How to have fun without alcohol: sobriety, friendship and finding yourself

One of the things I've noticed since I stopped drinking is the expectation that I'm no longer fun. I've lost friendships over it. People haven't invited me to things, because the fun-loving party person who was always the last to leave apparently isn't there any more. Except she is. I'm exactly the same person. I'm just not having several bottles of wine to get me through the night.

Helen Masters, founder of Sober AF, a dating platform and community for people in their sober or no-and-low era, agreed with every word. This is a conversation about how to have fun without alcohol, and about everything you gain when you stop believing sober equals boring.

Will I be boring if I stop drinking?

The stigma is real. Helen has lost count of the blokes who've said to her, you must be fun at parties, when they find out she doesn't drink. Her answer: bring me to one and you'll see. She's the life and soul, she'll be the one still going at the end, and she'll remember it tomorrow. If she does anything a bit crazy and out there now, it's because she knows what she's doing and wants to. And if she doesn't do anything totally stupid that would upset people, that's probably because she's sober and more aware of what she's doing.

Part of what she's building with Sober AF is a space for people who want to, in her words, disrupt the narrative that sober equals boring. For too long it's been black and white: you drink or you don't. She's also making room for the middle-lane drinkers, the ones who aren't alcoholics and don't drink all the time, who've had two glasses in a year and wonder if they're allowed in. They are. As Helen puts it, they're not on a programme, they're not labelled, they're just making their own choices, and, God forbid, having fun along the way.

Losing friends after quitting drinking

Do you lose friends when you stop drinking? Honestly, some. Helen's experience mirrors mine: the real ones stayed, and she's gained new friends who've become close in a short space of time. But the drinkers, the ones who need alcohol to have fun, have drifted. There are group chats she's not part of any more, because she's not fun any more.

I asked her whether, in some ways, we're holding up a mirror to people. She thinks so. They say the things we used to say: if you don't drink all the time, you haven't got a problem; just because you let your hair down doesn't mean anything. All true. But she's also watched people do what she used to do, seen things happen on all-day drinking sessions that would never happen in the cold light of a sober day. She's not saying everyone has to follow suit. She's saying it's okay to make your own mind up, and we shouldn't be judged for it. We don't judge others for drinking. Why should they judge us for not?

Socialising without alcohol: the uncoupling

When I stopped drinking, I decided in my head that everything I used to enjoy was alcohol-me. I didn't know how to have fun any more, and at the beginning I was downright miserable. Bored. Didn't know what to do with myself. Nearly three years on, I know that everything I used to love, I still love. I go to karaoke. I stay out until two in the morning dancing. I'm the first on the dance floor and the last to leave. It was a weird uncoupling process, but the fun was mine all along. My advice to anyone: alcohol is a crutch. Take it away and still try things, because you might be pleasantly surprised.

Helen's route in was 100 days. She didn't drink daily and wouldn't have called herself an alcoholic, but looking back, she couldn't stop at one or two. If she was going out, she was out out. After 112 days she had her first drink, one nice glass of red that became a bottle, then mulled wine, because it was Christmas and she was in a hotel in London. The next day, she says, she felt like she'd been poisoned, sick in the waiting room before a consultancy meeting. She got back on the journey. Like a lot of people, she didn't just stop and stay stopped; she fluctuated, and found her own way. And along that journey she had to find out how she was fun without alcohol, because every time she'd been fun before, drink had been involved.

Sober holidays: the pressure to drink on holiday

Holidays are the hardest test. Helen is a working mum who has spent years juggling motherhood, work and looking after everyone else, so holiday was always her time to exhale, starting with that first drink at the airport. Who doesn't love the airport drink?

Ibiza got the better of her once: sangria and paella was her combo, and the sangria won. But the trip that changed everything was Barbados with her two boys and her best friend, a trip of a lifetime after a tough year, in the home of rum. She was three months into her reset. At the airport she managed a non-alcoholic beer. At the hotel, the welcome punch was followed by, oh, you're in Barbados, everybody drinks. Her boys, bless them, told her it was fine to have a drink with them, they were in a safe place.

That first night, in a beautiful open-air bar on the beach, Whitney Houston came on. Helen loves her Whitney. She got up and started dancing, pulled every woman out of their seats, then the men, and within an hour of landing she had the whole hotel dancing, including a little old lady who worked there. Afterwards, three women went to the bar and said, we'll have whatever she's on. It was a mocktail. Their husbands were stunned: you don't drink?

That gave me this real confidence. I was a rebel. I was leading. I wasn't a sheep. I don't want to be a sheep.

The rest of the holiday held. At the pool she ordered a mocktail mojito while people asked her how she did it. At the Lazy Sloth, the little on-site pub, she was there until four in the morning doing shots with everyone, hers made of orange juice with a bit of cranberry on top. And then came the lightbulb moment: she wasn't losing something. She was gaining everything. She was going to remember the rum distillery tour with her boys. She was going to remember all of it, instead of having a few rums and forgetting how the night ended. From that moment she knew she'd get through the whole holiday without even wanting alcohol.

Sober dating and feeling confident having sex sober

I put something to Helen that I think a lot of people will recognise: for a long time, I only felt sexy after a few drinks. I only felt good about myself a few drinks in. What changes with intimacy when you're sober?

Everything, she said, and I'm not alone. We've all done the date where they looked like an eight online, a five or six in person, and you drink until the beer goggles bring them back to a seven. Society jokes about it, and it goes both ways. But alcohol masks poor judgement, and the morning after intimacy you can't fully remember can leave you feeling really low. Helen hears from a worrying number of women who can't remember things they've done.

Then there's the first time you get naked sober. Terrifying. Helen told me about a weekend away with a man she genuinely fancied, a lovely place, a bath at the end of the bed. The old her, after a couple of glasses, would have stripped off and swung from the chandeliers, because those glasses masked the insecurities and made her feel like a Victoria's Secret model. Sober, she stood there overthinking everything: the lighting, the angles, the cellulite, the wobbly bits, how to get in the bath without her tummy showing. Fill it with bubbles while I'm getting ready.

At the beginning it's bloody scary. Now I look back and I would not have it any other way. You have to find that confidence and own it. There's nothing like sober confidence. When you can own it, it's actually a superpower.

Body confidence without alcohol: find three things

So how do you build confidence without alcohol? Helen says if she could answer that in one sentence, she'd bottle it and sell it. Her actual answer is self-love, practised. Look in the mirror and tell yourself what you love about you, and not just tell yourself, believe it. We can all reel off a hundred things we don't like. If that's hard, find three things, in your personality and your looks, that you do like. Make them your things. Make them your superpowers and bask in them.

She started with two. She never liked her legs, chunky from years of kickboxing and football, but they're hers. And when somebody tells you they find you beautiful, believe it. It took her years. Her instinct was always, you just want to get in my knickers. But when something is heartfelt, they genuinely mean it. Own it, bottle it, put a bow on it, and stroll around that bedroom knowing you're bloody beautiful. Men have their own insecurities too; she's been with ripped men who shave their legs and ended up feeling like the smoother one. We spend so much time worrying about what we haven't got instead of appreciating what we bring to the table.

Finding yourself after quitting alcohol

Underneath all of this is an identity question. When I gave up, my internalised narrative was loss: you're giving something up. I truly believe now that I've gained far more than I've lost: confidence, clarity, and a kind of freedom from myself. Helen worried at the beginning that she'd lose her edge. It's uncharted territory, and it's almost like you grieve the person you were, the person you spent most of your adult life being and becoming, the person others expect you to be. Am I going to be enough without her?

The answer, for both of us, is yes. The fun was never in the bottle. And the culture is shifting: Helen points out that around one in four Gen Z-ers don't drink at all. Drinking less without giving up your social life isn't a consolation prize. Done consciously, it can be the thing that gives you your social life back, memories included.

Helen's platform, Sober AF Dating, is for people navigating their sober, no-and-low or drink-very-occasionally era, in real life and through an app, dispelling the "let's grab a drink when we meet" default. If any of this resonated, go and find your people.