Actress, Bessie Carter’s Real Life Sobriety Journey: “Finally, I was rediscovering the authentic, funny, creative, powerful person I was before societal ‘norms’ ambushed me”

Bessie Carter shares her journey with and thoughts on sobriety exclusively with JOMO Club. "The alcohol industry is the problem.”

If you told me five years ago that I would be writing a piece about my life changing decision to stop drinking alcohol...I would have laughed in your face. I drank. I drank alcohol like most of my generation did. I grew up in an era where it was deemed cool to ‘detach’ or as one of my girlfriends says ‘we were coming of age at a time where feminism looked like not caring, where to fit in you had to drink like a man and have sex like a man.’ Or as Florence Welch puts it ‘you haven’t seen nothing til you’ve seen an English girl drink’.

It was hilarious to be hungover. It was a way of connecting with people to huddle in the freezing cold and smoke a rollie. It was standard for a Friday night to start with drinking beers in a pub garden and end with blurry visions of endless cigarettes, horrible shots, trashy pop music, class A drugs, shared cabs with strangers and an unexplained bloody knee. Then all of these nights would simply be turned into funny anecdotes the next day over texts to your friends, whilst huddled and alone on your sofa with a takeaway en route.

If it’s funny it can’t be sad.

We were young and hormonal and therefore our yellowing teeth, spots, puffy faces from lack of sleep and nutrients all blurred into one big teenage nightmare and so of course we never questioned what was actually in these addictive substances, these cool props that made us feel like we belonged. And the biggest factor of all...it was just so ‘normal’. In fact, it was so ‘normal’ that you were the one seen to have the the problem if you tried to stop.

You got a job? Celebrate with a drink!
You got fired? Oh don’t worry - have a drink!
You’re going on a date? Don’t be present - have a drink!
You’re happy? Have a drink!
You’re sad? Have a drink!
You’re heartbroken? Get over it by going out and getting blind drunk so you don’t have to think about it for a bit longer! Wake up with a hangover; your body’s way of rejecting the ethanol you poured into your body, again, so all of those feelings that you were avoiding become heightened leading you to feel far worse than if you’d just faced it! Causing you to want to escape yet again! Or as Deepak Chopra puts it: ‘Pouring our sorrows into a glass may seem like a release, but it’s a deceptive trap that fuels the fire of our struggles, intensifying the very pain we seek to escape.’

So why has alcohol become such a standard part of our lives?
The simple answer is: the alcohol industry. The alcohol industry is a business that has made billions through incredibly well thought out marketing tactics that strategically monopolise on people’s pain and vulnerability. It uses our own nature against us, our desire to be part of a group, by creating a whole industry that thrives (and makes money) off normalising the drinker and alienating the non-drinker. The global alcoholic beverages market size was valued at $1624 billion in 2021 and it is projected to reach $2036.6 billion by 2031.
In a world that obsessively promotes wellness, health and nutrition...the irony that we then drink something several times a week that decreases our motivation, causes sleep deprivation, provokes mood swings, depression and anxiety, increases the risk of seven types of cancer and causes long term damage to our skin and brain... well that just does not make sense.

They have worked incredibly hard to ensure that society doesn’t question alcohol being part of everyday life. They have manipulated us so we forget that just on the other side of our glasses of red is a big, hungry, money making machine. Once I started to understand and perceive alcohol from this point of view...everything changed.

It was suddenly incredibly easy to stop. Not through doing Dry January (a system that is actually endorsed by the alcohol industry as it ensures you only avoid alcohol for one month of the year... clever.) Not by avoiding pubs or parties or weddings, not AA...but actually reading books on the terrifying impact alcohol has on us as individuals and as a society. And now I am finally angry at the right people.

After removing alcohol from my life everything fell into place.

I started EMDR therapy to work through my low self-worth problems which alcohol only intensified. I thought carefully about who I needed in my life and naturally the friends who only wanted to hang if there was alcohol involved slowly started to fall away. I craved healthy food again. I stopped smoking. I read more books. I valued nights in as I learnt they contributed to another day of feeling absolutely incredible.
Finally I was rediscovering the authentic, funny, creative, powerful person I was before societal ‘norms’ ambushed me with a drug that should be illegal.

And let me tell you...I have never been happier.

And with people like Tom Holland, Ed Sheeran and Florence Welch starting to talk about how brilliant their lives are without alcohol... it seems to be becoming mainstream. Which is just so exciting.

So, like them, I will continue trying to convince people what I and fellow non-drinkers know to be true... that life without alcohol is ten times better than the life you think you’re living.