How Sobriety Became a Secret Weapon for Young Creatives

AND OLD CREATIVES TOO –

Feb. 8, 2024 – For filmmaker Molly Manning-Walker – whose astonishing and critically-acclaimed debut film How to Have Sex perfectly distils British drinking culture – her experience with drinking was a little like her film characters. She was drawn to alcohol early on – like a lot of Brits, she was partying in her early teens, getting blackout down the park with her mates.

But I realised I had lacked an off button.” In her second year of uni, she took a step back.

How to Have Sex wouldn’t have been made had Molly, now 30, not been sober. “It became my fix in another way,” she explains. “I didn’t drink while we were shooting because I knew how easy it was for me to spiral.” Sobriety altered her perception of what she was filming. “It was quite an out-of-body experience going back to those party towns, so I kind of wanted to [experience] them in a different light.” After the film, she returned to drinking casually here and there – there were plenty of premieres, and industry parties. But sobriety was there in the background; a state of mind to return to.

I can relate to Molly. We’re the same age, and both grew up in London partying from our early teenage years. When I started writing my first book, All the Things She Said, I thought I’d be able to work, write and carry on drinking as usual. But a few chapters in and it quickly became clear that the creative part of my brain just wasn’t working on a hangover. Thoughts become sludgy. Days slip away from you.