The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober: THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

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When she’s not writing, Catherine can generally be found taking 20 identical pictures of the sunset, wondering why she’s always the sweatiest person in yoga, fighting her ‘spend it all’ financial urges or scanning the body language of strangers to see if it’s okay to pet their dog.

But I struggle in social situations—people always seem SO disappointed when I decline a glass of wine! I met Catherine online in a secret non-drinking Facebook group 8 years ago, when she was first starting her life without alcohol and she has been an inspiration to me ever since. Yes, and it’s also the machine, you know, the giant marketing machinery around alcohol, like, for instance, that I’m sure it’s the same in the States, but the alcohol brands are still allowed to sponsor sports and they’ve done something really interesting this year and that they’ve started, you know, using there’s zero proof that you know, zero brewed beer, it but I think that’s a preemptive strike. The younger you are, the less you drink, which is just completely the opposite to how it’s traditionally been. A panicked PR woke up her colleague on one of many disastrous press trips because he had seen Gray drunkenly take three men back to her room.Gray’s drinking began at 13 when she was clubbing in Wolverhampton three nights a week and continued after moving to London to work for Cosmopolitan magazine. Unfortunately, too many people mix these definitions like a cocktail and consider sobriety to be boring.

I mean, I think it did feel a lot like recovery for, I would say, the first four or so years, because my brain and body was been so bashed about my alcohol, and your brain literally has to recover.

It never ceases to amaze me that although I choose not to drink, I spend a lot of time reading about how and why people don’t and their journeys of recovery. Firstly, although I had no intention of giving up booze, I find that I've not felt the urge to drink while reading it or since finishing. And a fifth of British adults think similarily, since they’re also teetotal, according to the latest Office for National Statistics figures. It’s part of being an adult and bonding and, and then there’s the marketing and then your friends keep reinforcing it too. But just just circumstances, I mean, I think if my life had if things had been different than I probably would have drank for longer, you know, I suddenly found myself in a situation where I was freelancing in a terrible toxic relationship and could drink all they ever wanted to.