Chris Raine on the origins of Hello Sunday Morning from One Red Thread on Vimeo.

It all started with a hangover. In 2008 Chris Raine, a 22 year-old from Brisbane, woke up after a night of heavy drinking and read that Australia’s national binge drinking culture (a culture that he was very much a part of) cost the country over $15 billion and was responsible for the death of over 260 young Australians, each year.

Chris felt strongly that existing government communication (fear-based advertising campaigns) designed to tackle youth binge drinking was widely missing the mark. It seemed neither relevant nor meaningful to his life and motivations and, he was sure, to the majority of other young Australians. In a moment of sober soul searching, he decided that this was important enough to him to try to think of a better solution. Initial research made him realise that any solution would need to be effective in changing the “root causes” of the binge-drinking culture, as opposed to simply addressing the “symptoms” of it.

Chris committed to spend 2009 researching and understanding binge-drinking culture in young Australians. Central to this process, Chris took the bold, and difficult, decision on 31 December 2008 to give up alcohol for the entirety of 2009. Chris felt this would be the best way to fully experience what it would personally take for a young Australian to limit, control and be genuinely non-reliant on alcohol in their life, emotionally, socially and psychologically.

Throughout the year, he candidly chronicled his journey through a blog, ‘Hello Sunday Morning’ (www.hellosundaymorning.com) attracting a following of over 1000 people. Over the year it has evolved to represent a community of bloggers aged from 18 to 30, from all over Australia who have committed to an extended period of sobriety (3/6/12 months) in order to give them the space and motivation to honestly explore their relationship with alcohol through a period facing life’s challenges, and celebrations, without alcohol.

Following his year, and seeing the changes Chris had made in his life, people that wanted to go through a similar process started to get in touch and blog themselves. Hello Sunday Morning continues to grow in numbers every day.