Laura Dockrill: ‘The older I got the more I was planning my week around drinking’

Two years on from giving up alcohol, Laura Dockrill and Ciara McDonnell compare notes on the most surprising byproduct of sobriety: joy

Laura Dockrill: “Having a feminist mum and growing up with a matriarchal background I thought that drinking pints and being that funny loud one in the room was an act of feminism, if that makes sense?” Picture: Orfhlaith Whelan

Vulnerability is humankind’s greatest superpower. When we take the shackles off our hearts and tell our deepest truths to the world, it resonates. If we are brave enough to share the darkest sides of ourselves, we give other people a shard of light to dance in.

I am a person who feels a lot. I have spent my whole life feeling like a baby chicken with no feathers — that energetic shield to protect me from other people’s emotions seemed to be completely absent. At once wanting to be a part of the world and at the same time hide away from it, I felt slightly outside the circle of where I should reside. Until, I discovered alcohol.