Since being described as “the sober-curious manifesto of the year” in Low No Drinker Magazine, there has been quite the buzz around 99% Sober, and the broader approach to sobriety and mindful drinking that it advocates. We sat down with the author, Patrick Ruddy, to really dig into it.
Tell us a bit about yourself?
I’m based in Glasgow with my wife and two young children. My day job is in finance, but in my now hangover free spare time, I provide self-help advice to anyone who wants to reduce or eliminate their alcohol intake. I do this through my website and book, hopefully in a relatable and engaging way!
What is 99% sober?
99% sober, or dry by default, is a label for those of us who are fed up drinking on autopilot and want to control our relationship with alcohol, but who aren’t ready to shut the door on it completely. It’s part of the wider trend of mindful drinking and being sober curious. People going 99% sober or dry by default are those who rarely drink but make the odd exception. It can make sense for those of us who don’t want to put pressure on ourselves with a ‘drinker’ or ‘non-drinker’ label and it removes the angst of counting days.
How does 99% sober work?
I’m pro-choice recovery. I don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all approach. So the entire book comes with the caveat that I’m sharing with you what worked for me. If you are someone who has already stopped drinking completely and this works for you, then I am in no way suggesting you should start again to try the 99% sober approach. The wise counsel from the 1970s sitcom Different Strokes should be kept in mind at all times:
Now, the world don’t move to the beat of just one drum, what might be right for you, may not be right for some…
Or if you want to get all highbrow, as the German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche quipped back in the 1800s:
You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.
There is nothing prescriptive about the 99% sober approach, so I use the term ‘how it works’ loosely, but a key benefit is that it alleviates the feelings of deprivation that typically come with ‘giving up’ by offering you the option to drink in the future, but only when it will enhance your experience or benefit you. We dive into what we mean by this and the methodology behind it in the book, so you don’t start telling yourself that booze will enhance the experience of loading the dishwasher on a Wednesday afternoon. For me, going 99% sober took the power away from alcohol. I wasn’t ‘giving up’. I was choosing not to. And, in the same way, I would also choose when I did want to. I would decide when and if it was worth it. Will it serve me? Does it enhance my experience? Rather than just running out of will power at a random event six months down the line.
It might sound trivial, but that 1% wiggle room, just keeping the door slightly ajar and giving myself the option, meant I no longer felt like I was depriving myself of anything. I wasn’t poor abstinent Paddy with his non-drinking cross to bear. I had made a choice, and continued to make the choice, not to drink. It works for me. It might be worth a shot for you.
Why did you write the book?
Up until I properly flung myself into the research back in December 2021, my understanding of what going sober meant was based on what I had seen in films or on those ITV dramas. Where you have the alcoholic detective, grimly sitting through another ‘meeting’ in the basement of a church hall, sipping bad coffee from a paper cup. Even films centred on substance abuse were pretty restricted in their view of recovery. The alcoholic character would have their dramatic rock bottom, then get locked away for twenty-eight days in rehab to be fixed. They would emerge with a steely determination to spend their life ‘working the programme, doing the steps’.
I have zero first-hand experience of Alcoholics Anonymous or any other group-based methods of recovery, but I didn’t think AA was for me and couldn’t get past the initial fear of sharing in a group. I also knew that a residential programme was out of the question. (I didn’t have any spare money to pay for it, because, you know, booze!). So, if I couldn’t go to AA, and couldn’t ‘check in to rehab’, by default this left me to my own devices, and another crack at sobriety using willpower, or a misguided attempt at “drinking normally”, whatever that means.
But now, having dived head-first into the sober sphere, I know there is a world of options. I want to share these with as many people as possible. My approach to recovery in the first eight months was to talk openly about it as little as possible. I had no interest in discussing my drinking problems. I could read about other people’s, or write about my own, for hours, but having a conversation, and saying it out loud, did not appeal. While my not-sharing approach worked for me, I was conscious I was taking a lot without giving anything back. I rummaged the comments sections and blogs looking for tips, but never left a comment. I read other people’s articles and listened to their podcasts. I took a lot but never really contributed. In a small way, I hope this book is a way of putting some of that back out there and that it will help more people.
Tell us a bit about your own sobriety journey?
My life didn’t look like my idea of the life of someone with a drinking problem. I wasn’t drinking cider on a park bench. I didn’t wake up wanting a drink or pour vodka on my cornflakes. But I did love drinking, and most of the time it felt like the benefits outweighed the downsides. I felt that without drinking, I wouldn’t have been as successful in my career. That people wouldn’t like me as much. That my wife wouldn’t want to stay with me. That I’d never have a good time again. While I didn’t have a one off, dramatic “rock bottom”, I did have a series of mini rock bottoms that helped me see that my life had been narrowed by drinking. It was a life where I made it through work, got to the end of the week exhausted and reached for a drink. A lot of drinks. I started the next week sluggish from the weekend, limped through it and then repeated the cycle.
I knew it was time to break the cycle. The 99% sober approach helped me do that.
If you had one message for someone who was considering their own relationship with alcohol, what would it be?
Nobody regrets going sober. Literally no one. In all the memoirs, research articles, blogs and interviews, I’ve yet to come across a single person who says, ‘I went sober, and I really regret it. Worst decision I’ve made. I wish I could get those three months back. What a waste.’ If you give it a go, and don’t think it’s for you, fair enough. But what have you got to lose? How many years of your life have you spent on autopilot, drinking by default? What harm would it do to try a few months of something else?
You don’t need to wait for a dramatic rock bottom to cut back, even people who I would class as light drinkers tell me about the dramatic improvements they experience when they cut back. You won’t know how much it will impact you until you give it go. Don’t tie yourself in knots asking, ‘Am I an alcoholic?’ ‘Do I have a drinking problem?’ Flip it on its head. Ask yourself, ‘Would my life be better with less alcohol?’ If the answer is yes, or even maybe, it’s worth a shot.
99% Sober is available to purchase now on Amazon. You can also read more from Patrick on his website, 99percentsober.com and follow him on Instagram @99percentsober
