Guest post by Sam Bail, Founder of Bright Nights Social, a sober nightlife community based in NYC.

What does joy actually look like after quitting drinking? For women navigating sobriety in their 40s, it’s rarely what they expected – it’s quieter, stranger, and harder to name than anyone warns you about. In this guest post, Sam Bail, founder of Bright Nights Social, digs into the difference between fun and real joy, and what it looks like to rebuild a life that finally feels like yours.

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I remember the exact moment when I became fully aware of my own mortality for the first time. Not aging, or the act of dying itself, my 26 year old self wasn’t afraid of that just yet. What happened to me that one morning while I was brushing my teeth was different. The thought just hit me out of nowhere:

One day, I will no longer exist.

Everything I have experienced in my life, every single thing that happened to my body and my mind while I was alive, will be gone, leaving behind only photos and memories, some funny anecdotes, and maybe some grudges that last beyond my grave.

The realization felt like someone had pulled the rug from under me and made me break out into tears periodically throughout that day. And even now, over a decade later, it feels like someone’s knocked the wind out of me every time I think about the non-existence we’re all going to face at some point, sooner or (hopefully) later. 

The moment I became aware of my own future non-existence also set something in motion in me. Of course, I had thought about the “meaning of life” before I was in my late 20s, after all, I was a stoner, clinically depressed, and had taken philosophy classes since I was a teenager.

But rather than just talking about it from a philosophical perspective, this time, I truly felt it. I realized that even though I was still relatively young, I only had a finite amount of time left, and after that, poof. Gone. And so I started asking myself: what the hell should we be doing here? What’s the point? 

What’s the point of being alive in this body that’s really just a sentient lump of cells, on this planet that’s a giant rock spinning through space at 67,000 miles per hour, and all of it is basically just one big happy accident? Of course the purpose of life is highly debatable and depends on your personal beliefs, but I think there’s one thing we can all agree on: being joyless is not the point.

What Is True Joy (And How Is It Different From Fun?)

It took me another decade to come to the conclusion that, in fact, experiencing joy is one of the most important things we can do to make use of the time we are given on this planet.

And I’m not talking about unbound hedonism at the cost of others or our own health and wellbeing. I’d actually argue that sex & drugs & rock’n’roll, entertaining and fun as they may be, don’t bring true joy. There’s a difference between fun and joy, and we often conflate the two.

Fun is the feeling of enjoying something, or being entertained. It’s pleasant, but not necessarily deep or lasting. True joy, on the other hand, is this intrinsic feeling of knowing that we’re in the right place at the right time, one of those very few moments in our chaotic little lives where we feel like we’re exactly where we need to be. In some way, experiencing joy is experiencing purpose.

And yet – with everything going on in the world around us, the incessant stream of news that have somehow gone from pretty bad to straight out horrifying in recent years, having to take care of others before thinking of ourselves, the hustle culture, social media doomscrolling, AI nightmares, over-optimization, over-comparison, and over-consumption – joy isn’t always the first thing we prioritize. Especially as a 40 year old woman with a “portfolio career” (a nice term for “I juggle dozens of jobs”) who’s been trained to put other people’s wellbeing first, it’s been hard for me to come up for air and ask myself:

Am I actually experiencing joy?

And if not, what can I do to change that? 

Life After Quitting Drinking – And Losing the “Pink Cloud”

I have to be completely honest for a moment: the past few years living in New York City have been fairly miserable for me. I quit drinking in 2022 and was riding the pink cloud of early sobriety for quite a while, but once the excitement wore off, I didn’t really know where to go from there.

Sure, I was building my sober nightlife community while working a well paid job, had a few successes, met amazing people, and got to have plenty of fun. But all of that came at the cost of working nonstop, not being able to switch off, having to be on social media all the time, and constant FOMO.

At some point I realized it had been a long time since I had felt those moments of true, deep joy and purpose, and I wasn’t sure how I could get them back. I felt stuck in a joyless marriage with myself. (Footnote: I actually believe the word “joyless” in the phrase “joyless marriage” is doing a lot more work than we’re usually aware of.)

How Women Over 40 Are Finding Joy Without Alcohol

So I started asking a bigger question – not just about sobriety, but about joy itself, and I did what every extremely online person in my position would do: I posted a question online:

“Okay, women 40+, I want to hear the most radical thing you’ve done to bring JOY back into your life. Not “I take a bubble bath and read a good book every weekend” surprise me. Heck, SHOCK me.”

Within a few minutes after posting this question on Threads, the answers started coming in.

First just a few that I replied to, then slowly more, and over the next few days, my notifications tab was flooded with replies to the point where I was barely able to keep up. In the end, the post received almost a million views and over 7,000 replies.

Scrolling through the responses, I saw several themes emerge: Animals – dogs and cats, of course, but also a surprising number of horses. Divorces and quitting jobs – absolutely no surprise here. Quitting drinking. Moving to another country. Music – live music, raves, dancing, k-pop, choirs, and so many amazing ladies in bands. 

But I also noticed something else: At some point, the thread drifted away from the theme of “joy” towards people listing their accomplishments instead. Starting their own businesses, getting degrees, publishing books. At the same time, a lot of women told me about trips and vacations. I wondered whether we had, once again, conflated “fun” or “success” with true joy.

A trip to Paris or a law degree is great, but how will it bring you long-lasting joy throughout your life? I don’t want to police anyone’s personal experiences, but for the purpose of this post, I want to encourage everyone to try and dig a little bit deeper. Does this make you happy, does it bring you fun, do you feel successful and accomplished – or do you actually feel true joy and purpose? 

The answers to the post encouraged me to take stock of my own life.

I realized that for me personally, joy almost always involves movement, music, or both. Biking in the sunshine. Discovering a new song for the first time and standing there with my eyes and mouth open, trying to process what I’m hearing. Running to the same playlist I’ve been listening to for years. Singing. Experiencing live music of any kind. Feeling every single part of my body in a yoga class. The euphoria I experience when I’m dancing at a club and the beat drops, when I make brief eye contact with the person across from me and we both just… know. Being part of a group that creates something. And sometimes, just allowing myself to sit in the sun with a book and a coffee and not worrying about all the things I have to – and want to – do.

It’s now been almost two months since I asked that question.

Since then, I’ve gotten back into running after almost a year of recovering from an injury. I’ve been taking advantage of the better weather and biking around the cities I’ve been visiting on my trip to Europe. I also signed up for a women’s indie choir that starts in a month, and for the first time in over a decade I’m going to be part of a creative community again. They’re all tiny incremental changes, but the amount of joy they have already brought to my life is immense. 

So here’s my question for you – not as a thought exercise, but as something you actually sit down and think through today: What brings you joy? Not fun, or a feeling of success or accomplishment. True joy, when you feel that sense of alignment, like this little sentient lump of cells is exactly where it needs to be right now, for the short time it exists. 

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If you’re navigating your own alcohol-free life and wondering what comes next – what joy even looks like on the other side of the quit – I write about the real, unfiltered version of this life every Tuesday in Uncorked.

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