‘It’s like a grieving period’: Adwoa Aboah opens up about how lonely the journey to sobriety is

‘There are things that you just in no way can relate to any more’

Model Adwoa Aboah has revealed that there is loneliness attached to sobriety that feels like “a grieving period”.

The 30-year-old, who has appeared on the cover of numerous magazines, has been sober for nearly eight years and speaks candidly about her past struggles with drink and drugs.

She previously said that being open about her experiences is an important part of who she is.

Speaking on the Reign with Josh Smith podcast for World Mental Health Day on Monday, Aboah said that getting sober means you can’t be among certain people or in certain situations.

“I don’t think people talk about [loneliness] enough when attached to sobriety,” she said. “Like imagine, you know, it’s almost like a grieving period.

“You mourn the people you can’t hang out with. The situations you can’t be part of. It’s just endless, you know?”

She continued: “There are things that you just in no way can relate to any more because you are so far from them. Or just mentally and chemically you’re not there. It is a bit lonely sometimes.”

Aboah reflected on that feeling of loneliness when she was younger and how it felt like “isolation”.

“It wasn’t a healthy one,” she admitted. “It was one that kept me from asking for help, it was one that kept me low and in the dark and unable to see anything better.

“Now I am not afraid of being myself,” the model added.

Aboah, who has modelled for Calvin Klein, Fendi, Alexander Wang, and more, was chosen as one of Britain’s most influential Black people on the 2020 Powerlist, which names 100 people of African or African Caribbean heritage in the UK each year.

Adwoa Aboah attends the 2022 Vanity Fair Oscar Party hosted by Radhika Jones at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on March 27, 2022 (Getty Images)

She founded online platform Gurls Talk to empower young women and provide them with a space to discuss mental health, sexuality and body image.

Sobriety is now “second nature” for her, Aboah said, and she knows how to have a good time without being under the influence.

However, she added that it can also be harder as she can no longer “fake it” in certain social situations.

“So in a sense, there’s a new sort of loneliness where I know I used to push myself to be part of things and now I just know that I have an inability to be part of it which is actually fine,” she explained.

Elsewhere in the podcast, Aboah spoke about her experience in rehab on a couple of occasions and said she feels “lucky” to be given the chance to do things differently.

“I was lucky enough to go to treatment, so I met a mad variety of people there who’d been through all sorts of different things,” she said. “It kicks it out of you when you are forced to really confront yourself. I’m actually quite lucky, a lot of sober people say that.

“I think I’m quite lucky that I was pushed to deal with it now. Pushed to pick apart any judgments I had towards other people. Pushed to rip apart myself and put it all back together so that I could look at things a bit differently.

“Even though it was pretty f***ing shit, I’m pretty lucky, to be quite honest, that I’ve been given this chance to do things differently and to look at situations in a more empathetic way, actually.”

Additional reporting by PA