For decades, I was a hard drinker who could drink anyone under the table. This lasted from the age of 27 until after 50, a golden time during which I felt very sorry for ex-drinkers and people who couldn’t or wouldn’t drink. How did they make it through social situations, especially parties? What did they do at the end of a workday to celebrate and relax? 【小题1】

When I first tried to quit drinking myself in my early 50s, I wasn’t sure at first how it would work for me. But I did it anyway.【小题2】 I was getting older. I had to concede that I wasn’t as tough as I used to be. Nights of drinking too much showed in my face, and I could feel it in my bones. I wanted to take care of myself. So for the next few years, I bounced between not drinking at all for months at a time, then slowly starting again until I had to quit again.

During these years, I didn’t love not drinking. But I had to admit that when I was off booze, I looked and felt better physically: I slept more deeply, had more energy, exercised more. My mind was clearer. My moods were brighter. Parties were hard, and so was cooking at the end of a day of writing without a glass of wine at my elbow.【小题3】

I finally quit drinking for real almost four years ago, on 12 July 2019, when a writer friend stayed with my husband and me after his wife kicked him out. After my husband had gone upstairs to bed, my friend sat on our sofa drinking an entire bottle of gin, complaining about his fate, until he passed out next to our dog, whose bed that sofa was.【小题4】 I didn’t have a drink the next night, or ever again since.

I’m not going to lie: being sober is not a hot-air balloon ride.【小题5】 Having to feel my damn feelings without filters compels me to face and change the things in my life that keep me stuck. Hard work all around, but as my reward, I connect more deeply with the people I care about. I think of not drinking as a kindness I’ve given myself. And to my surprise, it’s rewarded me with true, hard-won happiness.