I started sleeping better, I was handling stressful situations better, my relationship was better, my relationship with my family was better.

You just have to be bold enough to take that step to try it and once you get across the line you're like, wow.

I used to remember going to parties in LA when I, because at the beginning, you know, as a young kid you try to fit into the LA world and now that I've grown up a little bit and I know that it isn't my place to be, I don't try as hard to go out to the LA parties and mix with celebrities that I don't know.

And I think mental health, you know, I took a break from social media once and felt the need to kind of announce it because I didn't want to, I didn't want people to worry that, you know, I had disappeared or something, I don't know.

And that also was met with a negative reaction of like, oh you can't hack it, like you can't handle social media.

I just think that sometimes it's important to look up and engage with what's around you and and I find for me with social media I can easily sit on the couch for four hours and scroll and I haven't had Instagram on my phone.

I'll download it to post something or download it if a friend of mine's post something and I want to like it for them but 99% of the time I don't have it on my phone and my life is so much better for not being completely glued to this felt false world that we have on our phones.

But it's a shame and I really hope it changes because I think self-preservation is so important.

I think it's really disappointing that a young person in my decision who's lucky enough to have the power to say I'm going to take some time off for myself gets painted as, you know, something negative.

I think we all work too hard and we should put our lives first.

I've always lived by the idea that I work to live, I don't live to work and I think that it's really unfortunate that that's what people took from the idea of me taking a break.

You know, pressure is only natural and pressure is a privilege to a certain degree but sometimes too much pressure is too much pressure.

Only a fool would say to you you should work until you crack because if you crack it's going to take you longer to get back to full fitness and work at your top capacity.

So for me like taking these strategic little breaks where you can rest and recoup and come back your best self is really important and something that should be heralded rather than chastised.

I didn't decide to put the booze in the rear view to begin with.

I just decided to do dry January and in doing dry January it really scared me because I had a really tough time.

I couldn't quite wrap my head around how much I was struggling without booze in that first month and it really scared me so I decided as a sort of punishment to myself that I would do February as well as January and I would do two months.

The second month was no easier, if anything like it got a little bit harder.

So then again I was starting to kind of panic thinking damn like I have a bit of an alcohol thing.

I'd had a you know quite an upsetting conversation with a doctor about my liver a year earlier and as a young kid I ignored the doctor as we all do and I started to think like oh wow maybe I have a bit of an issue here so then I started to go I'll do March and I got through March and started to feel a little bit better but was still really struggling so I said to myself if I can make it to June 1st which is my birthday and I can do six months without booze I will have then proved to myself that I don't have a problem.

I'm just young and enjoying a drink and then by the time I'd done six months sober I really started feeling the benefits.

I started sleeping better, I was handling stressful situations better, my relationship was better, my relationship with my family was better, my relationship with my work was better and I just sort of said to myself let's do a year.

Let's get through the first year and then that will be a wonderful achievement and then by the time I'd crossed that annual mark I was done.

I was like I'm never gonna drink again because this is the best version of myself and when I realised that alcohol wasn't masking my insecurity or bringing out my best self it was actually doing the opposite.

I then started to feel this freedom of like oh I can just be myself and I have nothing to be insecure about.

People think a life of sobriety is sacrificing the fun but it really isn't.

You just have to be bold enough to like take that step to try it and once you get across the line you're like wow. you