Millie Gooch: Hangover anxiety, creating Sober Girl Society and why sober dating is superior to drunk dating

A Life Less Ordinary with Sophie Elwes

Millie Gooch is the founder of Sober Girl Society, an online community which destigmatises sobriety, and brings women together who want to connect and have fun, without the booze. Millie quit drinking in 2018 after experiencing one too many blackouts and the terrible accompanying ‘hanxiety’, leading her to read Catherine Gray’s The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober, which kick-started her sober journey. We both talk about our relationship with alcohol, the scary situations its landed us in, and the contradiction of how many of us are so mindful about our health, yet ignore the fact that alcohol is a toxic substance.

She opens up about how things were in the early days of sobriety, sober clubbing, and that smug feeling of feeling great when everyone else is worse for wear.

We discuss how we both have used alcohol as ‘dutch courage’ and she shares about how quitting forced her to step into her anxiety and sit with her discomfort.

Millie talks about her book, which I found was an absolute breath of fresh air, and provided a really positive stance on why getting sober or becoming ‘sober curious’ has myriad benefits and is an option definitely worth exploring.

We speak about the narrative we’ve all been given around alcohol, thanks to its gigantic marketing budget to persuade us that drinking is the right option, the memes about gin o’clock, to the automatic assumption that any sort of celebration requires cracking open the bubbly.

Millie tells me about how, for her, sober dating has been such a positive experience and also about the events they run at the Sober Girl Society from dance classes to boozeless brunches.
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