Edinburgh Fringe has always been a stage for bold, boundary-pushing comedy, but few acts this year hit closer to home than Alex Stringer’s debut, *Happy Hour*.
In a nation where binge drinking remains a cultural staple, Stringer’s brutally honest yet wildly funny show offers a raw, unfiltered take on addiction, mental health, and the difficult road to sobriety.
The statistics don’t lie: the UK has one of the highest binge-drinking rates in Europe, with one in four adults drinking at levels considered harmful. For Stringer, alcohol wasn’t just a weekend indulgence, it was a lifeline that stopped working. At 23, she hit rock bottom, faced suicidal thoughts, and finally got sober. Now, eight years on, she’s turning that journey into comedy, because, as she proves in *Happy Hour*, sometimes the darkest moments make for the funniest stories.
Stringer recalls one drinking misadventure in a taxi: mid-journey sickness caught the driver so off-guard that he instinctively flicked on the windscreen wipers. It was the kind of absurdity that made her question everything, including who the real loser was in that moment.
Rehab came next, but it wasn’t quite the redemption arc she expected. There, she was told not to shout “line” during bingo, in case it triggered recovering cocaine addicts, so instead, players had to say “a horizontal sequence of numbers.”
She unpacks everything, from self-harm, mental illness, and her time in a psychiatric ward, to the guilt of “stealing someone’s depression thunder” when two friends were simultaneously open about their mental health struggles.
Stringer isn’t just another rising comedian, she’s a necessary voice in the conversation about sobriety, addiction, and the unrealistic expectations placed on sober people.
“I thought sobriety would make me enlightened,” she jokes.
“Turns out, I still think people who text into radio stations belong on a register.”
Her reluctance to embrace cold-water swimming, ‘soft drinks,’ and motivational social media culture speaks to the wider frustration of young sober people. What happens when society assumes sobriety equals perfection? And what about the people who quit drinking but don’t fit the stereotype?
Her show arrives at a critical time. Government funding for addiction recovery services continues to shrink, leaving many young people without accessible paths to rehabilitation. In *Happy Hour*, Stringer shines a light on this crisis, not with lectures, but with laughs.
See Alex Stringer’s *Happy Hour* at Pleasance Courtyard – Bunker 3 at 6:00pm daily for the month of August.
