‘I don’t miss pre-dawn pints at the airport’

Paul Sullivan reveals how giving up alcohol has made him a more appreciative traveller – and set him on a journey of self-discovery Giving up was like learning to walk again. I was filled with trepidation without the crutch of alcohol

The most awkward moment of my new life of sobriety occurred in Russia in 2019 – back in the good old days when we could gather fearlessly in small venues – at a swanky cocktail bar in Moscow. A traditional drinks menu was trendily superseded by an explanation of the bar’s concept from a bearded barman. At the end of a five-minute monologue extolling the benefits of handmade syrups, seasonal mixers and boutique spirits, I had to explain demurely that I was teetotal.

A momentary look of confusion on his face dissolved into disbelief and, a second later, stunned laughter – loud, dry, incredulous laughter that ricocheted around the bar like a thunderclap, turning the heads of nearby patrons. He hadn’t meant it in any offensive way, he explained. It was just that the concept of being alcohol-free was strange to him, and more so in a cocktail bar; the irony of the bar being called voda (“water”) did not escape us. The dainty, alcohol-free strawberry martini he made for me completed my emasculation in the eyes of the liquorswilling punters all around me.

Despite such episodes, the past year or so of living and travelling without booze has been wholly positive. There has been a distinct lack of peer group pressure, not least because I am in my mid-40s and people don’t expect me to be necking Jägerbombs and swaggering around drunkenly.

Not to mention the fact that bars, cafés and clubs across Europe and beyond have been emptied by Covid19 – a wholly unexpected phenomenon that has none the less been a positive for many people wanting to shuck off the shackles of peer pressure. There are dedicated alcohol-free establishments in London, Dublin and Berlin.

Not that achieving, and maintaining, sobriety has been easy overall. Like millions of fellow Britons before and after me, I discovered alcohol in my mid-teens, when its power to boost self-confidence seemed miraculous.

It got us introverted kids talking to girls, impressing our friends with bold antics, and rushing enthusiastically towards the dance floor.

Alcohol stayed in my life like a faithful dog until I quit in late 2018 – a three-decade career of steady alcohol consumption that I never questioned. Why would I? From births, weddings and funerals through to school discos, after-work shindigs and casual dinner parties, alcohol is omnipresent to the point where – to use a well-known phrase in sober circles – it is the only drug we have to justify not taking.

I would have continued to imbibe without much thought if life hadn’t started to go awry around 2016. A series of painful and (mostly) unexpected life events – the disintegration of a long-term relationship; the theft of my photography equipment; a legal battle; and my mother being diagnosed with cancer – had me against the ropes like never before. I drowned my sorrows with booze. By the end of 2018 – a full year after watching my mother die – I was drinking more than ever, and feeling powerless to improve my life.

I knew alcohol was making me feel worse rather than better. Desperate for change, in December 2018 I joined the (excellent, highly recommended) One Year No Beer Challenge, and started a WhatsApp group with a few friends, who also felt they were drinking too much. We limped miserably through Dry January but, by the end, felt good enough to continue to a 90-day stint. That turned into a whole year for most of us – the longest break of our adult lives – and none of us have looked back.

Giving up was like learning to walk again. I was filled with trepidation as I ventured to pubs, concerts, theatres, cinemas, nightclubs, even dates, without the crutch of alcohol. After overcoming the initial awkwardness, I began to feel calmer, kinder and clearer minded, more positive and present.

One wholly unexpected change is how I have approached and enjoyed travel. Our world is flooded with imagery connecting alcohol with enjoyment, and travel is hardly an exception. We dream of sipping piña coladas on postcard-perfect beaches or clutching elegant martini glasses as we look out over twinkling cities from rooftop bars.

Fine dining is inextricably entwined with the idea of fine wines, and backpacker hostels offer free bar crawls.

There is even that idea that a holiday isn’t properly under way until you have had a pre-dawn pint at the airport or an in-flight G&T. And yet every single one of my half-dozen trips in the past year were 100 per cent devoid of alcohol and correspondingly more enjoyable.

First, they were better organised – which leads, naturally, to a less stressful experience. For most of my life I had thought of myself as a hopelessly lastminute type, with mad dashes to the airport or train station accepted as unavoidable. Nowadays I arrive in enough time to enjoy a coffee and croissant, and to people-watch for a while. I have also long had a maddening, absent-minded tendency to forget and lose things during trips: items of clothing in various hotel rooms; so many pairs of sunglasses in airport lavatories and longdistance train compartments that I stopped buying them in 2017; and, perhaps the most (ie, least) impressive: losing my wallet on a flight home from Iceland, despite having bought drinks and snacks with it.

Nowadays I lose and forget very little – and when I do, my response is calmer and more rational. My behaviour was mostly hangover-related.

Then there is the matter of being more present for my 11-year-old son – especially on a couple of holidays last year, one of them to Reykjavík. It was summer – which meant long days full of Nordic light and crisp, fresh air – and we made the most of it. We visited Viking museums and took dips in the city’s hot pools, went on mountainbike rides along the winding coastline, explored ice caves on glaciers, and even did a spot of horse riding through the lava-covered countryside. No