I remember my last drink clearly.
It was New Year’s Evejust over two and a half years ago. My family was on vacation in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, and we were at 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 was holding a piña colada that had cost me $10, which felt absurd to a Canadian, and it was my second or third of the day, on top of a few beers.
I looked at my children and had a thought I couldn’t shake. Why did I choose to slow myself down with alcohol? What did the drink do? Did it make the afternoon better, or just soften the edges?
I was numbing myself on a beautiful beach next to my family, and I couldn’t think of a single good reason.
I put down the drinkand I haven’t had one since.
I didn’t so much quit as quit
I want to be clear that there was no plan when I… stop drinking. I didn’t announce it, set a 30 day challenge, or even tell anyone. I’ve learned over the years that when I give myself an ultimatum I tend to break it and then feel terrible about it, so I stopped doing that.
I just told myself that’s what I was going to do try not to drinkbecause it didn’t serve me anymore, and I didn’t feel good doing it. That was the whole decision.
I’m still not saying I’ll never drink again. I don’t know what life has in store and whether there is any point in drinking again in the future. But I’ve had two and a half years to ponder why I should start over, and I still haven’t been able to come up with a good answer.
The changes were smaller than I expected, and better
When I quit, I stopped drinking heavily. Two children and one moving to a small town I had already done most of that – my time was otherwise occupied. So I wasn’t expecting a dramatic before and after.
What I got instead was steady, low-grade improvement in almost everything. My sleep improved, my energy increased, and cravings for unhealthy foods faded. And while those things are great, the main thing I would point out now, looking back – and what my wife noticed first – was how much my mood improved. Don’t get me wrong, I still have a short temper sometimes, but I’m not nearly as irritable or impatient as I used to be.
The social part was the awkward part
The hardest 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 guaranteed me drinking. Beers with other dads at a children’s birthday party. A few drinks with friends after the kids were asleep. Weddings. You name it. All those situations had a script, and the drink was a prop that made the script easy. Remove the support, and you have to stand there completely as yourself.
What I realized is that I had never really tested whether I could feel comfortable in social situations without a drink in my hand. I assumed I couldn’t and never checked. It turns out I can. And to my surprise, I am now more myself at a social event than ever before, with three beers in me.
What I got back was time
The realization my wife and I keep coming back to is how much time you waste drinking. You sit in a backyard or on a patio and hours disappear, and at the end you’re tired, your sleep is ruined, and you haven’t accomplished anything.
Sure, the first 30 minutes of drinking are fun. The buzz, the laughter, the lack of inhibition. Then you spend the rest of the night chasing that 30 minutes and never quite get it.
Nowadays my time is much more valuable. I lift, I run, I write a book, I have two jobsand I get up early on purpose. Every 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 that I want to feel my best about and do my best for.
And while I don’t tell people in casual conversation that I’ve stopped drinking, if asked, I would say this: If you’ve wondered what your life might be like if you alcohol given updon’t give yourself an ultimatum. Don’t declare that you are done forever, because that is a promise meant to be broken and then punished. Just try without drinking for 30 days and pay attention to how you feel.
You’ll probably discover, as I did, that the part you were afraid of losing wasn’t the drinking. It was the version of yourself that you thought you needed the drink for.
