In the beginning, understandably, it takes up a lot of space. How do I get through Friday night without drinking? What do I say when someone offers me a glass of wine? Why am I craving alcohol at five o’clock? Will I ever be able to go on holiday, celebrate a birthday or sit in a restaurant without feeling as though something is missing?

For a while, learning how not to drink is the work.

And then, eventually, you get quite good at it.

Alcohol stops occupying quite so much mental real estate. You stop counting every day. You don’t automatically scan a restaurant menu for what you’re going to drink. Friday becomes Friday rather than an obstacle to navigate. An alcohol-free life starts to feel less like something you’re doing and more like simply the way you live.

But life doesn’t become easier simply because you stopped drinking.

There are still difficult relationships and work pressures and money worries. There are children who need things from you when you have nothing left to give. There are hormones and grief and uncertainty and loneliness and arguments and disappointments and mornings when you’ve slept badly and days when everybody seems to want a piece of you.

Sobriety removes alcohol.

It doesn’t remove being human.

And perhaps this is where some of the most interesting work actually begins.

Because for many of us, alcohol wasn’t simply something we drank. It was something we used.

We used it to create a full stop at the end of the day. To move ourselves from work mode into home mode. To soften anxiety. To make social situations easier. To reward ourselves for getting through something difficult. To take the edge off anger or disappointment. To quieten a mind that wouldn’t stop thinking.

Sometimes we used it simply because we didn’t know what else to do with the way we felt.

We don’t need to diagnose ourselves or adopt a label to recognise that. Behaviours serve functions, and alcohol is remarkably good at appearing to perform several of them at once.

Take away the behaviour and the need it was meeting doesn’t necessarily disappear.

You still need to come down after a difficult day.

You still need to tolerate frustration.

You still need pleasure and connection and rest.

You still need to know what to do when you’re angry or anxious or lonely.

You still need somewhere for stress to go.

Increasingly, this is where my work as a coach has taken me.

Of course I work with alcohol. Sobriety remains the foundation of everything I do. But I’m becoming less interested in teaching people how to spend the rest of their lives resisting alcohol and much more interested in what makes that resistance increasingly unnecessary.

And a huge part of that is stress resilience.

I think we’ve slightly misunderstood resilience.

We often describe someone as resilient when what we really mean is that they can tolerate an enormous amount of shit without falling apart, (I used to really resent being called ‘resilient’….I didn’t want to be known as the person who could take so much shit and still be standing).

They keep going. They cope. They push through. They don’t let people down. They get everything done regardless of how exhausted they are.

Women, particularly, can become exceptionally accomplished at this.

But I’m not sure that’s resilience.

Sometimes it’s chronic stress with excellent organisational skills.

Actual resilience is much more flexible.

A resilient nervous system isn’t one that remains permanently calm. That’s neither realistic nor particularly desirable. We need activation. We need our bodies to respond when something requires our attention. Stress is not inherently bad; it’s part of the machinery that allows us to meet challenge.

The important part is what happens next.

Can we experience activation without immediately needing to escape it?

Can we recognise when our capacity is becoming depleted?

Can we respond rather than simply react?

And when the thing requiring us to mobilise has passed, can we actually come back down?

That last question interests me enormously because I think many of us have become very good at activation and surprisingly bad at recovery.

We live in a culture that celebrates the activation side of life. More goals. More productivity. More exercise. More discipline. Better morning routines. Push yourself. Challenge yourself. Become a better version of yourself.

We are considerably less comfortable with stopping.

And yet adaptation requires both.

If you train a muscle, the exercise provides the stimulus, but the adaptation happens during recovery. Continually applying stress without allowing recovery doesn’t make the muscle infinitely stronger. Eventually it breaks down.

Humans aren’t so different.

One of the things I teach in coaching is that stress changes the number of choices available to us.

Think about the difference between yourself after a good night’s sleep, when you’ve eaten properly, had some time outside and generally feel okay, and yourself after four nights of poor sleep, three unresolved problems, too much work and somebody asking you for one more bloody thing.

The same irritating comment can produce two completely different responses.

The comment hasn’t changed.

Your available capacity has.

When we’re highly activated, our world becomes smaller. Our reactions become faster and more automatic. We reach for the things that have reliably changed our internal state before.

For some people that’s food. For others it’s scrolling, shopping, working, withdrawing, controlling, exploding, endlessly keeping busy.

And for many of us, historically, it was alcohol.

This is one of the reasons I don’t particularly like the idea that long-term sobriety should be an endless exercise in willpower.

If the strategy is simply I must not drink, every stressful experience becomes another opportunity to test how well we can resist.

I’m much more interested in asking:

What would make alcohol feel less necessary in the first place?

That question takes us somewhere very different.

It takes us into sleep and nourishment and movement. Into boundaries and relationships. Into emotional regulation and self-compassion. Into connection and meaning and rest.

And it takes us into one of the most useful skills I’ve learned: creating a little space between feeling something and doing something about it….the power of the pause.

I’m angry.

I’m overwhelmed.

I’m lonely.

I’m anxious.

I want to make this feeling stop.

There is a tiny moment available to us between the experience and our response.

Sometimes it is very tiny indeed.

But we can learn to make it bigger.

We can notice what is happening in the body. We can notice the story the mind immediately produces. We can notice the urge to make the discomfort disappear.

And then we can decide what happens next.

That doesn’t mean sitting serenely with every emotion while breathing deeply and pretending everything is fine.

Sometimes the appropriate response to stress is action.

Sometimes you need to say no.

Sometimes you need to leave.

Sometimes you need to have the difficult conversation you’ve been avoiding.

Sometimes you need to cry.

Sometimes you need another person.

Sometimes you genuinely need to lie on the sofa and do absolutely nothing.

Regulation isn’t the same thing as calmness.

It’s the ability to respond appropriately to what is actually happening rather than automatically reaching for whatever has historically made the feeling go away fastest.

And perhaps that’s why I’ve also become increasingly interested in the difference between restoration and escape.

They can look remarkably similar from the outside.

Both can involve stopping.

Both can provide relief.

Both can feel pleasurable.

But one gives something back to us.

The other mainly allows us to disappear for a while.

Alcohol was very good at creating the sensation that we’d switched off. That didn’t necessarily mean we’d recovered.

And alcohol certainly isn’t the only way we do this. We can spend two hours scrolling and call it rest. We can binge a television series because we’re exhausted and emerge four hours later somehow even more exhausted. We can fill every spare moment with noise because silence would require us to notice how we actually feel.

There is no moral judgement required here.

I just think it’s an interesting question to ask ourselves:

Does this restore me, or does it simply help me escape myself for a while?

Maybe this is part of what comes after sobriety.

Because I don’t believe the ultimate goal of getting sober is becoming exceptionally good at not drinking.

Surely the point is eventually getting to think about alcohol less.

To use the space sobriety creates to learn something about ourselves.

To recognise our stress responses before we’re completely overwhelmed by them. To understand our limits. To tolerate discomfort without assuming it needs to disappear immediately. To create boundaries before resentment creates them for us. To let other people support us instead of wearing self-sufficiency as a badge of honour.

To rest before collapse makes the decision on our behalf.

To experience difficult things without needing to abandon ourselves to get through them.

This has been on my mind a lot recently because I’m preparing for our Sobriety Sisterhood retreat in Bali this October.

I’ve been thinking about what I want seven days together to actually be for.

And I realised I don’t want to take a group of alcohol-free women halfway around the world to spend a week talking about alcohol.

Our sobriety matters. It’s what creates the space and safety in which we’re able to do this work together.

But I want to explore what becomes possible because of it.

So this year’s Bali retreat will be centred around stress resilience.

We’ll spend the week moving through awareness, regulation, capacity, choice, connection, recovery and finally integration.

We’ll explore how stress actually shows up in each of us, because it doesn’t always look like panic or anxiety. Sometimes it looks like irritation. Sometimes control. Sometimes overworking. Sometimes withdrawing. Sometimes taking care of absolutely everybody except ourselves.

We’ll explore the pause between feeling and reaction. We’ll look at boundaries and relationships and co-regulation. We’ll explore what it means to gently increase our capacity for discomfort rather than arranging our lives around avoiding it.

And we’re going to practise rest.

Actual rest.

Not collapse. Not numbing. Not disappearing.

Recovery.

Even the daily yoga will follow the same journey. Grounding when we’re learning to notice. Balance when we’re exploring the pause. Strength when we’re exploring capacity. Connection when we’re thinking about relationships. Restorative practice when we’re learning that recovery isn’t something we have to earn.

I want the ideas to be experienced in the body rather than simply understood intellectually.

Because it’s relatively easy to feel regulated when you’re sitting somewhere beautiful in Bali with nowhere else you need to be.

The real question comes afterwards.

Can you find your way back to yourself on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon when you’re tired, your inbox is ridiculous, somebody needs something from you and life is resolutely refusing to cooperate?

Perhaps that’s the definition of resilience I’ve been looking for.

Not:

Nothing affects me.

But:

Things affect me, and I know how to find my way back.

If you’d like to explore this work with me in Bali, I’ll be taking a small group of alcohol-free women away for seven days this October. There will be yoga, reflection, sharing, adventure, connection and — importantly — space to stop. You can find out more about the Bali retreat here.

And you don’t need to come to Bali to begin this work.

Stress resilience, emotional regulation and building a sustainable alcohol-free life are increasingly central to my one-to-one coaching. If you’ve stopped drinking — or you’re trying to — but you’re beginning to realise that removing alcohol hasn’t removed the things you were using it to cope with, this is exactly the kind of work we can explore together.

You can find out more about working with me here.

Because perhaps the next stage isn’t becoming better at resisting the urge to escape.

Perhaps it’s building a life, and a relationship with yourself, that you don’t need to keep escaping from.

One of the biggest misconceptions about early sobriety is that success comes down to willpower.

We often imagine that getting through the first few weeks is simply a case of gritting our teeth, resisting cravings and hoping we’ll come out the other side.

In my experience, that’s only a small part of the story.

Whether you’ve been drinking heavily for years or you’re a grey area drinker who simply wants a healthier relationship with alcohol, the first few weeks without it ask something of both your brain and your body. You’re not just removing a drink; you’re removing something your nervous system has often come to rely on for relaxation, reward, celebration, confidence or escape.

That doesn’t mean alcohol was helping you.

It means your brain had adapted to its presence.

The encouraging news is that our brains are remarkably adaptable. Given the right conditions, they begin repairing themselves surprisingly quickly. Whilst we can’t fast-track that process, we can absolutely support it.

This is why I encourage my coaching clients to think less about relying on willpower and more about creating the conditions that make recovery easier. Simple lifestyle habits—prioritising rest, staying hydrated, nourishing your body, moving gently and seeking connection—won’t remove every craving, but they can reduce unnecessary stress on a nervous system that’s already working hard to adapt.

The first 30 days aren’t about becoming a completely new person.

They’re about giving your brain and body the support they need to heal.

Here are the lifestyle foundations I encourage almost every client to prioritise during those first few weeks.

1. Give Yourself Permission to Rest

This is probably the advice people expect the least.

Many people decide to stop drinking and simultaneously decide to lose weight, train for a marathon, renovate the house, meditate for an hour every morning and become a completely different person.

I understand the temptation.

Stopping drinking often brings a huge surge of motivation.

But recovery is work.

Your brain is recalibrating neurotransmitters that have been repeatedly influenced by alcohol. Your nervous system is learning to regulate itself without a substance that may have become part of your evening routine. Even if you were a grey area drinker, your body is adapting.

If you feel more tired than usual, that isn’t necessarily a sign that something is wrong.

Sometimes it’s a sign that healing is taking place.

If your body is asking for an early night, listen.

Recovery is productive.

2. Hydrate Like It’s Your Job

Alcohol is a diuretic. It contributes to dehydration and can disrupt your body’s electrolyte balance.

During the first few weeks, many people experience headaches, fatigue or simply feel a little “flat.” Whilst these symptoms can have many causes, dehydration often plays a part.

Aim to drink plenty of water throughout the day.

If you’ve been drinking heavily, consider an electrolyte drink occasionally, particularly after exercise or during hot weather.

Hydration isn’t glamorous, but it is one of the simplest ways to support your body whilst it recovers.

3. Eat Regularly and Forget the Diet

This is one of the biggest mistakes I see.

People remove alcohol and immediately decide to slash calories as well.

Your brain is already adapting to a reduction in dopamine stimulation. Adding significant calorie restriction or constantly letting yourself become hungry can make cravings much harder to manage.

Instead, focus on nourishment.

Aim for protein with every meal.

Include healthy fats.

Don’t fear complex carbohydrates.

Stable blood sugar creates a much more stable nervous system.

This isn’t the month to punish your body.

It’s the month to support it.

4. Be Patient With Your Sleep

One of the reasons many people continue drinking is because they believe alcohol helps them sleep.

The reality is more complicated.

Alcohol often helps us fall asleep more quickly, but it disrupts the quality of that sleep, particularly REM sleep.

During the first week or two without alcohol, sleep can actually feel a little worse before it gets better. Some people experience vivid dreams, lighter sleep or wake more frequently.

This doesn’t mean you’ve made the wrong decision.

It’s often part of the brain adjusting.

Stay the course.

For most people, the improvements that follow are worth every restless night.

5. Move Your Body Gently

Exercise doesn’t need to be intense.

In fact, during the first few weeks, I often encourage the opposite.

When we stop drinking, our nervous system is already working hard to adapt. Our brain is recalibrating, our stress response is changing, and our body is beginning the process of repair. Whilst high-intensity exercise has many health benefits, it also places additional stress on the body. In early sobriety, our priority isn’t to push harder; it’s to recover well.

Think of movement as a way of supporting your nervous system rather than challenging it.

Walking, yoga, gentle strength training, stretching, swimming or simply spending time outdoors can all help regulate mood, reduce stress hormones and improve sleep without overwhelming a system that’s already working hard behind the scenes.

If you already enjoy higher-intensity exercise, there’s no need to stop completely. Simply pay attention to how your body feels and allow yourself more recovery than you might normally. Early sobriety isn’t the time to prove how disciplined you are.

It’s the time to be kind to yourself.

Movement should leave you feeling calmer, stronger and more energised, not depleted.

Remember, the goal during the first 30 days isn’t peak performance.

It’s healing.

6. Think About Your Micronutrients

Alcohol can affect the absorption and utilisation of several nutrients, particularly in people who have been drinking heavily over long periods.

Depending on your individual circumstances, supplements such as magnesium glycinate, omega-3 fatty acids, B vitamins or vitamin D (if you’re deficient) may be worth discussing with a healthcare professional.

Supplements aren’t magic.

They don’t replace good nutrition.

But they can sometimes provide useful support whilst your body is recovering.

7. Lower Your Expectations

This might be my favourite piece of advice.

You do not have to become the best version of yourself in the first month.

You simply have to stop drinking.

That is enough.

You don’t need to overhaul your entire life overnight.

You don’t need to fix every relationship.

You don’t need to lose a stone.

You don’t need to become endlessly productive.

One of the kindest things you can do during early sobriety is allow yourself to recover before asking yourself to transform.

8. Find People Who Understand

Alcohol often creates the illusion of connection.

Recovery creates the real thing.

Whether that’s a friend, a coach, an online community or a recovery group, don’t underestimate the power of talking to people who understand what you’re experiencing.

One conversation can normalise something you were convinced only you were feeling.

We heal in connection.

Finally...

Whether you describe yourself as sober, sober curious or a grey area drinker, I think we sometimes make the mistake of believing that removing alcohol is the whole job.

It isn’t.

Removing alcohol simply creates the opportunity for healing to begin.

Your role isn’t to force that healing.

It’s to support it.

Rest when you’re tired.

Eat well.

Drink plenty of water.

Move your body.

Get outside.

Ask for help when you

need it.

Above all, be patient.

Your brain and body know exactly what they’re doing.

Sometimes they simply need the chance.

Ready for more support?

If you’re navigating the first few weeks without alcohol and would like personalised support, I’d love to help.

Through my 30-Day Reset and one-to-one coaching, I work with women who want more than simply stopping drinking. Together we build the foundations for lasting change by supporting not just sobriety, but the brain, body and lifestyle that make sobriety sustainable.

Last week I travelled back to Britain for a few days for the first time in a several years.

I arrived by ferry and returned home by plane, and somewhere between those two journeys I found myself noticing things that, for most of my life, I wouldn’t have given a second thought.

Perhaps I've simply stepped away for long enough now to notice what had always been there.

Over the last seven years, I’ve gradually and quietly created what I can only describe as a sober bubble.

Not because I wanted to hide from the world, but because I wanted my everyday life to support my sobriety rather than constantly pull against it. I wanted to build a life where alcohol no longer sat at the centre of my social life or my identity.

Alcohol hasn’t disappeared from my life. France, for sure, has its own complicated story with alcohol, and I’m certainly not living in a country where nobody drinks.

But somewhere along the way it stopped being the backdrop to almost every occasion. It no longer feels like the thread that quietly stitches my life together.

I hadn’t really noticed that this shift had happened until I stepped back into Britain.

Standing in the departure lounge waiting for my flight home, I glanced around the airport and was struck by something that would once have felt entirely ordinary.

Everywhere I looked people seemed to be drinking.

Couples sharing a bottle of wine before boarding. Friends beginning their holiday with pints. Groups raising glasses of Prosecco because, after all, the holiday had officially begun.

Then I wandered through Duty Free.

Entire aisles devoted to alcohol. Shelves filled with beautifully presented bottles. Multi-buy offers. Gift sets. Bright displays inviting us to take a little piece of celebration home with us.

None of it felt unusual.

That’s what fascinated me.

A few years ago I would have walked past all of it without noticing. I would have been excited about buying a bargain bottle or 2 myself. I certainly wouldn’t have questioned why alcohol occupied so much space or why it seemed to accompany almost every stage of the journey.

But standing there now, I found myself wondering just how much of what we call “normal” is simply a culture hiding in plain sight.

That's the curious thing about culture. When you're living inside it, it becomes almost invisible. It doesn't feel like culture at all; it simply feels like the way things are. It's only when you step outside for long enough that you begin to notice the patterns you once took completely for granted.

Returning to Britain didn’t make me feel critical.

If anything, it made me feel compassionate.

Compassionate towards the version of me who spent years trying to moderate my drinking because she genuinely believed alcohol was simply part of being an adult. Because that wasn’t a belief I had consciously chosen. It was a story I had absorbed, slowly and quietly, from the world around me.

And once I began looking through that lens, I started seeing it everywhere.

Not just in airports or Duty Free shops, but in the language we use, the advertisements we see, the jokes we tell, the celebrations we plan and the expectations we place on ourselves and each other.

Of course alcohol itself is addictive, but I don’t think that was the whole story for me. I was also trying to question something that my culture had quietly spent decades teaching me was normal. Not through lectures or rules, but through thousands of tiny moments that all pointed in the same direction.

Alcohol was what adults did. It was how people celebrated, relaxed, connected, flirted, coped, commiserated and rewarded themselves. It wasn’t presented as one possible way to do those things; it was presented as the way.

When you grow up inside that, you don’t experience it as culture. You experience it as reality.

It made me realise why it had felt so difficult to question my relationship with alcohol in the first place.

Perhaps that’s why choosing not to drink can feel surprisingly lonely in the beginning. You’re not simply changing a habit or removing a substance. You’re gently stepping outside a shared story and asking a question that, until recently, would never even have occurred to you.

Does alcohol really give us everything we believe it does?

Does it really create connection, or have we simply learnt to associate one with the other? Does it truly help us relax, or have we forgotten how to rest without it? Is it really the thing that makes holidays, birthdays and celebrations memorable, or is that just the narrative we’ve absorbed for so long that we’ve stopped noticing it?

I don’t ask those questions because I think everyone should stop drinking.

I ask them because I never realised I was allowed to ask them at all.

Perhaps that’s the greatest gift sobriety has given me. Not certainty, but curiosity. The freedom to step back from something that once felt completely unquestionable and to see it with fresh eyes.

I don’t have all the answers, and I no longer feel I need them. But I am grateful that sobriety gave me permission to ask questions I never knew I was allowed to ask.

If this article resonated with you, I’d love to invite you to join me in Bali this October.

For one week, you’ll get to experience what I described in this article—a sober bubble. Not because the real world disappears, but because, for a little while, you get to experience what life feels like when alcohol is no longer at the centre of every day..

If that sounds like something your soul is quietly craving, I’d love you to join us.

Ellen x

One of the things I wish somebody had told me earlier is that there isn’t a single doorway into sobriety.

If I’d believed there was, I’m not sure I would ever have become alcohol-free at all.

Let me be clear: I have enormous respect for AA and 12-step programmes. They have helped millions of people find freedom from alcohol and continue to do so every day.

The challenge for me wasn’t whether they worked.

The challenge was whether I believed they were for somebody like me.

Like many people, I had a very narrow picture of what an ‘alcoholic’ looked like. I compared myself to people whose drinking appeared far more severe than my own and concluded that my relationship with alcohol wasn’t serious enough to justify seeking help.

In fact, those comparisons often became evidence that I should keep drinking.

I wasn’t drinking in the morning.

I wasn’t losing jobs.

I wasn’t getting arrested.

I wasn’t hitting the stereotypes I associated with alcoholism.

Therefore, I told myself, I didn’t have a problem.

Looking back, I can see how dangerous that thinking was.

Because whilst my drinking may not have looked dramatic from the outside, my inability to comfortably not drink told a very different story.

The irony is that if I had believed sobriety was reserved for people who were worse than me, I would never have discovered everything sobriety eventually gave me.

The better sleep.

The calmer nervous system.

The freedom.

The self-respect.

The clarity.

The health.

The relationships.

The peace.

The life I didn’t know was available.

I think this is why I care so much about creating alternative pathways into sobriety.

Not because I think 12-step programmes are wrong.

Quite the opposite.

But because I think some people need a different doorway.

They need permission to become curious before they become desperate.

They need to know that sobriety is available long before rock bottom arrives.

They need to know that questioning alcohol does not require earning the right through suffering.

For me, that alternative doorway was understanding wellbeing.

It was learning about alcohol’s impact on stress, sleep, nutrition, mental health, emotional resilience, and physical health. It was becoming curious about what alcohol was giving me and what it was taking away. It was discovering that sobriety wasn’t simply about removing a substance, but about creating the conditions for a healthier and more fulfilling life.

Interestingly, the further I move into my own sobriety, the less interested I become in arguing about which pathway is best.

I have become a collector of useful tools.

Some ideas come from neuroscience, some from psychology, some from lifestyle medicine and some from people who have walked this path before me.

In fact, one of the unexpected things I have noticed over the years is watching my friends and peers from this sober community, many of whom found freedom from alcohol through entirely different pathways, later embrace 12-step programmes and witnessing the positive impact it has had on their lives.

These are not people who arrived there in crisis. Many had already been alcohol-free for years. Yet they found something valuable in the fellowship, the self-reflection, the service, the humility, the accountability, or the sense of connection that the programme offered.

Watching that has made me curious.

Not because I suddenly believe there is only one way to become alcohol-free, but because I have become increasingly open to learning from people whose experiences are different from my own.

One of the things long-term sobriety has taught me is that certainty and complacency can sometimes be dangerous. The moment we start believing we have it all figured out is often the moment we stop paying attention.

Today, I know that 12-step programmes are a tool available to me if I ever need them. Whilst they weren’t the right fit for me in the beginning, that doesn’t mean they couldn’t offer something valuable in the future.

Perhaps that’s what curiosity has given me.

I no longer feel the need to choose a side or defend a particular pathway. I simply remain open to anything that might help me continue to grow, stay honest with myself, and protect the freedom I have worked hard to build.

Because for me, sobriety has never been about knowing it all.

It has been about staying willing to learn.

I was never really a “just have one” drinker.

And I don’t think I’m a “just have one” approach to sobriety person either.

At this stage, if an idea helps people build a healthier, freer, more meaningful life without alcohol, I’m interested.

Because the goal was never to be right about the pathway.

The goal was always freedom.

I’m curious whether anyone else has experienced something similar.

Did you ever convince yourself that your drinking wasn’t serious enough to question?

Did you feel like you didn’t fit the traditional picture of somebody who would choose sobriety?

And if you found your way to an alcohol-free life through a different doorway, what was it?

I’d love to hear your experience in the comments. Because the more we broaden the conversation around sobriety, the easier it becomes for people to recognise that support, growth, and freedom are available long before things become desperate.

One of the reasons I sometimes struggle with labels in the sobriety space is because I believe sobriety is about far more than simply removing alcohol.

That might sound strange coming from somebody whose work revolves around sobriety, but hear me out.

Of course alcohol matters. It impacts our health, our sleep, our relationships, our emotional wellbeing, our decision-making, and our resilience. It is an addictive substance and, both personally and professionally, I believe that removing it has the potential to be genuinely life-changing.

In fact, one of the reasons I created my 30-Day Reset is because I believe there is enormous value in creating a period of separation from alcohol. Taking a break allows us to see more clearly. It interrupts patterns, creates space, and gives us an opportunity to experience life without the constant influence of a substance that many of us have been using for years.

Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is to remove alcohol completely and observe what happens.

But I have also come to believe that removing alcohol is only the beginning of the conversation.

The longer I spend working in this field, and the further I get on my own sobriety journey, the more interested I become in what happens after alcohol is removed. Because that is where the real work begins. It is where we start asking why alcohol became important in the first place.

Alcohol is rarely random.

It usually serves a purpose.

It may help somebody switch off after a stressful day, feel more confident in social situations, ease loneliness, or create temporary relief from anxiety, overwhelm, grief, boredom, uncertainty, or emotional pain. Whilst alcohol may not be a particularly effective long-term solution, it often makes perfect sense when viewed in the context of the need it is trying to meet.

This is why I don’t believe sustainable sobriety comes from focusing exclusively on alcohol.

If it did, information would be enough.

Most people already know alcohol is unhealthy.

Most people already know it affects sleep.

Most people already know it increases anxiety over time.

Most people already know it carries risks.

And yet millions of intelligent people continue drinking despite knowing all of that.

Not because they are lacking information.

Because they are human.

The question that interests me is not, “How do we get rid of alcohol?”

The question that interests me is, “What job is alcohol currently doing?”

Because once we understand the job, we can start looking for alternatives.

If alcohol helps us switch off, perhaps the work is learning how to rest.

If alcohol helps us cope with stress, perhaps the work is building stress resilience.

If alcohol helps us feel connected, perhaps the work is creating healthier forms of connection.

If alcohol helps us escape ourselves, perhaps the work is building a relationship with ourselves that no longer feels quite so uncomfortable.

This is where curiosity becomes so important.

Sustainable sobriety is rarely built through willpower alone. It is built through understanding. Understanding our patterns. Understanding our needs. Understanding what alcohol was giving us, and learning how to meet those needs differently.

The women I work with are rarely struggling because of alcohol alone. More often they are navigating stress, overwhelm, poor sleep, burnout, people-pleasing, perfectionism, loneliness, low self-worth, difficult relationships, emotional exhaustion, or simply the relentless pressure of modern life.

Alcohol often becomes woven into that picture because it appears to offer relief.

The irony is that the very things that support long-term sobriety are often the same things that support wellbeing more broadly.

Better sleep.

Nourishing food.

Movement.

Healthy boundaries.

Meaningful connection.

Emotional resilience.

Self-trust.

Purpose.

None of these things replace sobriety.

But sobriety makes them easier.

And they make sobriety easier.

This is why my work isn’t simply about teaching people how to stop drinking.

It is about helping people create lives that require less escaping from.

Because when we only focus on removing alcohol, sobriety can feel like deprivation.

When we focus on building a life that feels richer, calmer, healthier, and more aligned, sobriety starts to feel like freedom.

And perhaps that is the biggest shift of all.

My hope is that this article reminds you that sustainable sobriety is not simply about removing alcohol.

It is also about the life you create to support it.

If you’re ready to explore that conversation for yourself, you’ll find support, courses, coaching, and community inside Sobriety Sisterhood.

Because whilst it starts with sobriety, that is just the beginning.

One of the realities of long-term sobriety is that many of the strategies that serve us well in the beginning can quietly become limitations if we never move beyond them.

In the early days of exploring sobriety, creating safety often becomes the priority. We avoid certain situations, decline invitations, remove alcohol from the house, and become highly aware of the environments and people that may leave us feeling vulnerable. In many ways, this is exactly what we should be doing.

Whenever we are trying to create meaningful change, there is often a period where we deliberately make life simpler, removing unnecessary temptations and creating enough space for new habits to take root. For a period of time, protection is not only appropriate, it is often necessary.

The challenge is that eventually we have to step back into life.

Eventually we return to work, relationships, holidays, weddings, celebrations, disappointments, and all of the messy realities that make up ordinary life. The safety of the bubble serves a purpose, but it was never intended to become a permanent residence. Whilst protection can help us heal, avoidance can become a prison, quietly shrinking our world until we find ourselves organising life around what we are trying not to feel.

The irony, of course, is that the longer we stay alcohol-free, the more we begin to realise that many of our biggest triggers were never external in the first place.

It is easy to think of triggers as pubs, restaurants, weddings, parties, or seeing somebody drinking a glass of wine across the table. Those things can certainly be challenging, particularly in the beginning. But over time, many people discover that the moments which truly test them tend to have very little to do with alcohol itself.

More often, the trigger is emotional.

A difficult conversation with a partner. A stressful week at work. Financial pressure. Loneliness. Rejection. Disappointment. The feeling that life is not unfolding in the way we hoped it would. The feeling that we are somehow falling behind.

These are the triggers that interest me most because they reveal something important about the role alcohol was often playing in our lives. The drink was rarely the thing we were seeking. What we were seeking was relief.

And this is where I think many grey-area drinkers get stuck. The challenge is rarely a bottle sitting on the table. More often it is the moment after a difficult day when the mind starts looking for relief. The glass of wine becomes a reward for surviving stress, a comfort after disappointment, a way of taking the edge off loneliness, boredom, anxiety, or overwhelm. From the outside, this can look entirely normal. In fact, it is often encouraged. Yet over time, we can find ourselves becoming increasingly reliant on alcohol to navigate emotional experiences that are simply part of being human.

What I didn’t fully appreciate when I first stopped drinking was just how much alcohol had become one of my default responses to life. It wasn’t that I drank every time I experienced an emotion, but alcohol had quietly become attached to far more situations than I realised. Stress, celebration, loneliness, boredom, anxiety, uncertainty; whatever I happened to be experiencing, alcohol was often waiting in the wings as a solution.

What I couldn’t see at the time was that I wasn’t really learning how to navigate those experiences. I was learning how to temporarily step away from them.

I started drinking as a teenager, long before I had any understanding of emotional regulation, stress resilience, or how to sit with discomfort. Looking back, I can see that whilst I was growing up, alcohol quietly became one of the tools I used to manage difficult feelings. Not consciously. Not deliberately. It was simply what everybody around me did.

Which is why I think many people are surprised by how emotional sobriety can feel.

Removing alcohol isn’t simply removing a drink. It often means meeting emotions that we’ve spent years outsourcing to alcohol. Stress still exists. Disappointment still exists. Loneliness still exists. Life still happens. The difference is that we no longer have our usual escape route.

And this is where I think the work shifts.

The goal isn’t to eliminate triggers.

The goal is to become more capable of navigating them.

One of the simplest tools I use when I feel triggered is to pause and ask myself a single question:

What am I actually needing right now?

Not what am I craving.

Not what do I want to avoid.

What am I needing?

Sometimes the answer is rest. Sometimes it’s connection. Sometimes it’s reassurance. Sometimes it’s a difficult conversation I’ve been putting off. Sometimes it’s simply allowing myself to feel disappointed rather than immediately trying to fix it.

I’ve found that question creates just enough space between the feeling and the reaction to make a different choice.

I sometimes wonder whether this is one of the differences between white-knuckling sobriety and truly embracing it. If our entire alcohol-free life is built around avoiding discomfort, we may succeed in avoiding alcohol whilst simultaneously creating a life that feels smaller. The world becomes something to manage rather than something to participate in.

Protection helps us heal.

Hiding keeps us stuck.

For me, this is where the abundance of sobriety begins to reveal itself. Not because life becomes easier, but because life becomes bigger. The places we go, the conversations we have, the relationships we build, and the experiences we allow ourselves to have are no longer dictated by what we are trying to escape. Instead, they become guided by what we are moving towards.

The goal is not to create a perfectly safe world.

The goal is to trust ourselves enough to participate in the imperfect one.

And perhaps that is where real freedom lives.

If this resonates with you, this is exactly the work we explore inside Navigating Emotions in Sobriety with ACT.

Because sobriety is not simply about removing alcohol. It is about learning how to navigate the thoughts, emotions, urges, and triggers that alcohol once helped us avoid.

If you’d like practical tools to build emotional resilience, increase psychological flexibility, and create greater freedom in sobriety, I’d love to welcome you inside the course.

Or you can work with me at joinbesober.com and sobrietysisterhood.com

One of the reasons I am so passionate about this work is because I have come to believe that sobriety is not simply about removing alcohol.

It is one of the pillars of well-being.

Not the only pillar, but a foundational one.

Over the years, both personally and professionally, I have become increasingly convinced that many of the physical, mental, and emotional health struggles we experience are either directly influenced by alcohol or made significantly harder by it. Poor sleep, heightened anxiety, low mood, chronic stress, emotional reactivity, reduced resilience, strained relationships, weight gain, declining physical health, low energy, and a constant sense of overwhelm can all be exacerbated by a substance that we continue to treat as though it is an ordinary part of adult life.

The challenge, of course, is that we are trying to have a conversation about an addictive substance in a society where using it is not only accepted but expected.

We celebrate with it, socialise with it, relax with it, reward ourselves with it, and often use it to cope with difficult emotions before using it again to recover from the consequences of using it. It is woven so deeply into our culture that many people never stop to question the relationship they have developed with alcohol until something goes badly wrong.

This is where I often find myself struggling with the concept of rock bottom.

Not because rock bottom doesn’t exist. It clearly does.

But because I think our cultural obsession with it has unintentionally created a barrier to early intervention.

Many people have come to believe that sobriety is reserved for those who have suffered enough. That it belongs to people whose drinking looks worse than theirs. That there must be some dramatic event, some crisis, some undeniable consequence before they are entitled to question their relationship with alcohol.

And when you step back and look at that objectively, it feels like a terrible strategy.

If our goal is to improve physical health, mental health, emotional well-being, resilience, relationships, and quality of life, why would we wait until things are falling apart before encouraging people to become curious about one of the most widely used psychoactive substances on the planet?

Especially when:

• The World Health Organization states that there is no completely safe level of alcohol consumption for health.

• Alcohol is an addictive substance.

• Many people are using it to manage stress, anxiety, trauma, loneliness, overwhelm, and emotional pain.

• By the time “rock bottom” arrives, years have often passed.

Which is why I keep coming back to something Steve-O once said:

“The worst thing would be to have alcoholism just bad enough that it really slows you down, destroys your potential, gets in the way, but it’s not so bad that it has to stop. How many people do I know with just the years slipping through their fucking fingers and they’re blowing it, just wasting everything.”

What resonates with me isn’t the word alcoholism.

It’s the idea of lost potential.

The possibility that life could be better than it currently is.

The possibility that there is another version available.

The possibility that we don’t need to wait for disaster before making a change.

Because that was the obstacle I faced myself.

For years, I genuinely believed that sobriety was for other people.

People with “real” drinking problems.

People whose lives had fallen apart.

People who drank in the morning.

People who had hit rock bottom.

People who looked nothing like me.

I wasn’t drinking in the morning. I wasn’t losing jobs. I wasn’t getting arrested. I wasn’t what I imagined an alcoholic looked like. I was functioning. I was playing the roles I was expected to play. I was a wife, a mother, an employee, and a friend.

From the outside, my life looked perfectly normal.

Yet when I look back honestly, I can see that whilst my drinking wasn’t a problem in the way I imagined alcohol problems should look, my not drinking absolutely was.

I could never quite understand why something I supposedly had under control occupied so much mental space. Why moderation felt so difficult. Why I spent so much time negotiating with myself. Why I could stop temporarily but struggled to stop permanently. Why alcohol seemed to have more influence over my decisions than I wanted it to.

Looking back now, I realise I was asking the wrong question.

I wasn’t asking whether alcohol was improving my life.

I was asking whether my drinking was bad enough to justify change.

Those are very different questions.

And it is a mindset I still encounter regularly in my work today.

People come to me wanting certainty. They want to know whether they qualify. Whether their drinking is severe enough. Whether they are “bad enough” to consider sobriety.

My answer is almost always the same.

Why are we waiting for things to get worse before we become curious?

The irony is that we are often surprised when people develop complicated relationships with alcohol despite the fact that alcohol is an addictive substance and most of us are introduced to it long before we have the maturity or awareness to question what role it is playing in our lives.

We almost sleepwalk into the habit and then spend years wondering why it is difficult to break.

And this is precisely why I care so much about early intervention.

Not because everybody who drinks has a problem.

Not because everybody needs to stop drinking.

But because curiosity is easier than crisis.

The earlier we become curious, the more options we have. We can make decisions from a place of possibility rather than desperation. We can experiment, learn, reflect, and decide what role we want alcohol to play in our lives before life forces the conversation upon us.

One of the things that keeps me grounded in my own sobriety is remembering that I am not making a decision about a single drink.

I am making a decision about the direction of my life.

When I am radically honest with myself, I know where drinking leads me. Not because I ended up in catastrophe, but because I understand the trajectory. I know the mental load it creates. I know the negotiations. I know how easy it is to romanticise the relief whilst forgetting the consequences.

Over the years, I have learnt that my sobriety is supported as much by mindset as it is by behaviour.

I regularly remind myself that alcohol was never giving me what I thought it was giving me. What I was often seeking was relief, connection, confidence, rest, or escape, and whilst alcohol sometimes appeared to provide those things temporarily, it usually left me further away from them in the long run.

I also spend time focusing on what sobriety gives me rather than what it asks me to give up. Better sleep and more energy were the obvious benefits in the beginning, but over time the changes became less visible and more profound. Greater emotional stability, less anxiety, more patience, more presence, deeper relationships, a quieter nervous system, and a growing sense of self-trust have all become part of my everyday life.

Perhaps most importantly, I stay connected to other people’s stories. Community reminds me that my experience isn’t unique. It reminds me where alcohol can lead, but it also reminds me what is possible on the other side. Hearing people reclaim their health, their confidence, their relationships, and their sense of self continues to reinforce something I have believed for a long time: that sobriety is not simply about avoiding harm, it is about creating possibility.

The longer I spend in this field, the less interested I become in rock-bottom stories and the more interested I become in possibility.

Not because everybody needs to stop drinking, but because everybody deserves the opportunity to ask the question before years quietly slip by.

Because perhaps the question is not whether your drinking is bad enough to stop.

Perhaps the question is whether your life might be better without it.

If you’ve been quietly questioning your relationship with alcohol, or if you’re simply curious about what life might look like without it, you don’t have to figure it out alone.

Whether you’re exploring sobriety for the first time, taking a break from alcohol, or looking for ongoing support, you can learn more about my coaching, community, courses, and retreats through Sobriety Sisterhood and Be Sober

Sometimes the most powerful changes begin with curiosity.

For a long time, I think I misunderstood discipline.

Actually, if I’m honest, I think I admired discipline long before I understood it.

I associated it with a certain type of person — the people who woke before sunrise, exercised consistently, had routines that looked effortless, made decisions quickly and seemed able to override discomfort without hesitation. I looked at those people and imagined that discipline must feel calm. That discipline created certainty. That if I could become more disciplined then perhaps life itself would feel easier to hold.

And so, at different points in my life, I tried.

I tried becoming the person who woke earlier, pushed harder, achieved more, committed fully, optimised more, created stricter routines, aimed higher, expected more of myself and held myself to standards that looked impressive from the outside. Sometimes I managed it for a while, which almost made it more frustrating when eventually the same pattern would unfold.

Ambition would slowly become rigidity. Rigidity would become overwhelm. Overwhelm would become exhaustion. And exhaustion would eventually become failure, followed by shame, regret, and another attempt to become the kind of person who seemed able to sustain things more effortlessly than I could.

Looking back now, I don’t think I was struggling with discipline at all.

I think what I was actually trying to create was safety through control.

Underneath all of that striving sat a fairly simple belief: if I could just become more disciplined then I would finally feel calmer, healthier, happier, more successful — more enough. Discipline felt like the answer because discipline looked certain. If I could just master myself, perhaps life would stop feeling so effortful.

But there is something deeply exhausting about trying to become somebody else.

There is also something quietly unsustainable about building a life that repeatedly asks you to override yourself in order to maintain it.

What I notice now is that this often creates what I would call critical self-correction.

You set the rules.

You inevitably fail the rules.

You criticise yourself.

You tighten the rules.

You promise yourself this time you’ll do better.

And for a moment it feels motivating because criticism can create movement.

But it rarely creates trust.

And eventually the cycle becomes familiar — control, overwhelm, collapse, shame, restart.

Compassionate self-correction feels very different.

It still asks for accountability.

It still asks us to notice when our actions no longer align with what matters.

But instead of asking What is wrong with me? it asks What happened here? What was I needing? What would support me better next time?

One creates pressure.

The other creates learning.

This week, while recording the podcast, I found myself thinking about how differently I experience discipline now and how often people comment on it.

Old drinking friends sometimes tell me how disciplined I am.

They notice me reaching for a cup of tea at midnight whilst they open another bottle.

They notice that I excuse myself and quietly go to bed while everyone else carries on drinking.

They notice that I leave early.

That I protect my sleep.

That I seem comfortable walking away from things that would once have kept me there.

And every time somebody says it, I find myself feeling slightly confused because the experience from the inside feels completely different.

It doesn’t feel disciplined.

It feels easy.

Not easy because sobriety is effortless and not easy because I never experience desire or temptation or nostalgia. It feels easy because the decision itself no longer feels like a negotiation.

I don’t leave because I’m being good.

I leave because I genuinely want tomorrow more.

I don’t choose tea because I’m restricting myself.

I choose tea because I already know how I want to feel when I wake up.

I don’t go to bed because I’ve become boring or because I’m lacking spontaneity.

I go because staying no longer gives me what I think it will.

And that shift has made me wonder whether what people are observing is not discipline at all.

Maybe what they are seeing is alignment.

Because when I was drinking, I often wanted contradictory things at the same time. I wanted connection but also escape. I wanted energy but also late nights. I wanted health while repeatedly reaching for things that made me feel less healthy. I wanted freedom while creating routines that made me feel dependent. I wanted peace whilst choosing things that created noise.

No wonder it felt difficult.

No wonder every decision felt loaded.

No wonder there was so much negotiation.

I was trying to satisfy immediate desire whilst wanting long-term outcomes that required something different.

Now I still want things in the moment.

I still want comfort.

I still want rest.

I still want relief.

But increasingly those things are no longer in conflict with what I want overall, because over time my life has slowly become organised around values rather than impulses.

And I think that changes everything.

Because perhaps discipline isn’t really choosing between what you want now and what you want most.

Perhaps discipline is what people call it when those two things begin moving in the same direction.

When your choices become coherent.

When your evenings support your mornings.

When your weekends support your health.

When your relationships support your nervous system.

When your habits support the version of life you are trying to create.

Compassionate discipline, I think, lives somewhere in that space.

It isn’t permissive and it isn’t punitive.

It doesn’t ask us to become harder on ourselves and it doesn’t ask us to indulge every feeling we have. Instead, it asks us to become more curious and more honest. Honest enough to recognise that what we want immediately and what we want deeply are not always the same thing, and curious enough to pause before assuming the louder voice should win.

One small practice that has quietly changed this for me is asking a very simple question whenever I feel pulled towards immediate comfort:

How do I want to feel tomorrow?

Not what do I want to do.

Not what should I do.

Not what would the disciplined version of me choose.

But how do I want to feel.

Because it gently shifts me out of short-term gratification and into relationship with my future self.

And I’ve found that more often than not, my future self wants surprisingly ordinary things.

She wants to wake up rested.

She wants to trust herself.

She wants to feel calm.

She wants to feel proud.

She wants to feel free.

Perhaps discipline is not choosing between what you want now and what you want most.

Perhaps discipline is simply caring enough about your future self to remember she exists.

—

This week’s episode of Recovery & The Rest explores this idea more deeply — discipline, alignment, self-correction, and building a life that supports you rather than demands endless self-control.

🎙️ Listen here:
https://recoveryandtherest.podbean.com/e/recovery-the-rest-season-2-episode-10/

People often ask me why I started running retreats and, if I’m honest, the answer has changed over time.

In the beginning, I probably would have told you that I wanted to bring women together, that I wanted to create experiences that supported sobriety and well-being, or that I wanted to offer something different from traditional retreat spaces. All of that is true, but looking back now I think the deeper reason is simpler than that.

I think I wanted to create the kind of space I didn’t realise I had been searching for myself.

Before sobriety, travel and alcohol were quietly intertwined in a way that I never really questioned. Holidays represented freedom, and freedom looked a lot like permission. Permission to drink at the airport, permission to have wine at lunch, permission to order cocktails by the pool because somehow time operated differently when you were away. Drinking didn’t feel excessive because it wasn’t excessive in the context it existed in — it felt expected. Holidays became one of the few places where day drinking was normalised and where routines softened enough that alcohol could occupy more space without attracting attention.

Looking back now, I can see that alcohol quietly dictated far more of the rhythm than I realised at the time. Days became organised around meals and drinks, afternoons softened into that familiar feeling of switching off, and evenings stretched later than perhaps they naturally would have. Even when the children were younger, there was often an underlying search for environments that made adult drinking easier — safe spaces for them, social spaces for us, all wrapped up in the belief that this was relaxation.

And I don’t say that critically because I understand it completely.

I think many of us are not searching for alcohol at all. I think we are searching for relief, for rest, for permission to stop performing, for somewhere to put down responsibility for a while and feel lighter than we do in everyday life. The problem for me was that although travel often gave me escape, it rarely gave me restoration. I came home entertained, stimulated, and full of stories, but not necessarily feeling calmer, clearer, or more connected to myself. If anything, I often felt as though I needed another holiday to recover from the first one.

It took becoming sober to realise that slowing down and switching off are not the same thing.

When I first travelled without alcohol, I remember being surprised by how exposed I felt. I think there can be a fear in early sobriety that life becomes smaller. If alcohol has become attached to celebration, reward, confidence, connection, travel and rest, then removing it can feel as though you are removing colour from the experience itself.

What I found instead was that life became quieter but richer.

Travel became less about escaping myself and more about returning to myself.

And this is where Bali entered the picture.

People often describe Bali as magical and perhaps for some people it is, but that has never really been the word that came to mind for me. What Bali gave me was not transformation or enlightenment or some dramatic shift in perspective. It gave me something much simpler and much more valuable.

It gave me a feeling of safety.

Not dramatic safety. Not certainty. Not perfection.

The quieter kind.

The kind that allows your shoulders to drop without noticing.

The kind that invites you to stop striving.

The kind that reminds you that existing is enough.

There was something about the rhythm of being there that felt deeply supportive of sobriety and of well-being more broadly. Long breakfasts that were not rushed. Days with enough structure to feel held but enough space to breathe. Conversations that unfolded naturally rather than needing entertainment. Movement that felt enjoyable rather than productive. Warm evenings that did not need enhancing.

I realised, slowly, that this was what I wanted to create for other women.

Not alcohol-free holidays.

Not transformation.

Not self-improvement.

But space.

Space to experience travel differently. Space to discover that mornings can feel as good as evenings. Space to notice what emerges when stimulation quietens and there is nothing left to distract you from yourself. Space to experience connection that isn’t built around wine. Space to rest without needing to earn it.

Over the years, what surprised me most was that the retreats gradually stopped being about Bali.

At first I thought I was creating experiences around beautiful places because that seemed like the obvious thing to do. But the longer I have hosted retreats, the more I have realised that destinations matter far less than I once imagined.

What stayed with me after each retreat was never really the excursions or the accommodation.

It was always the shift.

There is something incredibly moving about watching women arrive carrying more than they realise. Sometimes it looks like exhaustion, sometimes overstimulation, sometimes uncertainty, and sometimes it is simply the heaviness of constantly needing to hold everything together. Women arrive apologising for needing rest, feeling guilty for taking time for themselves, unsure whether travelling without alcohol will feel limiting, unsure whether they are allowed to simply exist without producing, achieving, or performing.

And then something begins to happen.

Not dramatically.

Not because anybody has had a breakthrough.

But because rhythm starts doing its work.

Conversations lengthen. Mornings become slower. Meals become less functional and more enjoyable. People sit without needing to fill silence. Bodies soften. Laughter appears more easily. The pressure to be interesting or productive begins to disappear.

What I have come to realise is that most people are not actually craving transformation.

They are craving permission. Permission to slow dowm, to stop performing and to feel enough.

That is what I hope women leave with.

Not a new identity. Not a dramatic reinvention. But a feeling of having come back into contact with themselves.

Sometimes that seems to look like restoration — people returning home calmer, more rested, sleeping more deeply and remembering what it feels like not to rush. Other times it looks more like revitalisation — people returning with energy, confidence, adventure, renewed motivation and a sense of possibility.

But underneath both experiences I think the outcome is often the same.

People leave remembering that feeling well does not always require intensity. That connection can exist without alcohol. That adventure and rest are not opposites. That they can trust themselves in places they once thought they needed something external to enjoy.

And perhaps that is what I will miss most about Bali.

Not the destination itself, although I will miss that too.

What I think I will miss is being reminded, over and over again, that when people feel safe enough, rested enough, connected enough, and given enough space, they become more themselves.

There is something deeply hopeful about watching that happen.

Which is why deciding that 2026 will be our final year hosting in Bali has felt unexpectedly emotional.

Not because Bali has lost its magic, but because over time I’ve realised that what I care most about was never the destination itself.

It was creating the feeling of safety and of slowing down.

Increasingly I feel drawn to creating more of that closer to home, here in France — bringing forward everything Bali has taught me and creating the same sober, supportive spaces in the country that first taught me the value of a slower pace of life.

So this doesn’t feel like an ending.

It feels like carrying something meaningful forward.

—

If Bali has been quietly sitting in the back of your mind, 2026 will be our final year there before we begin this next chapter in France.

You can find out more here → https://www.sobrietysisterhood.com/bali-2026

It is part of our second season of Recovery & The Rest, where we have been taking words, principles, and themes connected to recovery and sobriety, and discussing how their meaning changes over time. How the words we once resisted sometimes become the very things that quietly shape our healing.

And after recording the episode, I found myself continuing to reflect on this one.

Because if I’m honest, responsibility used to feel like a heavy word to me.

A suffocating word.

A word tied to pressure, expectation, emotional labour, and the constant feeling that I had to hold everything together for everyone around me.

In the early days of sobriety, one of my strongest core values was freedom.

Or at least, I thought it was.

I craved freedom desperately. Freedom from stress. Freedom from emotional exhaustion. Freedom from chaos. Freedom from carrying everybody and everything. Freedom from the endless mental load that so many women quietly walk around with every single day.

And at first, sobriety felt like it gave me that.

There is often a phase in early sobriety where you suddenly feel lighter. Clearer. More alive. The nervous system begins to soften. The brain fog lifts. You realise how exhausting it was constantly negotiating with yourself, recovering, overthinking, managing shame, or trying to control drinking.

But looking back now, I can see that what I was really searching for was not freedom from responsibility.

It was autonomy.

There is a difference.

Because long-term recovery has taught me that responsibility itself is not the problem. In fact, there is something deeply empowering about taking responsibility for your own healing, your own wellbeing, your own choices, and the direction of your life.

Sobriety gradually taught me:

• I am responsible for how I care for myself.

• I am responsible for protecting my peace.

• I am responsible for my boundaries.

• I am responsible for learning healthier ways to cope.

• I am responsible for the environments I stay in.

• I am responsible for whether I continue abandoning myself or begin meeting myself differently.

That kind of responsibility no longer feels heavy to me.

It feels grounding.

What felt heavy was the responsibility I was never actually supposed to carry in the first place.

Because somewhere along the way, many of us — especially women — become conditioned to believe we are responsible for everybody else’s emotional state too.

Their happiness.
Their comfort.
Their reactions.
Their healing.
Their disappointment.
Their regulation.

And if you are somebody who is caring, empathic, hypervigilant, trauma-aware, or used to keeping the peace, you can spend years unconsciously managing the emotional temperature of every room you walk into.

I know I did.

And I can see now how alcohol became both an escape from that pressure and a coping mechanism for the nervous system exhaustion that comes with chronic over-responsibility.

Sobriety forced me to look at that honestly.

Where had I confused love with rescuing?
Where had I confused kindness with self-abandonment?
Where had I made myself emotionally responsible for adults who were never mine to fix?

These days, my understanding of responsibility feels much simpler. Much calmer. Much clearer.

I am responsible for the care of myself.
My children.
My pets.
My home.
My work.
My integrity.
My recovery.

But I am not responsible for regulating every adult around me.
I am not responsible for rescuing people from themselves.
I am not responsible for managing everybody else’s emotions so that I can feel safe.

And honestly, that shift has been one of the greatest gifts of long-term sobriety.

Because autonomy, for me now, is not about escaping life or avoiding responsibility altogether.

It is about no longer abandoning myself in the process of trying to carry everybody else.

This conversation was part of our ongoing exploration in Recovery & The Rest — the reality of what happens after the alcohol is removed. The quieter work. The deeper work. The ongoing process of learning how to care for ourselves, build healthier relationships, tolerate discomfort, and create lives that feel more honest and sustainable.

For both Mandy and I, sobriety became the cornerstone. Not because it magically fixed everything, but because it created the conditions where this kind of reflection and healing became possible.

You can listen to the episode here:

Recovery & The Rest Podcast

You can connect with Mandy here:

Mandy Manners

And if this resonates with you, you can work with me through:

Sobriety Sisterhood — a women’s-only space focused on sobriety, wellbeing, nervous system health, and sustainable recovery.

Or through:

Be Sober — an inclusive sobriety support community offering support, meetings, and connection for anyone exploring an alcohol-free life.

These days, responsibility no longer means carrying the whole world.

It means knowing what is mine to hold…
and finally understanding what never was.

They picture freedom. Sunshine. Reinvention. Long lunches and slower living. A life that feels bigger, lighter, more alive than the one they left behind.

And sometimes it is all of those things.

But there is another side to expat life that people speak about far less openly — particularly once the novelty wears off and real life settles in around the edges.

The isolation.
The pressure.
The homesickness that arrives unexpectedly years later.
The feeling that you should be happier than you are because you are technically living the life you once dreamed about.

I know this because I have lived it myself.

I moved to France from the UK in 2007. Like many people who move abroad, I thought I was building a better life. And in many ways, I was. But over the years there were also relationship breakdowns, financial stress, periods of deep uncertainty, raising children, trying to integrate into another culture, and the emotional exhaustion of constantly trying to “make it work.”

There is a particular kind of loneliness that can exist when you live abroad.

Not necessarily because you are physically alone, but because you are carrying so much internally without the familiar support systems you once had around you. The people who knew you before. The friend you could call without thinking. Family nearby. Shared history. Familiarity. Ease.

Living abroad can be beautiful, but it can also feel emotionally untethering.

And I think alcohol often quietly steps into that gap.

Especially in France, where drinking is deeply woven into culture and social life, alcohol can become normalised to the point where it is almost invisible. Wine with lunch. Wine to unwind. Wine to socialise. Wine because everybody else is drinking too.

But I also think there is another layer that many British expats quietly carry with them: the drinking culture they arrived with in the first place.

Because for many of us from the UK, alcohol was already deeply embedded long before we moved abroad. Weekend drinking. Stress drinking. Drinking to celebrate, socialise, reward ourselves, cope, relax, numb out, connect, survive awkwardness, survive heartbreak, survive boredom.

Then you arrive in a country like France where alcohol is not only accepted, but culturally woven into daily life in an entirely different way.

And I think those two cultures can quietly collide.

The British relationship with alcohol can often be emotionally driven — drinking to escape pressure, stress, loneliness, anxiety or emotional discomfort — whilst French drinking culture can appear more ritualistic, social and normalised.

Combine the two, particularly in the context of expat isolation, and it can become very difficult to recognise when alcohol has slowly shifted from pleasure into dependency or emotional reliance.

For many expats, alcohol becomes both a social bridge and a private escape.

Something that helps you feel less awkward. Less lonely. Less homesick. Less overwhelmed.

Until eventually, you realise it is no longer just enhancing life abroad — it is helping you tolerate it.

That was certainly part of my experience.

And through my work supporting women around alcohol and emotional wellbeing, I now hear versions of this story over and over again.

Women who moved abroad for love.
For adventure.
For a slower pace of life.
For family.
For a fresh start.

Women who appear functional, capable, successful even — yet privately feel isolated, emotionally overloaded, disconnected from themselves, or increasingly reliant on alcohol to switch off at the end of the day.

Not because they are “alcoholics.”
Not because they have hit rock bottom.
But because alcohol quietly became part of how they coped.

I think one of the hardest things about expat life is the pressure to feel grateful all the time.

When your life looks beautiful from the outside, it can feel difficult to admit that you are struggling internally. Particularly when people back home see your life as idyllic.

There can be guilt in saying:
“This isn’t as easy as I thought it would be.”

Or:
“I feel lonely here.”

Or:
“I don’t actually know who I am anymore.”

So instead, many people keep going quietly.

Pour another drink.
Push through.
Stay busy.
Tell themselves they should appreciate what they have.

But loneliness has a way of surfacing eventually, no matter how beautiful the backdrop is.

One of the things sobriety forced me to confront was that alcohol had become a way of avoiding myself. Avoiding discomfort. Avoiding difficult emotions. Avoiding the reality that I was exhausted from holding everything together.

And without alcohol, I had to learn how to actually meet my life instead of escaping it.

Not perfectly. Not gracefully all the time. But honestly.

That, to me, became the real work of sobriety.

Not simply removing alcohol, but learning how to build a life that no longer required so much escaping from in the first place.

I think this is why the conversation around alcohol amongst expats deserves far more attention than it currently receives.

Because often the issue is not just drinking.

It is:

• isolation

• identity loss

• emotional overload

• nervous system exhaustion

• relationship strain

• lack of support

• disconnection

• and the pressure of trying to create a meaningful life far away from familiarity

Alcohol simply becomes the coping strategy sitting on top of all of it.

And perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned is this:

You do not need to hate your life to struggle.

You can love where you live and still feel lonely.
You can be grateful and still feel overwhelmed.
You can have built a beautiful life and still feel emotionally disconnected inside it.

Those things can exist together.

For me, sobriety was not about deprivation.

It was about becoming present enough to actually see my life clearly — and honest enough to start rebuilding the parts that no longer felt aligned.

And I suspect many expats quietly need that conversation far more than we realise.