Damon Gough (aka Badly Drawn Boy) has reached the milestone having not touched a drop of booze for half a decade and revealed he no longer gets any urges to drink alcohol when he’s around other drinkers.
He tweeted this week: “After giving up the booze 5 years ago, believe it or not, my first gig after quitting was headlining a Beer Festival in Prestwich. After getting through that successfully, I felt invincible. Being around drinkers is totally not an issue. Each to their own.”
Badly Drawn Boy previously revealed he swapped booze for herbal tea and admitted he made the decision to give up drinking because it was getting in the way of “a lot of things” in his life and he had grown “bored” of the habit.
He said before his first gig since getting sober in 2016: “The beer festival is the first gig I’ve done since the Bewilderbeast tour ended last year.
Ironically, I have given up drinking so this time I won’t be taking advantage of the drink on offer. But I will be looking forward to the food and other drinks on offer — or I can always bring my herbal tea, which I have developed quite a taste for.
“After pretty much a whole life of drinking, I feel that I’ve had enough and I want to enjoy life in a different way. Drinking was getting in the way of a lot of things in my life, so I knew that it was time to stop.”
The Mercury Prize-nominated artist’s life has been “more varied” ever since he ditched booze and the musician admitted he came to realise that he didn’t need to drink to be “creative” with his music.
He reflected earlier this year: “When I was boozing, every day was more or less the same. You get to a certain time, you drink. Now that I don’t drink, my days are more varied. I do more varied things throughout the week. I’m not shackled to that time slot of, ‘Better have a drink now.’
“You become free and your life opens up. The novelty got me through that first year of not boozing. I’m okay without booze and I’m still creative, I’ve still got ideas.”
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