500 people join in my town. People who wanted to socialize without alcohol. And so as I was blown away and I was like, okay, well I better do something about this.

Now I found myself a venue. A pop-up venue is a disused shop, which has now being sort of used as a community space. They got artists displaying art there. They've got like a little bar. I had to buy a load of drink. I did some fundraising for drinks because I spent all my money on alcohol and I'd got into debt. So and people started donating money to actually buy stock. And then I was contacting sort of companies that provides to alcohol free drinks.

And some of those provided me with three drinkers, welcome drinks. And I started running social events, sort of three out of four Saturdays. And I gave myself one, one Saturday a month after I'd have a comedy night. And that's been absolutely fantastic, actually is introduced me to people I would never have met before people who I can now call friends, somebody, I call my best friend. Now I met from attending one of those events.

And then there's loads of other people, if I'm ever sort of feeling. Or I need some help with something, even if it's something boring, like, oh God, I've got to move a load of stuff to the tip. Or I've got to take, which, sorry, the waste and recycling center I've discovered recently from Instagram that Americans don't call it, its tip. I've learned lots of things like that. And if I need help with things, there's people who just offered to help me with really boring things.

And like, I'm trying to think if I'd asked my friends from the pub or would you help me move some really bulky stuff for no pay just for, cause I need some help. They'd have said no, it's like no Betsy and the publisher. And I am really grateful for that, that friendship group it's been really difficult. In terms of attendance to some events, some of them have been really popular others. Haven't I had a cup an event just before Christmas. That was an absolute disaster.

We've got army Cron, various sort of running riot, and people have been very nervous about catching it and then having dice late at home, over Christmas. So I had one person turn up to the event, but actually that's that one person I'm really grateful. I've met cause we were staying in touch. So I don't regret it. I might've made a loss on my venue and I people were staying home so they don't get in. I it's something I'm going to continue. I want to do things slightly differently as well.

Today I went on a walk, it was raining. It's been disgusting. We went inside and we'd go for a nice sea front walk a couple of weeks ago, somebody else organized it. And it's been rainy and a bit windy and cold here, but four of us still turns up and we went through a bit of walk and we got drenched. And so we just cut it short and went into a cafe and had a brunch. And it was a brilliant day. I was like, I really didn't want to go.

It's like you, can't not turn up to an event that like is in the group that you set up. So you've got to go, Michael. So I went along reluctantly and two of the people I hadn't met before and the other person I had met and it was absolutely brilliant. We had brunch and, and then the conversation, it just. It was really quite outrageous. It was quite filthy in places.

And it was like, one of those conversations you'd have drunk in the park after you've had about four drinks and all your secrets come out and it's, and you're all cackling like witches. I mean, there were some truly, truly horrific stories that were told there and we all bonded and I felt like I'd had a, I got the endorphin rush out of it, half that bonding just from having poached egg on toast and two cups of coffee and really wacky creative conversations with three other people.

And I am so pleased. I went in because I came back buzzing from that, from that straw walk and breakfast. And I'm not going to organize any events in January. Cause it looks like we're going to have restrictions in place. So I'm just going to sort of relax and start thinking about, I want to do. A bit later in the air, but if nothing else, I've got an online community, who's there for each other.

If someone slipped up and other people are supportive and then some of them will never actually come to events, but others do. And we've got like a ready, made set of friends and we're going to do more walks. I'm going to organize my first camping trip to see. Cause it's something I love. And I've now know a few other sober people who love camping.

And I've got a bit more of a presence on Instagram now, and I've got some really good connections in the sort of the British sober community and who, who are willing to also plug maybe like a long camping retreat. And I found a site where we can do it. So that's something I'm really looking forward to this year is going on a camping retreat with sort of yoga. Yoga and till walking and sort of music in the yert.

So I'm going to release my inner hippie this year and I'm going to go on that retreat.

So my job opportunity went there and I went into public relations instead, but I've always still really enjoyed writing. And it's just for work these days when I write, it's usually about very boring things like waste collections and that sorts of things, I work for a local authority. So this gave me a creative outfit and I actually found I was enjoying it. And I went on to Instagram for the first time. Cause I thought that Instagram was for young people and there were.

And it's not actually it's for people my age and I just, I just really enjoyed the medium. I enjoyed putting it together, like posts on, you know, designing the artwork for them. Then I try and make my posts funny or engaging. And that's mainly it's for two reasons. Firstly sobriety can seem very dry. Sometimes it can seem quite joyless in early sobriety and we can always do with light relief.

And the second reason is because every time I've tried to do something seriously in life, I always, it always ends up being a bit of a joke. I always end up putting a comic spin on it, whether I like it or not, I've tried, I'm quite musical. And I've sort of tried to write serious songs in the past and they've always ended up as ridiculous parodies or something, very comical. And no matter what I try. I always end up doing stuff that makes people laugh.

And I, you know, I've thought, you know what? I can, I can do serious bits, but if I always end up making people laugh, that's not such a bad thing in sobriety. So let's actually use that to good use. Let's do some light-hearted posts or the posts that may be seem lighthearted, but they have still a an important or powerful message to them. So I started doing that and I've been sort of experimenting cause I had no experience of Instagram before.

I use the, the, the handle of happy without the hooch and that's because that's the sort of person I wanted to be. I was, I didn't just want to be someone who wasn't drinking and having a personal struggle to fight the demons every single day. I wanted to be someone who could be, who could not drink, but also be happy about the fact that they weren't drinking and have the lid to sort of life. Alcohol promised I wanted sobriety is delivering that for me.

And I want it to show people that things can be tough. You can see there was so much laughter and fun to be had. And I've had really good reception. And for me as well, I was doing, I, I, I post every day on Instagram because it builds community. But also I believe it helps keep me sober. I was saying someone recently, I've, I've never done any journaling. I know you're supposed to do journaling. When you say I'd ring up, I've never done any of that.

And then I thought I've been posting onto Instagram once a day, at least every day for the last several months on the topic of sobriety and addiction. So essentially I have actually been journaling. I, so I, I don't know why it never occurred to me that in fact, I was. With journaling it's just because it was on Instagram and it really does help me. I think, I suppose it's the one thing that I do every day that helps keep me clean and sober.

And I've gotten contact with so many other people throughout the UK, but also the U S in fact, I have more followers in the U S than I do in the UK. And it's, it's helped me build this global community. And the people I can chat to everyday who, people who check in on me, like, I didn't need to have people check in on me, like from my friends, from the pub, they'd check in to see if I was going to go to the pub, but they wouldn't check in to see if I was okay.

And if I'd been struggling with something, and now I've got people who do that every day and I check in on them, and that is just such a positive thing to have in having my life. And there's other people who struggle. They tell me about it and I can, you know, help motivate them or tell them not to beat them up. If they've slipped themselves up and give some tips from what I've. And I, one thing I love to do is share other people's stories of sobriety.

So why ask people to do is like, send me your, your story. I then helped to edit it and agree on a picture they can use and do a collab. And those are always my best performing posts is when people share their story of addiction and recovery, that is what always gets the most, the most engagement and the most positive response. And that's the thing I love doing more than anything else, because every day it reminds me of addiction of what I was going through and inspires me to stay sober.

And I think the more people we have recovering out loud, the more we can do to battle the huge stigma that still surrounds addiction. And it's a stigma that you don't have around other forms of illness. Okay. I'm still. I've I, I know there's questions as to whether alcoholism's a disease or not. Some people believe it is, or, and some people believe it isn't, you know what? I don't really care. It's it's something that makes people sick. It's a, it's a demon it's and there's a stigma around it.

And it's something that people struggle with. And the more it's stigmatized, the less likely they are to seek help and take action to build a better life for themselves. So I am all about breaking down, breaking down the stigma of addiction because so many people suffer in silence thinking they're the only one too ashamed to tell anyone that they've got a problem that they can't control it.

So I think sort of in the UK, and I think in the U S from what I've seen in media, there's been a lot more discussion about mental health in recent years, with people who are a lot more open talking about mental health. And that's a great. But we have not seen the same with addiction people aren't we don't talk about addiction in the workplace. Because you know, if we told people we're an alcoholic, we will be about losing our job is something you can't talk openly about.

But I think it's something that we need to talk openly about because everybody knows someone who's struggling with alcohol or drugs or both, and, and most people will have probably has a, a bad relationship with alcohol at some point where maybe they've drunk more than intended to. So I think it's a discussion that we need to have. And, and only by talking about it openly, will we ever dismantled this huge stigma? I

And that's because I think that's the amount of time that it actually takes to adjust to a big lifestyle change, which sobriety is. So if you're sober, curious, maybe actually. A 90 day challenge or a three month challenge, because that's where you're going to see sort of the real impacts and actually maybe start to be happy about the change, because I think life sober is beautiful.

Now. I think life sober, you're living life and fabulous Technicolor and sobriety delivers all those things that alcohol promised. And I would not have believed how fantastic my life is now. I do all the things that I used to only do when drunk, because I've now gained confidence. I've faced my. My demons have sort of anxiety. I don't worry about what people think about me. I combated my sort of social anxiety and nerves by doing improvised comedy course.

So I thought this is something that absolutely terrifies me. So the only way I'm going to get over this is to do stuff that terrifies me. So I did a course in improvised comedy and then stood in front of a paying crowd, doing comedy and something I never thought I'd be able to do without alcohol. And it really is so much better when you've put in that work, but don't expect results immediately. You've got a whole hard slog to do someone who's maybe struggling with alcohol and wanting to go.

So, but I think there, the advice I gave with be slightly different and I think we just got to take it back a bit. I think the most important advice I could give is to believe that recovery is possible for you, because if you don't believe it's possible for you, then you're not. You're not going to make it. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. If you enter going sober, not believing you can do it. You probably won't.

And if you really, after some deep diving into your beliefs and things, if you still cannot believe that recovery is possible for you, then be prepared to suspend belief, suspend your belief, go into it with an open mind and be prepared to prove yourself wrong, because I did not believe recovery was possible for me. And here I am at the moment, 10 months sober, which is 10 months more than I ever thought was possible.

So you get new episodes when they come out every Monday and Thursday, and then sell that time. Stay sober friends.