On 20 September 2013, I drank my last alcoholic drink. As a nurse who cares for liver disease patients, I had seen the physical impact of booze, but also the psychological and social impacts – I knew I had to stop.
My own drinking started when I was a teenager and had slowly increased over 25 years, from light social drinking to drinking heavily every day. I had become psychologically dependent on booze – all attempts to try to moderate my drinking had failed. I have two young children, and I didn't want them to experience what I did growing up. As a child, I remember finding my parents passed out in the garden in the middle of the day, drunk. I had been terrified for them.
I remember going to a barbecue with friends. They were the perfect hosts and our wine glasses remained topped up all day. By about 7.30pm, I was beginning to feel worse for wear and asked my husband if we could leave. He didn't realise what a state I was close to being in, and said that the kids were still having a ball so we should stay.
I went and passed out on the sofa. Later, we walked home with the children – I was reeling, and remember cannoning off the verges and falling over many times. I even stopped to spend a penny – in front of my kids. I remember crawling up the stairs on my hands and knees and passing out cold.
I had done the very thing I swore to myself I would never do to my own kids.
It wasn't rock bottom, as such – it took me another four months to stop – but it was part of a slow realisation that my self-esteem, and my confidence in my ability to function without booze, had been completely eroded.
Alcohol is a silent public health epidemic, and both my professional and personal lives have shown me just how true this is. It feels like our whole country has an issue with booze. 85% of the population drink, and although the message from the drinks industry is always one of 'responsibility', I've never drunk moderately in my entire life - and neither have most of the people I know.
Most of my family and friends don't acknowledge that my husband and I don't drink any more. We have had some very negative reactions to our sobriety, as if we're snubbing those we socialise with. People seem to take it personally, like it says something about their drinking habits rather being a reflection of a change we wanted to make in our own lives. People will try very hard to get you to have 'just one', as if, if we're all in the same boat - all 'just having a swift half' - then we don't have to think about what it's doing to our health.
Alcohol is ingrained in our society because it is our first response to anything and everything. Birth, wedding, divorce, funeral? Have a drink. Christmas, New Year, birthday? A large one. Good day at work, bad day at home with the kids? Celebrating or commiserating? Open a bottle. It's like we don't know how to connect or express ourselves emotionally without involving alcohol. A few glasses of wine will lubricate that deep-and-meaningful you've been meaning to have with a friend for ages, or get your boss on side in the pub after work, won't it? Alcohol is woven into our everyday lives, and picking up a bottle at the supermarket is as ubiquitous as getting milk and bread. Drinking is so normalised in this country that not to do so marks you out as 'weird'.
There's an old adage that says 'you only have a drink problem if you drink more than your MP or your GP', and with the House of Commons spending £1.4m on alcohol to stock their bars in two years, one has to question how seriously the political class takes this issue. At your GP's surgery, you will be offered an Alcohol Brief Intervention if you drink more than the recommended unit guidelines and will be advised to cut down a bit, but that's about it. It feels like nobody is taking our country's escalating drinking problem seriously.
Things are starting to change, though. There are lots of resources appearing online to support people who want to cut down or stop completely. There are hundreds of sober bloggers just like me, there are online communities like Soberistas, and a new documentary film called - which looks at how alcohol has become such a big part of British culture - is due to premier in London shortly. And maybe, this Alcohol Awareness Week, we should all think about how much we drink, why, and whether we could stop.
Guest posts
Guest post: 'The moment I knew I had to give up drinking'
MumsnetGuestPosts · 20/11/2014 10:55
Laly, I'm so sorry to hear that 
I'm also completely teetotal after losing a relative who was killed by a drunk driver. I hate being around drunk people and can't bear the smell of alcohol.
My DH and I often feel socially awkward because everyone expects you to drink alcohol and we are definitely made to seem like the odd ones out by asking for soft drinks wherever we go.
A well-written blog. Thank you for sharing it. I wish you well in your sobriety - and everyone else treading the same path. I wish more people would recognise that alcohol is a poison, and it is possible to relax or have fun without it.
I knew 5 people who died as a direct result of drinking too much over a long period. Oesophageal cancer x2, alcohol poisoning/aspirating vomit, cirrhosis, haemorrhage of oesophageal varices (engorged veins in the throat). Nice, eh, but at least they only killed themselves. We'll gloss over the effect on the 8 children involved, shall we?
I've had, oooh, about 1 unit in the last 10 years. It kind of doesn't appeal any more.
to laly, I think it was, for your loss.
Bluetrews thank you :) It is actually my 600th day without a glass of poison today 
There has been another loss in my world very recently because of this substance leaving 3 children without one parent - but the drinks industry don't advertise that bit do they?
Sapat you could replace it with cake and it would make sense you are right and that often is how I celebrate now. It is up to people to moderate their intake but alcohol is an addictive substance which can override that ability to moderate.
Thank you to all of you for commenting further :)
Yes that's true claraschu I usually drink cranberry juice in a pub with friends, and say nothing about drinking alcohol or not. But I'm used to getting 
looks because I also eat very healthily!
I don't care, I hate hangovers and I like looking younger than my age and being much healthier than my friends!
It seems for several of us having children naturally decreased our alcohol consumption. Plus I feel too old to be hungover. I am not teetotal in principle, I just do not drink alcohol. On the rare occasions the extended family eats in a pub, I just have coffee.
Congrats to all of you giving it up and all the best! My Dad has given up 41 years ago, and he says never regretted it a bit - it can be done!
This reply has been deleted
Message withdrawn at poster's request.
Dad Congrats on 5 months and your story sounds eerily familiar :) Yet another bloody awful hangover check clean without drink check bailing out of an increasingly worsening situation check and now pleased rather than embarrassed check Congrats on your 10 year stint and your newer 5 months! It is also an issue for women in a social setting as I don't want to look conspicuous either and I just found 0% San Miguel in Tesco's - very nice :) Small things indeed! We're all hanging out on the Dry 7 thread if you want to join us?
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