Alcohol wasn’t fun anymore — so I decided to ‘quiet quit’

‘Twas It So Easy –

Dec. 28, 2024 – For Christine Coulson, a lifetime of drinking ended with one final cocktail-filled Christmas, and a New Year’s resolution she was determined to stick to.

‘I’d been telling myself my drinking was fine for a long time,’ she tells Metro. ‘But I wasn’t allowing myself to live a good life, because I was making the decision to sit on my sofa to drink. ‘I drank more at university, but that was fine because didn’t everyone?’ she says.

‘When I graduated and got a job in the finance industry in London, the boozy lunches could last all afternoon. One ‘lunch’ lasted 16 hours and that was normal. Everyone was at it, so it was fine.

‘I liked a glass of wine and thought champagne added to any occasion. I headed to the pub after work to wait for rush hour to end, not because I had a drinking problem.’

In 2012, aged 32, Christine left London and moved to Yorkshire, retraining as a radiographer.

‘I didn’t drink every day and never drank on work days. I drank alone at home sometimes, but not a crazy amount,’ she says. ‘On my days off, I couldn’t have one glass and go to bed knowing the rest of the bottle was in the fridge, but that was fine.’