'What I Learned When I Stopped Drinking

In the spirit of #DryJanuary (we know you’re thinking about it!), we explored the experiences and insights of people who have taken a break from alcohol for anything from a month to forever…

- Marli Meyer

My birthday is at the end of February, so I’d go dry until then. Eventually I started doing “Ocsober”, too. By 2016, I’d go dry almost every second month. By silly season, there were loads of events with free drinks, and things started escalating. I thought: “I can’t drink at all these events; I just can’t drink so often during the week.” It became tiring.

So I decided I’d drink only on special occasions (Christmas, my dad’s 60th, New Year), but after December I decided to leave it altogether because it’s so hard to decide what’s a special occasion and what isn’t. I gradually drank less and less, and eventually I thought, “Why drink at all?”

People are usually freaked out by the idea – you spend most of your time justifying your decision. They want to know why, and always assume the worst: they think you caused an accident or ended up in jail or something. And they’re constantly trying to convince you to drink.

The biggest thing I learnt was that I’m actually an introvert – I don’t like socialising in big groups as much or as often as I thought I did. It was as if I’d discovered a new personality. Over the past year, I’ve realised that I’ve been going out less and less. People think it’s because it’s not fun for me to see other people drinking or because I’ll be tempted by alcohol. It’s not that. I just realised I didn’t ever like going out that much. Even when I was drinking, I preferred seeing a friend for dinner or a braai.

At first I was a bit depressed, because I was scared I might lose my friends or my social life. With alcohol taken out of the equation, half the incentive was gone. It’s hard for me to socialise in a big group when I’m not drunk; that was never actually me – it was just Drunk Me.