How to have fun (without alcohol)

I’ve been back on the booze but now I want an alcohol-free month (‘Sober October’). Let’s talk about how to make it actually fun…

Not so long ago, I wrote an article about deciding to give up alcohol, offering tips for others who’d like to do the same. I’d decided that alcohol was detracting from my life rather than adding to it and that now was the time to stop. Forever.

Initially, I felt the liberation that newly-sober people talk about: no guilt, less tiredness, you can drive at any time of the day and night, if you need to. My skin was better, I had more energy, patience, tolerance. Lots of very good things.

But I also experienced moments when I thought: hmmm, a glass of wine would be really nice right now and would actually enhance this moment. Like when sat in the garden of a Cornish holiday home, late afternoon, while my kids played on the lawn.

I refrained for most of the week and then on the last couple of days of our Cornish holiday, after 32 alcohol-free days, I decided to have a pint on the beach. I felt naughty. But not guilty. I enjoyed it, and it did indeed enhance those moments.

At first, I thought I’d continue like that - one drink, occasionally - but old habits started to creep back in and then on Saturday night, at a friend’s 40th, I had about five-too-many drinks and decided to go sober again.

So I woke up yesterday, on Sunday 1st October, and thought: brilliant, today I feel like utter shit but I will now do ‘Sober October’ and enjoy returning to that fresh, energised state I was in back in July before going to Cornwall.

What I realised, though, is that last time I stopped drinking, I stopped having so much fun. I continued doing soothing rituals like breathwork, meditation, palo santo smudging, paddling in rivers. But I didn’t have fun.

At the party on Saturday, there was a guy about my age on rollerskates. He was rollerskating around the dance floor giving zero fucks. That looked fun. And that’s the energy I want to bring to my own life.

So, here’s how I’m scheduling in FUN (a new value) for October.

I’ve got an actual fun planner because that’s how ‘fun’ I am. And I’d love you to download it and use it yourself, as well as tell me, in the comments, how you’re going to inject more fun into your life - what activities you’ll be doing - because we can inspire each other.