The Big Secret About Giving Up Booze

It's called the pink cloud, it's amazing and it's very fucking real.

They call it the ‘pink cloud’ - a sudden feeling of euphoria that hits you about a month or so after you quit booze and drugs. All the last traces of your bad habits finally leave your body and - WHOOSH - you start seeing the world through new eyes. Yeah, I thought it was bullshit too. But, turns out, it’s very real.

I was on a train on the way back from a work trip to Yorkshire when it first hit me. Rattling through the countryside at high speed, watching sheep blur past on the sun dappled hillsides, I suddenly got an overwhelming sense of wonder and joy. It was strange. I was not drunk, I was not high. I was not having sex or watching Return Of The Jedi. None of my usual joy triggers were at play. I was just sat on my arse, minding my own business, looking out of a window at some sheep. And I felt absolutely brilliant. Blimey.

Don’t worry, this isn’t the bit where I tell you that I turned to see Jesus Christ sat next to me right there in Second Class, smiling benignly and telling me that my sinful life was at an end. It had nothing to do with Christ, God or any other imaginary character from a film. It was just that my brain had finally managed to expunge the last traces of the crap I’d been filling it with for the past 25 years. It was like a dried up old mushroom that had suddenly been rehydrated.

In the days and weeks that followed, the feeling hung around. I began to take pleasure in the every day.

Air smelt fresher, leaves looked greener, crisps tasted…crispier. I realised that these every day pleasures had always been there but, for the most part, my stupid drunken brain had been too distracted to properly appreciate them.

I’m not saying I had been perma-pissed for the past 25 years. But I had built a lifestyle where drink (and drugs) were always hovering about somewhere in my mind. Either I was about to get drunk, actually in the state of being drunk, thinking about a future time in which I would be drunk, regretting a time when I had been excessively drunk or just promising myself that I would never, ever get drunk again. Having those sort of booze-thoughts constantly humming away in the back of your nut is exhausting and really boring too.

Once I made the unilateral decision to stop drinking permanently, all of that bullshit was lifted away. The tedious rules I made up (and loudly bored everyone around me with) about when and how I drank were suddenly redundant. I could stop pretending to myself that being inebriation-free for three days a week made me strong-willed and superior.

The pink cloud made me feel both calm and excited.

I felt tingly optimism but without the nervous energy that usually came with it. In the past, I had struggled to harness feelings of joy without them spilling over into a frantic anxiety that I would seek to diffuse with booze and drugs. If West Ham won a big match my only response was to get shit-faced. It would stop my mind from spinning. Looking back it was a shame really: I squandered natural happiness by smothering it in alcohol. Which is doubly wasteful when you think about how rarely West Ham win.

The instinct to drink at times of joy is partly cultural: we’ve been trained by adverts and TV to think that you’re not really honouring a happy moment unless you’re guzzling booze. But I think it is also biological: happiness can sometimes feel a bit too much to cope with. Your mind can go into overdrive, your heart can beat faster, you just don’t know what to do with yourself.

The pink cloud allowed me to just ride the wave of contentment without it getting out of hand. The closest narcotic buzz I could compare it to is being high on weed - but without the paranoia, snackiness or lethargy.

In fact, I felt the opposite of lethargic.

I felt so energised in those first few months that I started all sorts of new projects, including launching a new business. After a slow start, I remember receiving a phone call one sunny afternoon in August, telling me that we had been commissioned to make our first TV series. It meant my company was up and running and I might just have a future working for myself.

I was alone in an empty office when I received the good news. Everyone else was down the pub for Friday afternoon drinks. It was the first time since getting sober that I had received major, exciting news. Every instinct told me that the only way to mark the occasion was to get pissed. But I really didn’t want to. I just couldn’t think of what else to do - a lifetime of booze and drugs can make you profoundly unimaginative.

In the end I walked up the street to an ice cream shop, bought myself a double cone and sat on a wall, the sun on my face, luxuriating like a cat on a shed roof. And for the first time since I was about 12, I just lived in the moment. I’ve been trying my best to do the same ever since.

The pink cloud does not last forever.

Almost six years down the line, I still get angry sometimes. I snap or say things I shouldn’t. I feel tired and sometimes just get the hump for no reason at all. That’s normal. But it happens significantly less than it used to. And when it does I tend to spot it early and stage a mini-intervention on myself. That might mean taking a nap, eating a Kit Kat, saying sorry to someone or just quietly removing myself from a certain situation. Nobody’s perfect - striving to be so will only drive you mental. But little bits of happiness are all around us every day if you just open your eyes.

Go and get yourself an ice cream and watch Return Of The Jedi mate. You’ll be feeling better before Luke’s even managed to escape from Jabba’s palace.

The Reset Podcast Episode 8 - Justin Rollins

This week’s podcast has had a particularly big reaction. It was a powerful and at time shocking interview with writer, graffiti artist and former violent criminal Just Rollins. He told me about his brutal youth and the traumatic experiences that led him to a life of crime, violence and prison. Give it a listen, I’m particularly proud of this one.

Some services, links and phone numbers to help you through the tough times

https://www.samaritans.org/ Tel 116 123

@calm 0800 58 58 58

@YoungMindsUK 0800 018 2138

@ChairtySane 0300 304 7000

https://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/

https://cocaineanonymous.org.uk/

https://andysmanclub.co.uk/