Alcoholics on learning to enjoy life without booze

Men and women in recovery tell Megan Carnegie about choosing to stay sober in 'a world that glorifies alcohol'

- Megan Carnegie

When Lauren McQuistin was in the grip of alcoholism, sobriety didn't only seem impossible - it seemed pointless. Sobriety was something for other people to strive for. People who had lost everything and had something to reclaim: a family, a house, a partner, a career. “I was 19, and no one was depending on me,” says Lauren, now 32. “I never had enough to lose in the first place, so I couldn’t see the point of getting sober.”

On paper, Lauren had plenty going for her: she was a gifted opera singer, a graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow, and studying for her Master’s at Yale School of Music. Her future was bright. Inside, though, she was screaming. Growing up “depressed, a little bit weird, and so scared” in the remote town of Stranraer in western Scotland, drinking had been part of her and her friends’ lives since they were 13.

But almost as soon as she started, she realised her approach was different. While her mates were getting silly and sloppy, she was aiming for blackout. “People were beginning to distance themselves from me, because the libertine was becoming a liability,” she says.

In a psychiatric ward after Lauren attempted suicide at 19, doctors warned her that she might not live past 25 if she continued drinking in the same vein. Even this didn’t faze her. Her life and sanity were in danger, but she couldn’t see it. She continued drinking for nearly six years. It took several attempts, but with the support of a compassionate university doctor, the 12-step programme, and a close circle of trusted friends, she eventually got sober - and has been ever since. “I was a highly therapised person. I’d heard every theory about what was wrong with me,” she says. “But no one was telling me how to get sober, or how to build a life I didn’t want to run away from.”