“I had this tremendous guilt. I felt there must be more to life than this.” James Haze from DEXT Recordings on getting sober
Sometimes James Haze dreams of being down the pub with his mates, having a few drinks, taking a few lines. “I wake up and think fuck. I’ve blown it. And it takes a few minutes to realise it’s alright. It was just a dream.”
It’s been just over one year since James quit drugs and alcohol, but he’s still not quite settled into a normal sleeping pattern. Turns out that missing at least one night’s sleep per week for about 20 years takes its toll on your melatonin. “I used to say I wasn’t a morning person,” James says. “Now I’m like yeah, obviously not. I was fucking hungover.”
James spent his teen hood in ‘90s Essex, back when lad culture reigned supreme and women shouldn’t expect any help on a Thursday. Drinking til your legs gave way was a social badge of honour and just the idea of a weekend without booze seemed ludicrous and out of the question.
James’ whole world was and still is dance music and club culture. He worked in digital distribution for several years until he moved into managing labels 13 years ago. He’s a DJ and producer too, so when he wasn’t working in electronic music he was either playing or making the stuff. It meant that every night of the week there was a good reason to have a drink in his hand. And at the weekends there was no good reason to go to bed.
James moved to Ibiza in 2014 and established DEXT Recordings around the same time. The label leans towards the industrial side of house and the rough side of techno, with UK bass woven like a thread through each release. Not ideal for an Ibiza sunset, but perfect for a raucous night out with your mates. The consistency and confidence of each release gained the label instant respect, and a year after launch DEXT hosted a room at Vista Club in Privilege Ibiza, the world’s biggest nightclub. Bodyjack and Oli Furness joined James to play to a room full of wide eyed ravers – a monumental achievement for any label, let alone one so young. You can imagine the celebrations.
James’ final session was on his 40th birthday. Him and his mates went to Dekmantel and spent three days caning it in Amsterdam. James knew, though, that this was the last time. After this, he said, no more.
“I was adamant I would still keep my normal life,” James says, chatting from his studio in Ibiza. “Going sober won’t stop me going out, I thought. And I wanted to keep all my same friends. But it just didn’t work that way.”
Unsurprisingly, going to a nightclub newly sober can be a bit triggering. So although James tried at first, he quickly found he was only pretending to enjoy himself. “Now I tend to go to the club on my own. I don’t do pre-drinks. If there’s a DJ I want to see I’ll just fly in, hit everyone I want to see, stay for 2 or 3 hours, see the DJ, have a great time and come out buzzing. I do it on my terms.”
The friend thing didn’t work out as planned, either. James felt an instant distancing from some of his mates in the industry. “A friend of mine – we were good mates. We’re still friends but we lost our closeness. That was a little tricky to navigate. I recommend building a good group of friends who are doing the same thing, not drinking or using drugs. Fill that void.”
When James got sober a year ago it wasn’t his first attempt. He’d tried off and on for several years – a month here, a week there. But it hadn’t stuck. “Something in life would happen – it might be really good or really shit – and then the lid would come off and I’d drown my sorrows.”
James had a shit day yesterday. He lost a long-term client. A year ago, he says, that would’ve been a reason to go down the pub. “But now things like that happen and I have to get on the phone to someone and talk about it. Before I’d have kept it all in and got drunk. This year I’ve had to open up and that’s been really beautiful.”
Nothing in particular happened to warrant his decision to go sober this time, except that he was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.
“[The nights out] were really getting a lot worse. The hangovers, the feeling after. They were happening more frequently and I was enjoying them less. It was very rare that I was having fun. At the crux of it all was a central fear that’s ever present and that keeps you in the cycle. After those nights I had this tremendous guilt. I felt there must be more to life than this. I felt like I wasn’t reaching my full potential.” He pauses. “Fuck man. I don’t miss those nights.”
James says the best thing to come out of his sobriety is his relationship with his son. “Before it was good, but in the last year we’ve really built a different sort of relationship. I can come down to his level more. We’re tighter.”
Sometimes he feels like he’s missing out on all the fun, but he realises that instead of those synthetic connections on the dance floor, he’s making real ones. In fact, he says, he thinks that his previous habits did more harm to his business than good. By his own admission he says he could be “a bit of a handful.”
The conversations he has with friends and colleagues now, over lunch or dinner, are real and authentic, and exactly what people try to replicate at 6am with cocaine. But James says he could not have done it without a sober community behind him. So when he feels resentful that he can’t enjoy an Aperol Spritz on the beach post-lockdown, he gets on the phone to one of his mates and they remind him why he’s doing this.
“I know so many people who drink every weekend and don’t want to,” James says. “I know people who are doing coke every weekend and they don’t want to. They’re in a cycle. And I try to remind myself how many people would trade places if they could. I’m quite lucky really.”
He has no regrets, but when he thinks about what he’s achieved this year, he can’t help but reflect on what could have been. “Looking back, I do wish I’d found sobriety earlier,” he says. “I’ve got so much out of this year, particularly in the studio. I’m finishing so much music. Before when I was drinking, nothing came out. I had all these half-started projects. A hard drive full of loops and ideas that never got finished. Now stuff gets done.”
And what would he say to his 30 year old self? “Mate – you could’ve had an album by now.” He pauses. “But whatever age you find it – I believe that you’re never too young or old to cut out alcohol.”
Meanwhile, DEXT Recordings continues to thrive. They’ve hosted parties at Fabric London and Sheffield’s Hopeworks and just released eleVAte Vol 1 with Otik, Pugilist, Appleblim and Commix to mark their five year anniversary. Which, coincidentally, marked one year sober for James.
So how did he spend his 41st birthday? “Down a lake in Essex fishing on my own.” He pauses, then laughs. “Mate. I couldn’t have been happier.”
For their latest releases, follow Dext Recordings on Bandcamp.
Alice Austin is a freelance writer. Follow her on Instagram.
