Why I'm Going Sober for June. My Alcohol Free Challenge.

When I turned fifty, I gave myself a year without alcohol. No grand announcement, no public challenge, no accountability partner - just a quiet decision and twelve months of following through. I felt extraordinary. Clearer, calmer, better-rested, more present. My skin was good. My anxiety was noticeably quieter. My sleep was restorative.

And then, on my fifty-first birthday, I celebrated a year of sobriety with - you guessed it - a glass of champagne. Go figure!

I've been thinking about that decision ever since and I’m soon to turn 54!

What That Year Actually Looked Like

The year itself was remarkable, but I want to be honest about the parts that required effort - because the glossy version of going alcohol-free leaves out the bit where the people around you become inexplicably invested in your choices.

Booze bullies are real. I don't mean the dramatic kind - I mean the persistent, well-meaning, slightly baffled kind. The "oh go on, just one" brigade. The friends who take your sobriety as a quiet referendum on their own drinking. The social situations where saying no thanks becomes a negotiation, and where the path of least resistance starts to feel like inventing an excuse - a course of antibiotics, a migraine, anything - rather than simply saying the truth: I'm choosing to go alcohol-free for a year. It's a challenge I set myself as a gift for my fiftieth birthday. That's it.

Owning it plainly, without apology or performance, turned out to be one of the more quietly powerful things about that year. There's something remarkably clarifying about saying what you mean without feeling the need to justify it.

What made it genuinely, practically easier - was reading voraciously. I loaded up on alcohol-free literature from the start, the funnier and more psychologically sharp the better. Gabor Maté's In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts[4] was one I returned to repeatedly, not because I identified with addiction in its clinical sense (though I fully concede to being alcohol dependant) but because Maté writes about the human need for comfort and escape with such extraordinary compassion that you finish it understanding yourself rather better than when you started. Catherine Gray's The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober[5] made me laugh out loud and recognise myself in equal measure - the relief of that recognition was something I hadn't expected. Confirmation I was not alone in my quiet but persistent concern I was relying on the booze for many of life’s situations….good and bad.There’s a whole body of writing in this space now that's intelligent, funny, and deeply humane, and I'd recommend diving into it whether you're considering a month off or something longer.

I came out of that year feeling relieved. Relieved that I'd done it, that I could do it, relieved by what I'd discovered about myself, and - if I'm being honest - relieved that I'd had the sense to make the decision in the first place.

The Bit That Doesn't Make the Instagram Posts

The one thing I did find though, was nobody talking so much about the aftermath of the challenge. The month on, the month off. The "I've been really good so I can afford a glass tonight." The weekend bottle (or two) that feels entirely reasonable until you clock that it's become the norm rather than the exception.

That's been my last three years. Not dramatic. Not anything that would raise an eyebrow at a dinner party. A slow, creeping return to patterns I'd already proven I could live without - and live better without.

Wine is my particular weakness. One glass becomes one and a half. One and a half becomes two. A quiet glass on a Friday becomes habitual drinking over a weekend. Nobody around me would think twice about it. None of this is about comparison, though many women I know drink more. And that, I think, is part of what makes it so easy to let the volume tick upward without noticing. 

But I noticed.

What I Know From the Evidence (and From Living It)

I come from a clinical background - pharmacy, medical insurance, over a decade in global clinical trials - so when I say I know what alcohol does to the female body, I mean I've read the evidence as well as lived it.

Alcohol disrupts sleep even in moderate drinkers, reducing the slow-wave and REM sleep that's essential for physical and cognitive recovery.[1] It increases cortisol levels overnight, which means your body is in a low-grade stress response while you're supposed to be resting. The tiredness you feel the morning after even two glasses isn't imagined - it's physiological.

The anxiety connection is equally well-documented and, I'd argue, equally under-appreciated. Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant, which means it can feel calming in the short term. But as it leaves your system, the nervous system rebounds - sometimes into what functions like a fight-or-flight response.[2] That particular flavour of next-morning anxiety, the one that feels disproportionate to anything actually happening in your life, has a chemical explanation. And yet so many women I speak to describe it without making the connection.

On skin: alcohol is dehydrating and pro-inflammatory, and disrupted sleep compounds both effects. If you've noticed that your skin looks more tired, more reactive, or less luminous than it used to, and you're a regular drinker, those things are very likely related.[3] And testament to this - my rosacea - one of the joys acquired with peri menopause, flares up dramatically and with regularity when I’m on the sauce!

None of this was new information to me. I knew it all before that glass of champagne on my fifty-first birthday. Knowing something and acting on it are, as any coach worth their salt will tell you, entirely different skills.

Why June, Why Now

It's the first of June. It's a Monday. It felt clean.

I can see the pattern creeping back - not dramatically, but unmistakably - and I know from experience that I feel significantly better without alcohol than with it. There are no health benefits to what I'm currently doing. There are no upsides I'd miss. The things I tell myself I enjoy about a glass of wine - the relaxation, the ritual, the punctuation mark at the end of a long day - are available to me in forms that don't cost me sleep, skin, energy, and mental clarity.

This isn't a moral position. I'm not interested in convincing anyone else to stop drinking, and I'm not signing up for a permanent declaration. I'm giving my body a proper rest from something I've allowed to creep back in, and reminding myself - with evidence, in real time - why I feel better without it. A month is the commitment. Beyond that, I'll see how I feel. It may well be that I don't want to stop.

What I'm Expecting

I've been here before, so I know roughly what's coming. The first week is the one that requires attention - not because withdrawal is a concern at the level I'm drinking, but because the habits around alcohol are deeply embedded in daily rhythms. The Friday glass. The cooking glass. The post-clinic unwind. Those are the moments that need a substitute, not because I can't cope without them, but because rituals are powerful and need to be replaced rather than simply abandoned.

I also stopped smoking eight years ago. That was genuinely hard in a way that going alcohol-free isn't, and yet I got through it - and have stayed smoke-free - by reminding myself that the urge to light up never lasted more than ten minutes. Before I'd reached the other side of it, I was already on to the next thing. That mental trick transferred itself into my bones somewhere along the way. I know I have the wherewithal to sit with discomfort and let it pass. That knowledge matters.

After the first week, the rewards start to show up. Better sleep, usually by day ten or so. Cleaner skin. A noticeable reduction in ambient anxiety - that low-level hum I'd stopped attributing to alcohol because it had become so familiar. More energy in the mornings. The kind of alertness that makes early starts feel manageable rather than punishing.

I've done this. I know what's on the other side. I'm giving myself the best chance of feeling well - genuinely, properly well - and right now, that means this next month is alcohol free.

The Coaching Bit

Recognising a pattern and choosing to interrupt it - even for a month, even imperfectly - is a form of self-prioritisation. It's quiet and unglamorous and it won't get you applause. In the most literal sense, it's putting yourself first.

We talk a lot in wellness spaces about self-care as though it's a treat to be earned. A spa day. A long bath. Something added on to the life that's already happening. What I'm more interested in is the harder version - the decisions that require you to act against habit, against social ease, against the path of least resistance - because those are the ones that actually change how you feel.

Going alcohol-free for a month isn't heroic. Choosing to do something that's harder than the alternative, because you know it's better for you, when nobody is making you? That's the muscle I’m working on. My alcohol-free challenge starts today. Let’s go!

I'll keep you posted.

With Love. Alex x

[1] Drinkaware. Alcohol and Sleep. Available at: https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/facts/health-effects-of-alcohol/lifestyle-effects/alcohol-and-sleep [Accessed June 2026]

[2] Drinkaware. Alcohol and Anxiety. Available at: https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/facts/health-effects-of-alcohol/mental-health/alcohol-and-anxiety [Accessed June 2026]

[3] Drinkaware. How Alcohol Affects Your Appearance. Available at: https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/facts/health-effects-of-alcohol/general-health-effects/how-alcohol-affects-your-appearance [Accessed June 2026]

[4] Maté, G. (2008). In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. Knopf Canada.

[5] Gray, C. (2017). The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober. Aster.