LOVE ON THE NATCH –
June 26, 2025 – I love queer bars. I love meeting new people, squeezing around a table, and talking and laughing spontaneously. That first pint of the night used to feel so freeing, until it felt compulsory. Everyone’s sobriety journey is different and layered with deeply personal factors.
My drinking was never out of control. At my ‘worst’, I was only drinking two to three nights a week. But it felt like my social life revolved around alcohol, and I could feel the effects lingering in my body days later. Beginning with a 30-day sober stunt in May 2022, I gradually reduced my drinks down to five a week, and then five a month. In 2024, I had less than 20 drinks all year. I felt good about this amount, but if I’m being honest, I was torturing myself.
Even though I was only averaging a couple drinks per month, I was thinking about alcohol constantly. At every social event, I agonised over whether a drink was worth it. I was doing mental gymnastics over a glass of wine, and it was exhausting. We tend to associate alcohol with rebellion, freedom, and uninhibited joy. When I spotted a coffee mug that said, “sobriety delivers everything alcohol promised”, it just clicked for me, I wanted to experience freedom from alcohol.
