Why Sober: 7 Years, No Regrets

Every good journey starts with a decision to change direction. Mine came in January 2019, somewhere between a hangover and a hard look in the mirror.

For years, my drinking had been quietly creeping up, a notch more every year, so gradual I barely clocked it happening. I want to be clear: I wasn’t the guy causing scenes or missing work. I was fun. I was the one topping up glasses and keeping the night going. But underneath the fun, alcohol had been steadily claiming more territory in my life, year after year, and I could feel the road narrowing. Something had to give.

The real turning point wasn’t a rock-bottom moment. It was smaller and sharper than that. I had a beautiful daughter, four years old at the time, and I knew that clock was ticking. Kids notice everything eventually, and I didn’t want drinking to be one of the things mine noticed about me. That thought alone was enough to make me pull over and reconsider the route.

So I went looking for a map, and I found one in The Alcohol Experiment by Annie Grace: thirty days, zero alcohol, no pledges beyond that. Just an experiment to see what was on the other side. Each day of the thirty came with a webinar, Annie or one of her colleagues walking through the science: what alcohol actually does to us, what the advertising industry works very hard to make sure we never think about, and what your body and mind get back the moment you stop feeding it a depressant every night.

By day thirty, the results were hard to argue with. I was sleeping properly for what felt like the first time in years. I was, genuinely and somewhat hilariously, smelling better. And that first cup of coffee each morning had quietly become the best part of my day: no guilt riding shotgun, no hangover fog to burn off first. Just good coffee, properly tasted.

And here’s the thing about a good experiment: the results kept compounding long after the thirty days ended. Take music festivals: instead of losing an hour of my life stuck in a beer queue followed by an even longer one for the portaloos, I was simply free. Free to actually be at the festival, in the crowd, in the music, which is the whole reason anyone goes in the first place.

I haven’t become a hermit, either. I still turn up to the pub, the parties, the work socials, all of it. This was never a story about giving things up. It’s a story about getting to keep everything I actually loved (the conversation, the laughter, the food, the people) while dropping the one ingredient that used to add a tax of regret to the morning after. Turns out you don’t need the alcohol to enjoy any of it. You just need to show up.

Which brings me to coffee, the other half of this whole project. I keep it to two cups a day, so if I’m only getting two, they’d better be worth it: properly sourced, well-made, no exceptions. And somewhere along the way I realised the only thing that makes a genuinely great coffee even better is drinking it after a good ride, engine still ticking as it cools, somewhere you had to actually travel to reach.

That’s the road this whole site follows: great coffee, great routes to get there, and the stories in between. Seven years in, no regrets, and still very much enjoying the ride.

Thanks for coming along on the journey. Here we go!