Am I doing the right thing?

Going sober can be daunting and there will be times when you may doubt your decision. Stick with it and you will be rewarded with a deeper understanding that you are right.

This is my second Christmas sober and it is one of the occasions when it can be difficult to be sober. The pressure to have a drink is immense. It's when the underlying belief that you won't be able to enjoy Christmas without a glass of wine at dinner or a Baileys in the evening really kicks in.

I'm here to tell you, though, that you don't have to feel that way. You can get over that feeling and even look forward to a sober Christmas or any event.

Being sober is the gift that keeps on giving. It still surprises me when I get another sudden realisation of how good life is now or a reminder of how bad things actually were as a drinker.

I had my work's Christmas party a couple of days ago. Nothing special, just some drinks in the office and pizza. As the corks popped and everyone cheered, I felt a slight melancholy and looked through the fridge at the small choice of alcohol-free beers and ciders.

As I finished my first glass of alcohol-free cider, I didn't particularly want another one, but I felt strange without a drink in my hand. When you're drinking, you just keep your glass full all the time, one after the other. When you're not drinking alcohol, there is no need to keep drinking, and I can understand how someone might be tempted to just say "sod it" and have a drink, but I managed to nurse an alcohol-free lager for most of the evening.

My colleague commented on how I seem to be quite used to not drinking now. I agreed that I was, although I'd be lying if it never crossed my mind sometimes. And that's something that I have found, even as time goes on, there are moments when you think you would like to drink. You do sometimes yearn for the days of that heady first drink on the first sunny day of the year or the joy of finishing work for Christmas and hearing the champagne corks pop! But I promise you, these thoughts become less and less over time.

When discussing my sober journey with my colleague, I admitted that the thing that keeps me sober is the very real fear of getting very drunk and doing something stupid. Although these occasions were rare as I got older and almost non-existent before I quit entirely, I truly believe that it was only due to a lack of opportunity rather than a change in my drinking behaviour.

When I look back over my 20s, 30s and 40s, I can remember times when I have put myself in absolute danger and those memories make me shudder. I know that once I start drinking there is no off switch. At best, I'd be the one trying to convince my friends and colleagues to stay out for 'one more drink'. At worst, I'd find strangers who did want to hang out longer so I could carry on drinking.

The real fear of being in that situation is what keeps me sober but I don't think this realisation really kicked in until I said it out loud to my colleague at the Christmas Party and it has solidified my absolute belief that quitting alcohol was the right thing to do. And it's these nuggets of realisation that keep coming over time.

I have learnt that whenever I have a doubt about whether quitting drinking is the right thing, I have to push those doubts to the back of my mind and know that there are real concrete reasons why I wanted to quit in the first place and those memories will rear their ugly heads every now and then and remind to me to be confident that I am doing the right thing.