I’m Ally, a London-based recovery and life coach. Is it uncharitable to say that I feel really conflicted about the popularity of thirty-day sober challenges like this one?
Is this the sober coach equivalent of kicking a puppy?
Who, after all, would come out against a charitable initiative designed to raise funds for McMillan Cancer Support?
Because jumping into a sober challenge might make you feel worse, not better, and I’m about to tell you why.
But perhaps first, to prove to you that I’m not a monster, let’s start with some of the undoubted positives of taking part.
Sober October is indeed a fantastic charity endeavour
The month-long challenge/fundraising campaign was started in 2014 by the UK-based charity, Macmillan Cancer Support, providing support to millions of people living with cancer. At the time of writing, this year’s Sober October has raised £468 949, and all you’ve got to do is forgo Friday Happy hour for a few weeks. For many, that seems like a small trade-off to help fight cancer.
What better way to support a cancer fundraiser than by reducing your own chances of developing it?
Alcohol is carcinogenic. Drinking it increases your risk of developing multiple types of cancer, including breast, bowel, mouth, and throat cancers. Any reduction in alcohol consumption would positively impact your chances of developing cancer.
As a recovery coach working in the field of addiction recovery, I have been trained to always move a client towards harm reduction. It isn’t only abstinence that is the measure of a successful client outcome. Any steps that an individual is prepared to take towards reducing their alcohol intake, including the use of challenges like Sober October, is classed as a win in my book.
#soberoctober is a trendy catch-all.
The hashtag is fun, punchy, and easy to understand…that’s what makes it powerful.
Trends are easy to jump onto. They create a buzz and an excitement around an issue. And being sober is not traditionally known as something fun or exciting! As a sober advocate, I’m thrilled to have more people flirting with sobriety and doing it in a way that feels fun, inclusive, and (for some) easy to do.
You’re getting sober by stealth
Another huge benefit of jumping on a sober challenge is that it could spark someone’s interest in sober living. Thirty days is certainly long enough for the fog of alcohol to lift from the system and to start to feel the benefits that often come with living hangover free.
30 days seems attainable and non-threatening. While not drinking forever stretches out ahead of us like an endlessly tall mountain, a month seems like a molehill in comparison. Forever is unattainable. A month is more manageable and reduces overwhelm.
And once you’ve done thirty days…well you might as well do another. And another and another…and before you know it you’ve tricked your brain into getting sober by stealth.
Not drinking for a month sounds easy…surely everyone can do that?
But the thing is, what if you can’t do that?
And here’s where I kick the #soberoctober puppy. Because what if you can’t stay stopped?
For many, abstaining from alcohol isn’t as easy-breezy as a catchy hashtag suggests. Perhaps you’re five days in, three days in, or one day in and you can’t do it. You’ve pushed the ‘F**k it! Button’ and have resumed your drinking behaviours. Perhaps you’re now feeling the guilt, shame and hopelessness rush in. Perhaps you feel like you’ve failed, further compounding the isolation and hopelessness that you already felt before you took part in the challenge.
This is where a hashtag can’t convey the kind of nuance and the large spectrum of individual needs associated with alcohol use disorder and the levels of difficulty involved in stopping drinking.
Anyone who engages with alcohol sits somewhere on a spectrum between use, misuse, abuse, and dependence. An individual who intermittently uses alcohol might find it relatively easy to forgo it for a month. At the other end of the spectrum, an individual who has become dependent on alcohol would experience a high level of difficulty in any attempt to quit. It would, in fact, be downright unwise for them to go ‘cold turkey’ without medical supervision.
You’re not in the club
Getting sober is hard, especially in the first few days, weeks, and months. It’s normal to feel emotionally raw, vulnerable, exhausted, and pretty s**t. But this reality often isn’t presented on social media’s highlight reel.
If you follow the #soberoctober hashtag, you might find your feed brimming with happy, shiny sober people telling you about how great they feel. And you don’t feel that way. It’s like you’re out in the cold with your face pressed up against the glass of a warm, cozy sober party that you’re not invited to.
Let’s normalise the reality that getting used to life without alcohol can be tough and emotionally confronting. Many of us were using alcohol to cope with life and these don’t go away when we stop drinking. There’s bound to be a lot of work to do on ourselves as we recalibrate to living life sober.
The process of healing from physical and emotional dependence on alcohol takes more than a month and a hashtag, so please don’t feel bad if you’re finding this hard. If alcohol has played a big part of your life for a long time, it’s normal to feel emotionally raw and exhausted when you remove it. You are not alone. And if following the #soberoctober hashtag makes you feel that way, then don’t follow it.
Cutting out alcohol isn’t the same as doing a juice cleanse
Alcohol is an addictive, compulsive substance, and the fact that its use has become so normalised in our world doesn’t change that. I feel like this ‘challenge’ mentality lumps sobriety in with the world of wellness fads and detox diets. There’s a whole diet industry built on quick fixes and instant results that don’t consider long-term impact.
To me, challenges feel very surface-level and encourage cyclical restrict-then-rebound patterns that keep many people stuck. If we are not going deeper and questioning our habits and behaviours, then we can’t expect meaningful change or a sustainable recovery.
If you’re a gray-area drinker, a sober challenge could perpetuate the problem.
A gray area drinker is characterised as someone whose relationship to alcohol is problematic but who does not have severe alcohol use disorder. Individuals in this gray area may find themselves using alcohol in excess or in emotional ways but are still able to function in their lives. They may be able to go for long periods without drinking, but when they do engage with alcohol, their relationship with it is disordered.
For this type of individual, the ability to stop for periods like Sober October may further cement self-justification of damaging drinking behaviour. ‘I can stay off booze for a month therefore I don’t have problem.’ The abstinence challenge ends up perpetuating problem drinking because it is used it to prove to yourself and others that your drinking isn’t that bad.
My other issue with ‘challenge mentality’ is that I think I’m a bit of a rebel
I tend to have an aversion to ‘group think’ or jumping on bandwagons, and it’s not something I want to encourage.
As a coach, I often see clients who have lost trust and confidence in themselves and their own abilities. They look outwards for answers to their problems and are sometimes vulnerable to falling for quick-fix schemes or learn to look for solutions from experts rather than themselves.
It’s my job to encourage clients to develop their own inner resources rather than look to me or anyone else for answers. Empowering clients to trust their own intuition and make their own best decisions is an important part of my coaching process.
If you were working with me and wanted to take part in a challenge, my advice would always to be to approach these things with a critical eye before jumping in and ask yourself: why? As a participant in #soberoctober, what’s your motivation? What are you hoping to gain? Do you enjoy being part of groups and challenges as a whole, or do you find it overwhelming? Will participating in a challenge serve you and move you toward your goals? Are you doing it because you see everyone else is doing it and you feel like you should?
For me, the concept of challenges often has that whiff of something gimmicky or sales-y, and it makes me wrinkle up my nose and walk the other way.
So what’s the answer here?
Do I really think we shouldn’t be using sober challenges as a tool to support sobriety? Am I really a miserable curmudgeon who doesn’t want to raise money for charity?
In typical coaching fashion, I’m going to end this by saying that I don’t have the answers, only questions I would want to ask you if we were having this conversation face-to-face. I’m hoping that this post sparks a conversation with you about the positives and potential pitfalls of taking part in sober challenges like Sober October and draws attention to some of the downsides that aren’t really talked about.
If you are someone who struggles with sober challenges, then my sincere desire for you is that you explore other avenues of support. There are multiple paths available to you to help you get sober and stay sober. I offer one on one recovery coaching, where I will walk with you on the path toward a sustainable recovery.
If you’ve got any experiences to share about sober challenges and their impact on you, then let’s talk! I’d love to hear from you.
I can be reached at email ally@allymortoncoaching.com
Website www.allymortoncoaching.com
Instagram @allymortoncoaching