Given up drinking? Now what are you going to do on a Friday night?

The hard part of quitting alcohol is finding stuff to do instead, writes Rebecca Davis

I stopped drinking alcohol in January this year. I'm not asking for a medal, though if you do happen to be minting some, I'd appreciate at least being considered for one.

It's only been four months, but what you quickly find is that time operates very differently in Soberville. It's a kind of reverse Narnia. "I have so much more time," is a common thing you'll hear new teetotallers say. They may say it in a slightly ambiguous tone.

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Time is often considered a precious commodity, particularly among presidents hanging on to power, new parents, or the terminally ill, so I'm conscious that what I'm about to say may sound a tweetch ungrateful.

The thing about time, though, is that you have to fill it. If you have become accustomed to spending most of your leisure hours either consuming alcohol or being ravaged by its after-effects, this can be a shock to the system. Back in my heaviest drinking days, my friends and I used to speculate - entirely hypothetically - about whether there existed any recreational activities which would not be improved by the injection of alcohol.

Maybe ... hiking, we mused. Most sports. Sex, perhaps. After that we pretty much drew a blank. As a drinker, I used to marvel at people who actually had things to put in the "Hobbies & Interests" section of a CV.

If you are a big social drinker, you never have to invest much thought into what fills your idle hours, because it is essentially the same: alcohol. Where you drink, what you drink and who you drink with may vary, but your Friday night plans are effectively sorted for eternity, or at least until the onset of cirrhosis of the liver.

Until you stop drinking, you may not notice the degree to which our society presupposes that alcohol is an intrinsic part of kicking back. Try book a cottage for a weekend away, for instance. The advertising blurb will tell you that there's a stoep which provides the perfect spot to "unwind with a glass of wine".

It will direct you to the myriad farms nearby at which you can while the day away with languid hours of winetasting. Suddenly you will become hyper-conscious of how much people drink on TV, and in movies. It will feel at points that you are the sole passenger on a lonely boat of sobriety bobbing around on a vast ocean of alcohol.

You will also find yourself longing for grown-up non-alcoholic drinks that one can order at a restaurant, or take to a braai. As a teetotaller you have two beverage options: utterly tasteless (water), or containing enough sugar to give Tim Noakes a panic attack (cooldrinks). You will experiment with alcohol-free beer, before remembering that beer tastes like foot and is only worth it for its jolly side-effects.

When you quit alcohol for good, other heavy drinkers will marvel at your strength of character. "I don't think I could do it," they will say, as if you've just announced your intention to spend the rest of your life living up a tree to protest against nuclear power, or something.

This is plainly ridiculous. Much of the world leads happy and fulfilled lives without ever tasting alcohol. I intend to learn their secrets. In the meantime, let me know if you'd like to play a long board game.