Sober introvert, drunk extravert?

I'm a sucker for personality tests – I’ve even got people to do them on dates. But, as a drinker, they got me all wrong.

Myers-Briggs is the gateway drug of personality tests and it led to many others for me.

But it would class me as an extravert because my drinking made me behave like an extravert.

Having done the test since quitting drinking, I know I’m really an introvert and my results were heavily skewed by me being a drunk extravert.

Binge extravert

As a binge drinker, my answers would skew me towards extraversion, although I really like nothing more than curling up at home with a cat and a good book.

When I first stopped drinking in 2017, I embraced my long-neglected inner introvert.

I relaxed at home on the weekend, spent time with my girlfriend and avoided many social events.

But over time, I realised the introversion would go too far if I didn’t actively temper it.

Without rowdy nights out and without a natural inclination to reach out to people socially, I found it helped me stay social if I commit myself to things.

I would say yes recurring activities like squash. And I also committed to group activities and courses because I knew the group component would be good for me, even if it wasn't always my natural preference to seek out group things.

Over the years I've found that group courses have been great opportunities for social connection – yoga courses, meditation courses, creative writing courses, NLP – I’ve met great, likeminded people on all of them.

As a sober introvert/drunk extravert, these were particularly good opportunities to connect with people away from drinking. And they allowed me to balance my natural introversion when I’d removed my drunken solution to that life problem.

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