Hello, I'm Jemma and welcome to another episode of Good Influence.

This is the podcast where each week you and I meet a guest who will help us pay attention to something we should know about as well as

answer some of your questions. This week we're talking about going alcohol free, a new

movement of people who are sober curious, the role of technology in our nights out, and what can be

gained from ditching the drink.

So joining me this week is Millie Gooch. Millie is a journalist, author and founder of community the

sober girl society which she describes as a happy place for sober and sober curious

women to celebrate being hangover free. Her new book, The Sober Girl Society Handbook, comes out on the 14th of January 2021.

This is it, this is my 2021 thing. I'm actually trying to be better hydrated, but I've already neglected that this morning because I was like,

I don't want to need a win in the middle of the podcast.

Oh, I don't mind if you go that would be me,

if it's not you.

I feel like, sorry, can I just pop off?

So I guess where I want to start if that's okay is can I ask you to tell us a bit about your kind of history with alcohol and how you came to give it up?

Yeah, of course. So I started drinking when I went to uni. So before

you know I wasn't really a drinker. A lot of my friends did the whole like 14

whitelining drunk her park but I actually didn't start

drinking really until I went to university. And so then I became someone who all of a sudden had gone from not drinking at

all to like binge drinking three four nights a

week like I was the ultimate fresher and I started working in different bars in

different clubs and all of a sudden drinking just became this thing that I like adored and at the time

this is when like jawdy sure was in it's like real if like infancy so we used know, think it was great to go out and get absolutely mortal

...