The most exciting week of my life - done sober
Wednesday night in Prague delivered more joy and excitement than booze ever could
I’m just back from the best trip of my entire life. I travelled across Europe by plane, train, taxi and by foot with two of my best mates to watch my football team, West Ham, play in a cup final in Prague.
West Ham won the cup and I was there to see them do it. My mates and I sang and danced and hugged and did all of the celebrating we never thought we’d get to experience. We were celebrating the sort of victory we had long-since concluded was never going to be the gift of West Ham supporters like us. But we did it. We fucking did it and, I can tell you, it is the best feeling in the world.
I did the whole three day trip sober, natch. I’m almost eight years off the booze now and the thought of having a drink never crossed my mind. Why would it? I was experiencing unbelievable feelings of pure, distilled joy; the sort of joy I had been waiting for my whole life.
Sporting victory, friendship, adventure, glory, sunshine and an overwhelming sense of connection with all the other Hammers around the world. This is the shit we live for. Why would I need to have embellished any of that with alcohol? It would have just blurred the edges of all those beautiful emotions. I didn’t want to numb myself. I wanted to feel every last bit of it. And I did.
I’m so glad this victory arrived when I was sober. Because if it had happened in my drinking days I would have pissed the whole gorgeous experience away by boozing myself into a state of oblivion.
Nobody gave a fuck that I wasn’t drinking. Nobody noticed. Nobody asked. That’s the thing: when you’re contemplating giving up the booze, you think everyone will turn it into a big deal. Especially if you’re abstaining on a special occasion. But the truth is that nobody is paying much attention to what you are or aren’t drinking. When life gets as exciting as it has been over the past few days, people are just locked into the moment.
Most people were pissed. I was delighted for them. One of my mates is sober like me. We bumped into a few others who had chosen the same path as us. It didn’t really make a difference to us or anyone else. You could have easily mistaken the sober ones for being drunk anyway. When those feelings hit me, I don’t need to consume a special drink to make me act barmy - I will do it anyway. We were all there to have fun and feel love and that’s what we all did, drunk or sober.
I’ve been mad about West Ham all my life. My social life and much of my very identity has been built around going to watch them with my pals. Bonds have been built, memories made and psycho-emotional stories carved into my soul by this lifelong love affair with the club.
There were five thousand West Ham fans packed into the small stadium in Prague but at least another 30,000 spread all over the city who had travelled without tickets just to be part of the event.
It was incredible to be around so many other people who felt the same passion, love and excitement as I did. I kept seeing people I knew or had once known - like one of those weird dreams where random figures from your past and present all congregate in some random place.
Before the match there was nothing but excitement and enthusiasm; good will and joy spilled out of everyone as friends and strangers alike chatted, hugged, sang and shared in what was very close to being a spiritual experience.
After the match it was like time stood still. All of us had become accustomed to a deep certainty that, however much we loved West Ham, however loyal we were to them, they would always, ultimately, let us down. But suddenly, here we all were, with our collective pessimism confounded, trying to process emotions that were as unfamiliar as they were unexpected.
I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. At one point I took my top off. Later that night, I found myself in a disco dancing to Boney M’s Daddy Cool, clutching a vegetarian sausage roll in one hand and a Heineken Zero in the other.
All sorts of other beautiful, strange, uplifting and wonderful little moments have passed since then. My mates and I walked back to our Air BnB from the stadium long after the final whistle, wandering through the dark, dramatic streets of the Czech capital, embracing every other Hammer we encountered along the way, reflecting on the moment we’d been waiting for all of our lives. Drinking it in.
Life is just a collection of moments. Treasure the magic ones. You don’t have to honour them by getting off your tits. You can just live through them and relish every last drop of ecstasy they deliver.
Now I am at home: burnt out, bewildered but blissful. I am 48 years old. Is it childish to be so emotionally invested in a child’s game? Probably. But there is no rulebook on how you should draw pleasure from life.
And anyway, it wasn’t just about the eleven men in claret and blue winning the football match. It was about the human connection I felt with all of the thousands of other West Ham fans who had shared the same feelings and experiences I had for so many decades and had been compensated for all that pain and anguish by just one glorious night in Prague.
I’ve heard it said that the opposite of addiction is connection. This week, I discovered that to be true.
Coming soon…my Recovery Primer
Over the coming weeks I will be publishing a series of articles aimed at people stuck in the drinking ‘grey area,’ i.e, not full-blow alcoholic, not ready for AA, but concerned about their boozing and curious to know what sober life might look like.
This was how I felt for many years before I quit completely in 2015.
In my Recovery Primer series I will be telling you how I did and what to expect if you try to do the same. You might find it very helpful. Subscribe to The Reset Extra now for just a fiver a month for access to this series and much more!
This week’s podcast: bear attack survivor, Alex Messenger.
Listen here ( or if you subscribe to The Reset Extra you can get the episode emailed to you direct and ad free, a few days before everyone else)
Some services, links and phone numbers to help you through the tough times
https://www.samaritans.org/ Tel 116 123
https://www.thecalmzone.net
@YoungMindsUK 0800 018 2138
@CharitySane 0300 304 7000
https://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/
https://cocaineanonymous.org.uk/
https://andysmanclub.co.uk/
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-body/gambling-addiction/
Absolutely amazing nifty. As ever you've summed it up brilliantly.
This was great. You captured the emotion and thrill of your team winning. You are making a great case for living a full life sober.