I remember my last drink clearly.
It was New Year’s Eve, just over two and a half years ago. My family was on vacation in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, and we were on the beach in the middle of the afternoon. My daughter was 9, my son was 7, and they were playing a game in the sand with my wife. I had a piña colada in my hand that had cost me $10 USD, which felt absurd for a Canadian, and it was my second or third of the day, on top of a few beers.
I looked at my kids and had a thought I couldn’t shake. Why was I choosing to slow myself down with alcohol? What was the drink accomplishing? Was it making the afternoon better, or just softening its edges?
I was numbing myself on a beautiful beach next to my family, and I couldn’t come up with a single good reason.
I put the drink down, and I haven’t had another one since.
I didn’t quit so much as stop
I want to be clear that there was no plan when I quit drinking. I didn’t announce it, set a 30-day challenge, or even tell anyone. I’ve learned over the years that when I hand myself an ultimatum, I tend to break it and then feel terrible about it, so I’ve stopped doing that.
I just told myself I was going to try not drinking, because it wasn’t serving me anymore, and I didn’t feel good when I did it. That was the whole decision.
I still won’t say I’ll never drink again. I don’t know what life holds or if it will make sense to drink again in the future. But I’ve had two and a half years to sit with the question of why I would start again, and I’ve yet to come up with a good answer.
The changes were smaller than I expected, and better
I wasn’t drinking heavily by the time I quit. Two kids and a move to a small town had already taken care of most of that — my time was otherwise occupied. So I wasn’t expecting a dramatic before-and-after.
What I got instead was a steady, low-grade improvement in almost everything. My sleep improved, my energy went up, and cravings for unhealthy foods faded. And while those things are great, the main thing I’d point to now, looking back — and the thing my wife noticed first— was how much my mood improved. Don’t get me wrong, I still have a temper at times, but I’m nowhere near as irritable or impatient as I used to be.
The social part was the awkward part
The hard part about quitting drinking isn’t the drinking itself. It’s not drinking in a room full of people who are.
For most of my adult life, social events meant I was guaranteed to drink. Beers with other dads at a kid’s birthday party. A couple of drinks with friends after the kids were asleep. Weddings. You name it. Every one of those situations had a script, and the drink was a prop that made the script easy. Take away the prop, and you have to stand there fully as yourself.
What I realized is that I’d never actually tested whether I could be comfortable in social situations without a drink in my hand. I’d assumed I couldn’t and never checked. It turns out I can. And, to my surprise, I’m more myself now at a social function than I ever was with three beers in me.
What I got back was time
The realization my wife and I keep returning to is how much time you waste drinking. You sit in a backyard or on a patio and hours disappear, and at the end of it, you’re tired, your sleep is wrecked, and you haven’t accomplished anything.
Sure, the first 30 minutes of drinking are fun. The buzz, the laughing, the lack of inhibition. Then you spend the rest of the night chasing that 30 minutes and never quite catching it.
Today, my time is much more valuable. I lift, I run, I’m writing a book, I work two jobs, and I get up early on purpose. Each hour of my day is intentional. That’s the real reason I don’t drink, more than any health statistic I’ve ever written about for work. I now have things I want to feel and perform my best for.
And while I don’t tell people in casual conversation that I quit drinking, if asked, I would say this: If you’ve been wondering what your life could look like if you gave up alcohol, don’t give yourself an ultimatum. Don’t declare that you’re done forever, because that’s a promise designed to be broken and then punished. Just try 30 days without drinking and pay attention to how you feel.
You’ll probably find, like I did, that the part you were scared of losing wasn’t the drinking. It was the version of yourself you thought you needed the drink to be.
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