'People call me boring for being sober'

"You don't have to drink, you don't have to. You don't need to do that to live a fulfilling life," according to Charlie Fae, who has been sober for five years after taking part in Dry January and never looking back.

The 27 year-old from Shrewsbury said after struggling with her mental health and neurodiversity, she used drinking to cope, as well as a means to socialise.

"When I got to three months, I was like, wow, I feel so much better, I just felt great. Obviously I still had the mental health stuff, I still had... the stuff I needed to process, but I think being sober gave me that space to do that," she said.

"I had interests, I would always say... I'm interested in philosophy and yoga and in writing and creativity... it was more like lip service than actually doing those things, because I just used to like drinking.

"That was the the main thing that I did and that I liked to do, whereas now I feel like I've got my fingers in all the pies, all the different creative things."

At six months sober, she went back to university to do her masters - which she said was a nerve-wracking experience as someone who did not drink.

"All of my friends from my undergraduate, it was just very, very heavy drinking all the time, so I didn't know what to do," she said.

This led to her creating the Sober Society, or Sober Soc, at the University of Liverpool, which still runs to this day.

It won an award for new society of the year in 2022.

She said this led her to finding lots of people who also did not want to drink, but still wanted to socialise.

"It's been it's been really liberating for me."

Now in Shrewsbury, Fae has created the Shrewsbury Soda Club - a social group where people meet up and socialise without drinking.

Its first event was a disco on Friday, with more planned for the future.

"I don't think any of our events going forward will be at pubs or places where there is usually alcohol, because people might want to come to us for all sorts of different reasons," she said.

"They might be completely sober, they might have had a problem with alcohol in the past or just different reasons."

Fae said some people still struggled to understand her decision.

"A common one is: 'That could never be me', or people justifying their drinking to me," she said.

"People have said that I'm being brave... people have called me boring.

She said the "sort of magic that people associate with alcohol" could be "achieved through other things that are more present, more nourishing".

Fae added that she felt there was a pressure to be drinking when socialising.

"Not everyone wants to drink for various reasons, whether that's cultural, religious, not enjoying it, having had a problem in the past... being more health conscious as well."

"I hope that in the future it kind of moves away from having to drink and being more of an optional thing, rather than a necessity."

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