Who am I without alcohol?

Sometimes our characters seem to be intertwined with alcohol.

The party animal.

The wine connoisseur.

The drinking legend.

The life and soul.

Maybe you're just always the one who's up for a drink, or you're the organiser of every boozy brunch or girls' weekend. We build these little identities around drinking without even realising it. It happens so gradually you don't notice it happening.

And when you've been that person for years, even for decades, the thought of stepping away from alcohol can feel like stepping away from yourself.

Will I still be fun without it?

Will people still want me around?

What if I turn up to things and I'm just... quiet. Boring. Forgettable.

It's such a common fear, and such an understandable one. I hear some version of it from nearly every woman I work with. But I'd like you to sit with a different question for a minute.

Who were you before alcohol came into the picture?

Think back to being fourteen, fifteen, before that first drink.

What did you love back then?

What made you laugh so hard you couldn't breathe?

What were you curious about, brave enough to try, excited to become?

Maybe you were the girl who wrote stories, or the one who could talk to absolutely anyone, or the one who was fearless on a bike, or endlessly patient with her little brother. Whatever it was, it existed entirely without a drink in your hand. That version of you wasn't dull.

Who might you have become if drinking had never been part of your story?

Not a duller version of yourself. Someone with more time, more energy, more money, more clarity. Someone who actively pursued the things she discussed for years, rather than just talking about them over another bottle of Sauvignon. Someone who remembers every single night out, start to finish, instead of piecing bits of it together the next morning from someone else's account.

I think a lot of us are a little scared that underneath the party animal or the wine connoisseur, there's just... nothing. That the personality was always the drink talking, and without it we'll be flat, forgettable, hard work to be around.

But that's not what I see in the women I work with, not even close. What I actually see is someone rediscovering a version of herself that was there all along, just a bit buried under the bottle. Sharper. Funnier, even. More herself, not less.

Do you really want a drink to define you?

The definition of Alcohol is a toxic and psychoactive substance with dependence-producing properties. And I think it's worth asking honestly whether you want that to be the thing that defines you.

Alcohol might feel like it lends you something, confidence, humour and a joi de vivre...for a while, but you pay it back with interest, in the form of hangovers and anxiety.

You Are So Much More Than What's In Your Glass

The wit, the warmth, the way you show up for the people you love, none of that came from a bottle.

So if you're standing at that crossroads right now, wondering who you'll be without alcohol, you're asking the wrong question. The real question is "Who will you finally get to be without alcohol. Because she's in there. She always was.