As I type, I am seven full days off the booze. This is a rare thing for me, so I thought I would type a few words to usher in the milestone.

For those who drink in moderation, whatever that is, this post probably means little to you. Taking a week off the sauce for you might be a regular occurrence like going for a hike or waxing your motor. That said, for those of us that push the envelope in this department, it’s a different story.

I’m well aware that seven days off doesn’t make me a monk, nor does it propel me to anti-booze Instagram influencer status. What it does do though is give me space to reflect on the week that has passed and share my experiences, both psychological and physical, for the sake of documentation. Take this as a diary entry if you will.

Before I get into the No.1 question, I have been asked by astonished friends and acquaintances during the week, I’m aware of the danger of tempting fate here. It’s only seven days after all, and the last thing I want to do is write this only to pick up eight cans at noon today. Thus, I must tiptoe lightly around this topic.

Here is the question I’ve been asked most this week:

“So, what was the real trigger? What made you stop?”

Honestly, it feels similar to when I stopped smoking at the tender age of 27. For years, I tried to quit the cigarettes. Cold turkey, patches, gum, cutting down gradually, you name it, none of it worked. As soon as I was off them for a couple of days, I felt good and promptly rewarded myself with a smoke. I know how illogical that sounds, but that is precisely what happened, more times than I care to admit.

As a nicotine addict, the repulsive reality of what you are doing simply does not register. It doesn’t matter how many times you smoke through a chest infection in winter, wheezing with each breath like a broken accordion, ribs aching, chest rattling with each inhale. It doesn’t matter if you wake on a Monday morning, reach for the ashtray beside your bed and light up a one cm long butt, drawing the stale blue smoke in with a contented smile as though it were a fine Cuban cigar. It doesn’t matter if you climb a flight of stairs and sound like a human mouth organ at the top, gripping the banister while teenagers jog past without breaking a sweat. None of it matters. When you are deep in a decade-plus addiction, the rational mind has quietly packed its bags and left the building. It didn’t even leave a note.

The thing about addiction, any addiction, is that it rewires the way you interpret your own experience. The cough that wakes you at three in the morning becomes just the cough. A familiar companion rather than a warning sign. Friends raise an eyebrow. Doctors clear their throat. You nod along, agree wholeheartedly, walk out of the surgery and light up in the car park before you’ve even reached the car. The information goes in but it simply does not land. I was world class at this. An Olympic standard self-deceiver. If they gave out medals for it, I’d have been on the podium.

So, what made me stop smoking? Honestly, I still don’t fully know. It wasn’t financial. It wasn’t a single dramatic health scare. It wasn’t a conversation, or an article, or a particularly grim Tuesday morning, though there were plenty of those. What I can say is that I arrived, seemingly out of nowhere, at a deep and genuine moment of clarity. Not the performed kind you announce at dinner parties to make yourself sound interesting. The quiet kind. The kind that shows up unannounced on an ordinary morning and just sits there with you.

I simply knew I had to stop. The same inner voice that had spent years leading me by the hand to the newsagent each morning for a pack of twenty, that had whispered you’ll feel better after one through every failed quit attempt, suddenly and without any forewarning changed its tune. Instead of narrating my consumption it began encouraging me to clean up my act. It wasn’t a thunderbolt moment. More like a quiet shift in the wind. Unprecedented doesn’t quite cover it. But I listened, and here I am almost two decades later without a cigarette to my name. Not one. The voice, when it finally meant it, turned out to be worth heeding.

Last Saturday, the same thing happened with alcohol. The voice modified its output, shifting from a narrative of consumption to one of avoidance, and I genuinely cannot pinpoint what moved the dial. Not that I am complaining, mind you.

Cutting down on the drink is something I have flirted with on and off over the last couple of years, with almost zero meaningful success. Kicking the evening beers and the all-day Sunday sessions beside the ocean was something I thought about regularly but never quite got around to. And why would I, when there is always a perfectly reasonable excuse waiting in the wings. It’s a beautiful evening. It’s mid-week, which means the weekend is nearly here. The weekend is here, which means it would be rude not to mark the occasion. It’s holiday time, and you can’t sit beside the ocean without a few beers. That’s not a holiday, that’s a punishment! I deserve a few after the day I’ve had. The list is endless, and the mind of a committed drinker is a remarkably creative thing when it comes to manufacturing justifications. It could give a seasoned barrister a run for their money.

The mornings told a different story, of course. They always do. There is a particular quality to waking up after a heavy night that no amount of evening rationalising can dress up come daylight. The grim arithmetic of it all. The mouth like a used ashtray. The low-grade dread that parks itself on your chest before you’ve even properly opened your eyes. The slow replaying of the night before in fragments, checking the phone with one eye half open, piecing the evening together like Sherlock on a case you would genuinely rather not solve. You promise yourself, quietly and with great sincerity, that tonight will be different. And then 4pm rolls around, and the voice pipes up, and tonight is not different at all. It never is. Until, one day, it is.

What changed last Saturday wasn’t the circumstances. The circumstances were the same as always. What changed was something quieter and harder to name. The voice, the same one that had been my drinking companion for years, simply decided it had said enough on the subject. And this time, for reasons I may never fully understand, I listened.

Whether I am still listening a week from now is a question I am choosing not to answer today. Today is enough. Seven days is enough. And for now, that will have to do.

Let me leave you with my favourite description of a hangover from the novel “Lucky Jim” by Kingsley Amis. if you haven’t read this novel, please do. It’s hilarious!

“Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.”