Love Lives - Cheating, arguments and blackout sex: How alcohol affects the way we date, with Millie Gooch

Episode Date: March 26, 2021

This week, Olivia speaks to writer and campaigner Millie Gooch.Millie is the founder of the Sober Girl Society, which is a platform for sober and sober curious women. She’s also just published her first book, The Sober Girl Society Handbook.In this episode, the duo discuss how drinking alcohol, and drinking culture, impacts the way we date. They talk about everything from sober dating and infidelity to how alcohol causes arguments in relationships and what happens when drinking blurs the lines of consent.There is a discussion about sexual assault in this episode so please do bear this in mind before you listen.Enjoy the show!For more information on seeking support after sexual assault, contact Rape Crisis via their helpline: 0808 802 9999Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/millenniallove. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. Hello and welcome to Millennial Love, a podcast from The Independent on everything to do with love, sexuality, identity, and more. This week, I speak to the writer and campaigner Millie Gooch. Millie is the founder of the Sober Girl Society, which is a platform for sober and sober curious women. She's also just published her first book, The Sober Girls Society Handbook. I was really excited to speak to Millie because I think alcohol can be so integral to the dating scene if you do drink, and it can also have a huge impact on so many aspects of sex and relationships, which is exactly what we spoke about in this episode, with topics ranging from sober dating and infidelity to how alcohol causes arguments

in relationships and blackout sex. There is a discussion in this episode about sexual assault, so please do bear this in mind before you listen. And stay tuned for helplines and further information, which I will flag at the end. Enjoy the show. the show. Hi Millie, how are you? I'm good thank you, thank you for having me. Thank you for coming on the show, I'm so excited to talk to you, I absolutely loved your book. Oh thank you, it feels really weird that like people have actually like read it, it just feels weird when you write something you're like I don't know when I'll read read this it's fine I'll say what I want and then people say oh like I've read it and you're like oh okay people are actually reading it. Have you had lots of messages on Instagram from people who've read it and been like oh I really resonated with this bit? Yeah so many people which is like so

lovely and overwhelming like I said if one person messages me and has been like it's really helped then it was like well worth writing so can you start us off by explaining a bit about why you decided to go sober and when you made that decision so I always say that actually I was a bit of a late comer I think in British terms at least to drinking so a lot of my friends did like you know 14 white lightning cider at the park not telling their mums where they were but I was really into competitive dancing so I pretty much spent all of my weeks training so I am an August birthday so I'm like the last one in my year to turn 18 so I turned 18 and then three weeks after I literally went to university so I had kind of very little experience of drinking as a teenager turned 18 all of a sudden got launched

into this you know just world of nightlife I went to University of Sussex in Brighton so Brighton seafront was just you know littered with clubs and bars and I worked in a book of revolutions I worked in a shop bar I was like a flyering girl for a club and I literally went from being a pretty much zero drinker to a three four five night a week kind of binge drinker really so I had gone from never being drunk in my life to being just blackout drunk pretty much all the time and I think it was about my second year of uni was when Geordie Shore came out and this is kind of like changing, I think, a lot of drinking culture for women, which it wasn't just, you know, cocktails a la Sex and the City. It was go out and get absolutely mortal. So that was kind of what I did for like three years while I was at uni was just go out, get absolutely blackout drunk. And, you know, it's all fun and games when you're that age. But then slowly, as I kind of left university I didn't slow down all of my friends

seem to be slowing down but alcohol I say very slowly had become something that I just did because everyone else was doing it to something I actually felt like I started to need and not in a sense that I would wake up and think I need a drink it was in that I needed it for confidence I needed it to talk to boys, I needed it to have fun. So I couldn't imagine it got to a point where I would start going out without drinking. So I went to work in PR and then journalism after I left uni. And I mean, you will know they're quite booze heavy industry. So I'd go to a lot of media events. And, you know, there'll be Prosecco on arrival and whatnot. And I would start drinking, I would, you know,'ll be Prosecco on arrival and whatnot and I would start drinking I would

you know embarrass myself at work events I was always that one who was too drunk I was commuting home from London to Kent so I would be on a train and end up miles from my house because I'd fallen asleep drunk on the train and have to get like 200 pound uber home and just slowly but surely I really started to notice the effect that was having on my mental health so I was always anxious I really suffered with depression and just gradually as well the kind of beer fear that I was experienced got worse it was on like another level so the night after and and the beer fear kind of came from two places I think like one kind of the actual chemical effects of alcohol that increase your anxiety and then two because I was frequently suffering from blackouts or memory dips I wasn't really remembering you

know what I'd said who I'd spoke to how much money I'd spent and then towards the end of kind of 2017 I went to a breakup and I've been with my ex-boyfriend for six years and uh when you go to a breakup you know we always just say go out you put your glad rags on get absolutely shit face so that's what I did um for kind of like two months really heavily was just partying all the time wasn't remembering my nights was you know ending up in stupid places putting myself in vulnerable situations you know my mum was always worrying I was going to like fall down a train track or whatnot and I just woke up one day February 2018 and weirdly about three weeks before I'd read an article on the tube in Stylist

magazine that was talking about Catherine Gray and her new book The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober and I remember reading the article and thinking god she sounds a lot like me like I think my drinking's getting a bit out of control and so when I woke up that day in February I was like I think I'm going to download that book because you know I'm really hung over I feel like crap I'm just doing this weekend week out my life looks like a groundhog day I'm not happy and I've got no energy I'm spending all my time hung over like I'm going really hard at work in the week and then at the weekend I'm just you know wasting it just being hung over so I read that book and then I was like that's it now I'm gonna stop drinking and it sounds really easy like one day I just decided I was gonna stop drinking it wasn't as

easy as that because I'd done Soap October I'd you know tried to give up alcohol for Lent and things like that so it wasn't just I tried moderating I tried only drinking these types of drinks but that day I was like this is it now I can't do this anymore and yeah I just stopped drinking and three years later here we are amazing that you that you stuck to it and you have continued to stick to it because I mean the phrase oh I'm never drinking again I'm never drinking again is literally something that every single person tells themselves on a hangover it's interesting what you were saying about like Geordie Shore and how like alcohol was kind of I don't know I feel like in that show because the women drank as much as the men it was almost like this weird like power balance thing and it's like

oh it's actually quite empowering where women you can get as bad as you can and it almost was presented as like quite like a feminist act in a way yeah 100 and that's like an extension from kind of like 90s ledet culture which this is the kind of real real hard discussion around alcohol and feminism because you know we there was a time when women weren't allowed in pubs there were times when it was like really frowned upon to drink so kind of like la dette culture with you know like Zoe Ball and Sarah Cox and people like that drinking as much as the men was basically saying a big F you of look whatever you can do we can do it too we can drink you onto the table we can do this and that has kind of carried on and the problem is though that like reflected in all the stats are kind of since the 90s drinking problems have

been on the rise with women and alcohol related deaths are on the rise and you know cancer is on the rise for women and it's all kind of correlated uh back to this kind of like the debt culture so it's like it was great because we were kind of saying look you can do this and we can do it too but it's come at a detriment to us almost in terms of the health implications so that's why it's quite a tricky subject yeah absolutely and I know you mentioned the breakup earlier I'm so pleased to get you on the show just because I think there are so many aspects I think we talk about breakups and drinking quite a lot generally and how like it is this kind of trope like oh I've been dumped or I've just got had my heart broken I'm gonna go and get wasted every night but there's actually so many other

components to it that you write about in the book so the first one that I want to touch on is sober dating which obviously is something that you experienced when you decided to no longer drink alcohol so in the book you describe it as a dickhead perplexer which I love um so tell me what that experience of sober dating was like for you when you first started doing it you know did you tell your dates from the beginning that you didn't drink how did they respond like did you have all these dickheads being like oh you're such a loser yeah so I actually I so I did drunk dating first and then I did sober dating so I feel like I've got good like comparison hands on both and I genuinely thought when I stopped drinking that every single person

would be like put off of it or like make some kind of remark and actually I found that 95% of people were really open to it so I always told people really up front and I always say that wasn't even for them that was for me because inevitably you will get one or two people who will say something and I don't think what you want is to be stressing up to the date like the whole time that oh what will they say when I go to order a drink and and then you don't want to be on that day and you tell that person and they react like negatively so I was always up front but if you turn around and you say I don't want to go on a date with you because of that then that's great yeah I have like not wasted my time or my energy into putting anything else into this so I always tell people

up front but really people were actually surprisingly like okay about it I always say like we have this kind of like unspoken British rule of like we will drink because other people are drinking and like my friend says to me now I love going to dinner with you because I know that like I'm going to be home by like nine o'clock so actually when I said to people on dates I'm not drinking they'd be like oh thank god like I had a heavy weekend I'd quite like a break actually so people were quite responsive to it in that way and also I think people were very shocked that it in that way and also I think people were very shocked that I had the confidence to say I'm going to come on this date and I'm not

going to drink and weirdly I think a lot of people actually found that quite attractive because I think they were like god she's she's got confidence like come on this date and not drink so what I actually thought was going to be a complete turn off for a lot of people was you know not but I also think I probably read it quite well as in like if everyone if their pictures were every single picture because I was doing that bumble at the time if every single picture was them on a lad's night out I kind of knew that they weren't really going to be in line so I would you know pick people who there was a picture of them on a walk or like it wasn't just you know completely here's me and Ibiza here's me and Magaluf here's

me and I just kind of tended to avoid um anyone who I thought wasn't necessarily going to be aligned with that but the experiences were so positive and I always say sober dating is one of the best things that I did and I also say in a kind of like cold way as well it felt it was a lot more efficient because if you go on a date with someone well at least this was my experience if I went on a date with someone and we were drinking if I had like two drinks and then I kind of felt like there wasn't really a vibe I would there was kind of this unspoken obligation to just see it out and keep drinking and keep the night going just to see if or maybe you know I did start to find them funny or I did start to

like them more but when I wasn't drinking I could tell straight away if I liked someone like it was very easy to see if there was that natural chemistry without alcohol so if I got like two drinks two alcohol free drinks in and decided actually I don't really think like we're on a similar kind of vibe then I would just call it a night and no one kind of expects you to stay if you're not drinking either they're kind of like oh yeah fair enough two drinks let's go home so I found it a little bit more efficient as I have to say. Yeah I think that's a really good point because when you are on a drunk date which is basically the majority of dates for people who aren't sober it's very easy to get caught up in that kind of drunken silly haze

where like you're giggling with someone as you often do when you're drunk and you kind of convince yourself that you're really compatible with someone and that you have this really great spark but then it becomes really difficult if you continue going on dates with them and you know you continue drinking on these dates and then eventually I feel like something peters out if you're not really a match and it's just so interesting I feel like you know because how long would you date someone until you go on a sober date with them you know I feel like the kind of sober date activities are later down the line all of the kind of traditional first and second and third

dates like go to a pub go for dinner go for drinks go for cocktails like whatever um how do you think that drinking can hinder our judgment on dates because is it that you are just like enjoying being drunk with someone yeah I mean that that is what I found is every time I went on a date when I was drinking I would come out of it and be like you know I found the one or like we're really compatible we've got loads in common and then you know it wasn't until I got to that sober date which was probably around date four or date five that I was like well actually I don't think we've got anything in common and you know the way alcohol actually affects our brain is it affects the kind of rational decision making part of our brain so our judgment is affected and you know I used to think that I probably missed a lot of red flags when I was drinking

I just thought you know haha this person is hilarious they're attractive and you know alcohol can give us this like full sense of bond. It's the same way, you know, you meet drunken girls in the toilets and you instantly think you're best friends. And the next day you're like, oh, I'm never going to see that person again. Like we're not best friends.

And it's kind of the same on dates as you think, oh my God, this is going amazing. We've got so much in common. And then when that kind of wears off and you actually start to get on a level with someone, you're like oh okay maybe not so it was kind of like doing the fourth or fifth day as day one and when you've kind of also got that clarity you remember everything that you like want to ask so you get all those like

must-have questions like out the way first of all so that you know yeah okay they tick that box and yeah they tick that box and they like doing this activity so I mean I'm not saying I sit there and relentlessly question people but you like think about the things you want to ask rather than necessarily going off on these these tangents but I just think I mean there's a lot it goes a bit deeper with like alcohol and spirituality and but they say that alcohol like pokes holes in your aura and it lowers your kind of vibrations and I think when it comes to like dating you can kind of tell that authentic like connection slightly better when you haven't got the drink there because you know you feel it with someone that that spark or whatever that is and I think alcohol kind of creates that very false spark and then you have to work out

date four or five that will actually do we have that for real or you know was that just the booze so I kind of worked out straight away whether we had an authentic spark or not also I'm just thinking it saves you so much anxiety because I'm thinking of all the dates I've been on where you freak out about like oh god I can't believe I said that that's so embarrassing and you can't quite remember how you said it and then someone will tell you the next morning like the guy might be like oh yeah you said some really funny stuff last night and it's just oh it's yeah it's the worst thing to hear like it's awful anyway when someone tells you that when you're drunk but I think particularly when you're on a date because the stakes are so high like so it's just like you really want to

impress them and then if you say something embarrassing I mean I can be so embarrassing when I'm drunk I like it's just awful yeah so I've had that horrible like cranging out feeling I'm even like getting it like my body is seizing up now just thinking about it um so I also want to talk to you about sobriety and alcohol in relationships um because again this is something you touched on about how so many arguments that couples have uh tend to happen after they've both had a drink or one of them has had a drink and you know you quote this study from the university of bristol about how drunk people can misinterpret one another's emotions and how that can then lead to more arguments is that something that you have had personal experience of? Like, I know you mentioned your previous relationship where you were,

who you were with for six years? Yeah, definitely. So I was definitely quite an argumentative drinker. So I had a habit of, you know, suppressing things, I wasn't a very good communicator, because when it came to sort of alcohol my like my emotion that's that's kind of like what I used so I would you know suppress all these feelings and I wouldn't speak about them and then when I got drunk I would unleash it on them and you know alcohol makes us more likely to say things that we've been holding on to but it also makes us more likely to say things that we don't actually mean so um it was kind of quite a cause of a lot of arguments in my relationships and I see it now in my relationship which is that my boyfriend has only ever known me as a non-drinker

and we do not even argue I'd say like a tenth of the arguments I had in my relationship when I was drinking so I think that has kind of just shown to me what a difference it can make and a lot of that has come with like learning how to express emotions or like how to regulate emotions without necessarily just turning to booze to suppress them so that has been part of you know I hate the word for me is kind of learning actually when I've got something to just say it out in the open and then squash it rather than being like, oh, I don't really know how to feel about that. I'm going to drink and then that will just kind of, you know, come flooding out. And does your boyfriend drinks, right? He does drink now. He does. Yeah, yeah. So how do you navigate that? Do you ever, because I mean, I'm just thinking of like, you know, nights when

I go out for dinner with a boyfriend and if I'm not drinking and they get absolutely smashed I can't help but feel really annoyed about it and feel like it's really disrespectful like even if for example like I'm thinking of so many times when you know if I plan a date with someone and they would show up really hungover I just find that really disrespectful and they're just sat there like glum face like not able to make a conversation with you just head in the clouds kind of thing it's so that that incompatibility can be very like viscerally irritating and feel really really like insulting almost so how do you how do you kind of navigate that kind of difference between the two of you yeah so I would say he's very like sober curious so he's not a huge drinker and to be honest that

was something that I looked for when I was dating is that I like you found it very hard to be on a level with people who were constantly drinking and you know on a Sunday didn't want to get up and go out because they were hung over so that was very much like a priority so I kind of looked for someone and I always said it wasn't necessary that someone needed to be a non-drinker but just someone that was a bit more mindful about their relationship with alcohol and like had other stuff going on that wasn't just partying and drinking so that was kind of like the first way that I managed it um and then you know like the other way is I do find that over time because you're not a drinker they do drink less so we never

really drink well I obviously don't drink but he never really drinks in the week um if we go out for dinner sometimes he'll probably just have like one he doesn't really drink that much I think when you spend a lot of time with someone who doesn't drink I think it does naturally lower how much you drink and you know he's he's read the book he knows all the stats so I think that is kind of like the other thing but you know if he goes out with his friends and he wants to drink I'm not around it so I feel better about that so I think it is really tricky to kind of like navigate that so I was very lucky in that I kind of started that fresh and specifically look for someone who didn't necessarily drink that much. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.

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Everywhere. Acast.com You have a whole chapter on sober sex and drunk sex and this is something i'm so keen to talk to you about in more detail because i think most people who drink alcohol would say that they don't have sober sex unless they're in a relationship because like i said like all of your dates kind of probably revolve around alcohol if If not revolving around alcohol, they'll be like, oh, we'll go play, I don't know, mini golf and then go to a pub or something. It's only until you're like in an established relationship with someone, I feel like, that you might feel comfortable enough around each other to have a sober date and then have sober sex. So I'm really keen to ask you about this, because it's like, well, what are the consequences of that? Because then you go from, you go from suddenly being really

comfortable, because you've kind of got alcohol to like, numb any insecurities that you might have about your body. And that can feel quite soothing, I guess a way and quite empowering and then suddenly you take that away and it's like sober sex is this like really scary thing yeah I think that is one of the consequences is we rely on it so much that when it actually comes to doing it that first time sober we are scared because it does feel unknown And we do use it to kind of like mask those insecurities. And, you know, alcohol, aside from just like sexual insecurities, is a mask for a lot of insecurities rather than us dealing with, you know, like, why do I feel this way?

Why do I feel ashamed about my body? Like, we use it just to mask those things rather than saying, okay, well, actually, I don't feel comfortable being naked in front of this person. So, you know, why does alcohol then make me feel like I can be more confident shouldn't I work on feeling more confident around them in the first place so it is kind of like a mask and it can prevent us or at least delay us from dealing with those kind of things that we're using it for so that is one of the major things that I found is when I stopped drinking I had to deal with like you know everyone thinks it's just oh you just don't drink but you have to deal with all these things that

you can no longer use alcohol to mask or disguise so you have to you know straight up deal with any kind of body insecurities because from the first time you have sex with that person you haven't got that like mask or that shield on top of you you have to be like okay you know this is me naked and you know I've got nothing else clouding me so you have to kind of deal with those stuff so it kind of forces you to to confront those things quite early on yeah and I think that's so important because you know if you if you are lacking in body confidence so many young women are it's it's really important to kind of recognize that and not try and numb it with alcohol and actually try and address it because otherwise it'll just get worse and worse and worse and you'll get to a point where sober sex like you said becomes this incredibly

intimidating thing that you feel so unable to even go through it because you just have absolutely zero confidence in yourself also this is something that I think we really need to address like drunk sex is not good nice nice the weird thing is like it's so glamorized in tv and film like it always looks so hot like there are all these scenes of really great dates and then they cut immediately to like being pressed up against a wall together and like aggressively making out and then another cut and suddenly the woman is having like a really loud orgasm and it's like supposedly drunken sex is like the best sex and that's just not what happens no there's a really good shakespeare quote actually which is that um alcohol provokes the desire but takes away the performance so it does because it you know it lowers our inhibitions it hushes our

insecurity so we think right well I'm well up for this but in reality the actual kind of whole thing of it is a letdown because you know we've all been there in a situation where it hasn't quite worked out how we imagined it and and even the way alcohol affects like orgasms are made in the brains the way alcohol affects us means like your orgasms are probably weaker. It's harder to self lubricate. And even your coordination is probably off. So while you think that you look like a porn star, it's probably not the reality. It's so it's so glamorized that, like you said, like from a purely sexual functioning point of view, alcohol know statistically proven to lower sexual function so there's just no universe in which drunk sex is better even though you might feel more liberated

yeah I think you feel more liberated um on that note I want to talk to you a bit about cheating because again this is something that people I think blame alcohol a lot for to try and absolve themselves of responsibility so it's very common again to hear this excuse of oh I didn't mean to kiss them or I didn't I didn't mean to sleep with them I was really drunk like I can't I can't take responsibility for that because I was so drunk I don't even remember I don't know why I did it and And, you know, I understand in a sense, because obviously alcohol does lower your inhibitions and it does kind of probably make you less likely to focus on the consequences of your actions. But at the same time, I think it's a massive cop out to blame one's infidelity on drinking. Would you agree? one's infidelity on drinking would you agree yeah I think again this is quite like a complex nuanced conversation because the way that alcohol does affect our brain is like it's it's a prefrontal cortex which is the bit that allows you to kind of make rational decisions to think about the

consequences of your actions and when alcohol affects our brain that way you literally can't decide what's right and wrong so in reality a lot of people do cheat and don't mean it a lot of people do cheat and don't know why they did it a lot of people will actually black out which means that they literally don't kind of have a choice in the matter so it kind of is an excuse in the way but drinking to get to that point is your responsibility so I think that's where the conversation lies is you know if you don't want to cheat then you shouldn't be drinking that much but because a lot of us aren't aware of exactly how alcohol affects us and our ability to make rational decisions we don't really consider our alcohol consumption so it is being used as a cop-out but the argument is kind of like saying well you shouldn't have drunk that much to get

to that point but I do and I spoke to a lot of people about it for the book so I do believe that not all drunk cheating comes from a place of not loving that person or not caring about that person it literally is that you have drunk so much that your brain is not working properly so it's it's really difficult because I can see why people will forgive people if they drunk cheating but you're right it shouldn't be an excuse because they shouldn't have drunk that much in the first place but because a lot of us don't understand exactly the way alcohol affects us we don't think about that when it comes to drinking so it's very complicated conversation yeah and I think there's always more to the story like you said isn't there because it's like oh well you know you put yourself in a position where you were

at a party talking to this person you know alone for hours this person who maybe you know has feelings for you and you you allow yourself to get very drunk in that person's company I guess it's that kind of thing isn't it yeah yeah a lot of it is like completely situational is it like oh this colleague that you've been flirting with for months you have two wines and then you suddenly you know it loosens your inhibitions or is it that you got completely blackout drunk kissed around her in a club that you've never seen in your life and don't even remember what she looks like this it's so hard to judge it on like all drunk cheating is bad or no drunk cheating is bad it's kind of completely

dependent yeah completely and I think there's also there's a degree of denial when alcohol is involved isn't there that kind of makes it easier for you to rationalize it in your own head. And yeah, it's yeah, it's really problematic. And even more so with the next subject I want to talk to you about, which is consent. So you write in the book that alcohol can blur the lines of consent. So explain to me a bit about what you mean by that yeah so um kind of especially when it comes to blackouts blackouts can be like fragmentary where you kind of don't really you know like if you remember speaking to someone but you can't really remember what it was about you

know like if you're like oh god I remember speaking to my boss but I can't remember what I said that's kind of like fragmentary or you've got like on block which is kind of like you miss you know three four hours of your night and sometimes if I was drinking a ridiculous amount it would be more like five six of I remember walking in that club but I don't remember getting home so when you are in a blackout you're you are functioning in a way that no one could tell that you were in a blackout so the only way to test if someone is in a blackout really is to ask them a question uh get an answer and then kind of you know ask them the same thing like three minutes later to see if they remember it um other than that you could be walking around

you could be dancing you could be having conversations but you won't be there basically the lights are off no one's home so for me I would wake up sometimes and absolutely not remember this person who was in my bed and be like I don't know how they got here I don't remember this knowing in the morning that I had sex but not remembering whether I had said yes whether I had said no and it becomes a really complicated conversation. Because as far as that person is aware, you're fully functioning, you are dancing, you are chatting to them, you are saying all these things. But in the morning, you can't remember it. So it's, yeah, it's a really challenging conversation. At least it was for me,

because I would say to them, did I did I say yes? I say yes and they'd say yeah yeah we were kissing in the club don't you remember you invited me back all things that I would not remember in any way shape or form so the conversation becomes very complicated so that was my personal experience um but obviously it's a yeah very unique conversation yeah I think it's very it's a very difficult thing to talk about and I was trying to do some research in the run-up to this episode about um whether blackout sex is rape and like you said it so the police would say yes if you cannot remember consent you did not you were not in a position to give it and therefore any sex that you don't remember having would be classed as sexual assault and be classed as rape and I think it's a very horrible thing to process because you obviously wake up feeling violated if you don't remember sleeping with someone but then it's like because like you said the other person will think be

will might be under the illusion that you had a consensual sexual experience what that then does to your brain is kind of convince you of all of these damaging myths around rape that exist already it's like oh well it's my fault for getting so drunk and you know this doesn't count as rape because I was I was so drunk I was the one that you know said must have said yes in my drunken state like I don't have a right to feel violated by this which I think is is is a real issue because it's like it's you need someone to actually tell you because if you do feel violated which I'm sure most people would in that situation you you need the kind of vindication to have that feeling right yeah 100% and the problem is it becomes equally as complicated if they have been drinking as well

because they might not remember as well so the pair of you both wake up and you think well did we didn't we like how did this happen so it is a really complicated conversation in like were they sober enough to know that you were in a blackout it's very hard to tell when people are in a blackout just from when I used to go up my friends and I would wake up the next day and say I don't remember anything from last night and they'd be like you were fine you were chatting we had a good conversation about this and I would wake up the next day and say, I don't remember anything from last night. And they'd be like, you were fine. You were chatting. We had a good conversation about this. And I just wouldn't have remembered it. So there are chances that you might've said yes.

And that's where it gets really, really complicated. And the kind of only answer really is to understand how alcohol does affect you and, you know, more knowledge around the subject of it. Because, you know, should we be drinking that much? It is a really, really complicated conversation, to be honest. So I only ever really touch it from personal experience. Yeah, because it's even more complicated when you think about the fact that, you know, an estimated half of sexual assaults do involve alcohol. And we know for a fact that perpetrators of sexual assaults do involve alcohol and we know for a fact that perpetrators of sexual violence often use alcohol as a way of dulling a victim's inhibitions or lowering their ability to consent with the intention of taking advantage of them so when you take into account all of those

other factors it's like everything else it adds so much more weight to it and you know the situation which you described is like oh waking up next to someone who you don't remember meeting again I think that image is almost like glorified in popular culture a bit isn't it and like there are songs about that and it's like this kind of mark of this really funny kind of like uh anarchic behavior and it's it's just really kind of fetishized in a way and that's obviously really difficult because that could be someone else's experience of sexual assault. And imagine going through something like that

and then hearing it in a song and hearing people laugh about it or telling someone, telling a friend that you woke up next to someone you don't remember meeting and them laughing and being like, oh my God, you are so crazy. You're so funny. it's if you feel

really violated by that you're not going to feel that you have a right to feel that way at all so if you feel comfortable talking about this can you tell me how you felt after those experiences and whether you ever considered taking action in any way, like speaking to the police or anything like that? Yeah, no, I didn't, to be honest, because it is one of those things where I had by that point, suffered a lot of blackouts and done a lot of stuff that I didn't remember and agreeing to do a lot of stuff that I don't remember. like even in a friend context my friend would say like yeah you were really up for that at the time and I would have no recollection the next day so because I felt like I I had nothing to say to them other than hey I woke up with someone I don't

remember I might have said yes I might not have said yes but obviously in no way am I saying if you experience a sexual assault whether you're drinking not, that you shouldn't go to the police. You should absolutely report it. So I just want to be very clear about that. I just think on top of this conversation, we also need to have that conversation about the real dangers of alcohol, what it actually does, how it can affect us, how it's kind of entwined in these conversations about consent. But I think exactly what you said the major problem is the glamorization of it and the normalization of it and that's where the problem lies in that we glamorize alcohol so much and it's so normalized and we need more of an understanding of what it actually does like the problems it's causing like for us to make you know alcohol

glamorous and sexy when it like kills so many people it's so tied up in domestic violence it's so tied up in sexual assault yet we joke about it we make memes about it we think it's hilarious and that is I think the wider context of it is it's really hard because when I talk about alcohol I instantly get the like preachy card you could be saying anything but you know if I was talking about veganism it would be okay if I was talking about alcohol all of a sudden I'm labeled preachy but we need to be able to talk about the real dangers of alcohol and the fact that it is a drug and it is a drug that kills people and you know it is cited as the most harmful drug in the world because say ecstasy ecstasy doesn't contribute to a rise in domestic violence, yet we've absolutely

demonised it, we've criminalised it. Alcohol is tied up in so many of these things, crime, everything, and yet we joke about it, and we think it's really cool and fun, and we say people who don't drink it are boring, and it's the way we talk about alcohol, and the way we glamorise it and normalise it that needs to change and then this will help with reducing sexual assault domestic violence all those things it's just like such a wider conversation yeah completely and we'll reduce in this horrible victim blaming culture that we have because you know even if it's not even if it's not that thing of waking up next to someone you don't know and then going through your head like oh god I mustn't drink like

that again it's you know oh don't leave your drink unattended at the bar and don't drink too much because you might risk getting spiked and all of that stuff it's so tied up with all of this stuff that I feel like often women bear the brunt of it also this kind of goes back to what we're saying before but I think it's worth mentioning like people because you said you know people hate hate it when you talk about alcohol in this way and you're kind of labeled as preachy I know that whenever I've gone out on a night with friends or you know to dinner or whatever and for whatever reason I've decided I don't want to drink that night maybe I've got like an early start or something the next day the reactions that you get from other people when you say you're not drinking and I guess maybe left

this is less so in a dating context because you're just with one person usually but if you're in a group situation and you're not drinking it kind of brings out like other people's insecurities and I think it kind of prompts other people to be like to feel really insecure about why they're drinking and then that they get really angry at you and like oh that's why you get that oh you're such a loser kind of thing do you think that's fair yeah a hundred percent and I know that because I was one of those people if I was out on the night out and I've got friends who are I would say quite sober curious I've got one friend that is really drunk and every time she would say I'm not drinking I would say you're so boring blah blah blah and

it's because I just didn't want everyone to see me drunk on my own I wanted everyone to be as drunk as me so they didn't notice how drunk I was and I think it is holding a mirror up to other people's drinking when you say that I mean it's it's a really like it is a really toxic culture that we have and especially in the UK. And again, that's one of the things I'd love to change is just to normalize it to the point where, you know, if you said to me, I'm not smoking, I wouldn't even ask you why. I know why you're not smoking, because it's not good for you. But there always has to be a reason why when you say I'm not drinking, people will say,

well, why? It's because it's not good for me and I don't want to. People shouldn't need to provide a reason. And, you know, like like my friends we're three years down the line now and they know that nothing has really changed but at the start I did get the you're going to be boring you're going to be this conversation so again like there's so many things that we need to change around the discussion of alcohol. Yeah I think it's just about education, isn't it? Because imagine the difference had we been taught about this stuff at school. Like obviously you're taught about,

oh, don't drink too much and don't give into peer pressure. But I mean, all of the subjects that we've covered in this episode of like how alcohol relates to dating and relationships and consent is so important. Imagine the difference if we were taught about that stuff at school.

Now it's time for our lessons in love segment. So this is the part of the show where I ask every guest to share something that they've learned from their previous relationship experiences so Millie what's your lesson in love oh I would say kind of don't use alcohol to mask problems or you know insecurities and emotions I think even if you have no intention to become a non-drinker just even to be more mindful about how you're using alcohol so like if there is a problem in the relationship like rather than just drinking and hope it gets better I would say like addressing that that has been really key for me is kind of learning to speak about when I'm feeling insecure rather than just drinking and hope for the best,

especially when it comes to, you know, sexual relations. I would just say to kind of have those conversations. They let this is how I'm feeling rather than just think, oh, I'll neck a Jager bomb and that would do the trick. And so that's one thing I would say is try and learn how to communicate and not just mask over with with booze. I think that kind of applies to all relationships I guess doesn't it and just like everyone every aspect of your life you know if you have an issue rather than you know sinking into a bottle of gin confront these issues head-on and I think that is particularly important obviously with a romantic partner because otherwise these issues

just kind of bubble up don't they and if you don't address it you know god forbid then it comes out in a horrible drunken row which is all made all the more dramatic because you're so drunk why are we so much more dramatic when we're drunk in arguments like what is that yeah that's that's the inhibitions lowered I think because you don't care if people are looking, you don't care if you're raising your voice, you just go for it. Yeah, it's awful. You see those, I know you mentioned this in the book,

you see those couples fighting outside nightclubs, screaming at each other in public. Yeah. And just that you know that they wouldn't be doing that if they were both sober. Yeah, that used to be me. That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening.

Like I said at the start of the show, those seeking more information on support after sexual assault can contact Rape Crisis either via their website, rapecrisis.org.uk or by calling their helpline on 0808 802 9999. If you're a new listener to Millennial Love, you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Acast or anywhere else.

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