Blog #2 - Seven Days into a Sober Ski Season

Dry January started a month early for me as I prepared to venture back into an epicentre of alcohol, Après, and the fast-paced lifestyle of living in a French (but basically, British) ski resort. Even with a strong plan and a sober mission, you can’t shy away from the sheer busyness of resort life in the mountains whether you’re drinking or not. Balancing work, tons of socials and miles and miles of alpine terrain to cover, separated with nothing but lively restaurants blaring music and spraying champagne showers, I remembered that there’s a lot of plates to spin out here. When I worked on my first season for a chalet company, the first thing they said to us was this: “You can ski, work and drink, but you can only ever do two out of the three”. Wise words that couldn’t be more true - because something eventually has to give.

December’s decision to call it quits before Christmas came as a surprise to people around me, being the busiest time of the year for nights out, dinners, family events, work parties, birthdays, and the typical seasonal mayhem. In the midst of that, I decided that not drinking would be a challenge that would set me up for a good start to 2025, and if I could get through the holiday period, then anything was possible for the year ahead.

Drinking has been a massive part of my life for the last decade, but I’ve gone through several waves. For years I’ve had the lingering feelings that I should maybe reduce my intake - or even cut it out completely. The trouble is, for the most part (other than the occasional stint of dry January over the last 5 years), I’ve not committed longer than a few days at a time and I’ve broken thousands of promises to myself in the process. “I’ll stop after this weekend”, or “I’ll just wait till that birthday or event is out the way”. A lot of these events in the future have felt inescapable and I couldn’t even entertain the thought of doing them sober because drinking has become so ingrained in our lives, for any kind of scenario, ever.

It wasn’t easy, though, and the first outings were really quite testing. Not having that false confidence to lean on in new situations and having to repeatedly explain to people why you’re making this choice is a skill that has to be learned. You feel like you want to fold for convenience the second someone questions your decision-making, or when the person behind the bar doesn’t hear you and you have to repeat it even louder to draw even more attention to yourself.

After sampling 0% options at every event and stocking the fridge with Lucky Saint & Guinness 0, I soon realised that a lot of my habits around drinking weren’t actually even related to needing the alcohol itself, although for a long time I thought it might have been. It was more the act of planning, pouring, opening and first-sipping that I was taking from the experience more than anything. Keeping myself occupied in the evenings, often with a glass in my hand put me at ease, especially in social situations. What I didn’t realise was that what’s in the glass doesn’t matter to me as much as I thought it did.

Drinking large amounts fairly regularly meant that my tolerance was pretty high, and I had simply slipped into the habit of having a drink on any given day, whether there was an occasion to or not. The ritual of marking the end of the day or finishing the working week seemed to be intertwined with what felt like a compulsory, well-deserved drink. I wasn’t even giving myself the option of not having it – it was just a habitual given, and something I’ve done since a teenager.

But, when you’re flirting with the idea of trying to launch an alcohol-free brand at the same time, the juxtaposition of needing to unwind with a contradictory cold one became too ironic to continue.  This feeling left me with a decision to make. It was one or the other, and the curiosity of what my life could become without being held back by bad habits let my mind run wild.

As most of us know when scrolling through Instagram or TikTok, our timelines are filled with motivational people, highlighting all of the extreme methods for drastic self-improvement, each encouraging a series of recommended non-negotiables. I found myself watching this stuff constantly, with a genuine aspiration to employ some of these tactics in my own life, but as soon as the phone went down before bed, I’d forgotten or simply couldn’t be bothered by the morning, often after some bad quality sleep after a few drinks.

After battling with a stream of health anxiety that started a few winters ago, the constant to-and-fro between being overly worried about my health, whilst simultaneously doing everything possible to self-sabotage with negative choices and over-indulgence created a really vicious and toxic loop in my life. The one thing I had never fully removed for a decent period of time in this stage of my life was alcohol. I would use it as a distraction away from how I was feeling at the time, in a poor trade for tomorrow’s peace and wellbeing, time after time after time.

I finally came to the conclusion that I needed to stop taking the easy way out, and tried to commit to being more disciplined in my life for change. “If you always do what you’ve always done then you’ll always get what you’ve already got” became a sort of mantra. When I stopped for long enough to reflect on the last few years of my life, I was genuinely astounded at some of the things I’ve been able to achieve or opportunities I have created whilst drinking at the volume and frequency that I have been, and it begged the question: “If I can do all of this in that state, what could I do without being held back by anything”.

I also realised that people don’t tend to ask too many questions if you still look as though you’re drinking, but the hardest times were making an order at the bar or having to decline at a table. I wasn’t trying to make a big deal of the fact that I was taking a step back, but people naturally ask questions when they hear you aren’t going for your usual poison.

I’ve been so surprised at how easily people have accepted my recent choice to go sober, as in many crowds of friends, family, and colleagues I’ve been known as a fairly big drinker for a number of years. I was expecting more pushback of people thinking I couldn’t do it, or that it wouldn’t last, but when you tell people you’re trying to really live the ideal experience that you hope you can encourage others to try, people respect the decision more than I thought. Of course, you still get the occasional joke or “It’s only one” friend who wants you to have a drink with them, but I’ve learned that if you stick to your guns enough times then you gain power in your decision making. You carry that momentum into each situation, and it gets easier and easier to say “No” once you’ve had a few wins behind you. And, on the whole, people really do drop it after the first couple of times.