Two years.

Why I stopped drinking in March of 2022.

Two years ago, on March 19, 2022, I consumed my last alcoholic beverages during a girl’s night with some of my oldest friends. Prior to leaving for the gathering, I bargained with myself, as I always did back then whenever drinking was involved. I would limit myself to TWO drinks that night while hanging with friends. Just two, no more. That would be enough. It had to be enough.

I went over the familiar script in my head, telling myself I’d savor those two drinks (which would probably be wine) and enjoy the buzz, then switch to water. I shared my plans with Carolyn, attempting to be accountable to someone else. I was resolute in this commitment… until I started drinking. Like so many hundreds (thousands?) of times before, I was washed away by the warmth of the alcohol hitting my stomach. That dulling sensation, the first sign of intoxication, was too much. I only wanted more of it. I could never get enough. So, after consuming my promised two drinks, the wine bottle was making its rounds again and I asked for a top-off.

“Are you sure?” Carolyn said to me, raising her eyebrows in concern. She remembered my promise.

“Yeah, I’m sure! I know I said two drinks, but …” I proceeded to list off several empty justifications for breaking my promise to myself. I don’t remember how many drinks I had that night. I do remember that the bottles of wine we consumed were numerous (there were six of us). And I do remember how I felt the next day when I woke up. I do remember the deep pit in my stomach, a feeling of sickness — not quite a hangover, more a feeling of shame and disappointment. I had done it again — I’d let myself down, not kept my word.

I consider myself to be a person who keeps their promises. Integrity is important to me, in myself and in others. In every other area of my life, I was keeping my promises… alcohol was the one area where I felt out of control of my integrity.

For long periods of my adult life, I drank heavily. I’m just gonna refer to my college years as the black-out years. I drank to excess, to the point of browning or blacking out, with great frequency. I tried various tactics back then to rein in my consumption when I’d start to feel that day-after shame setting in. I’d almost always take Sundays off, and I’d occasionally abstain on a random Saturday. During the week, I tried to space out my nights of drinking so they weren’t consecutive. After college, I managed to cut down to drinking only 2-3 nights a week simply because I had to get up and work M-F. But still, there were tricks, tactics, negotiations with myself — always. Looking back, I had so many methods by which I tried to control the alcohol, convinced that I was in the driver’s seat. I truly believed for years that if I could nail the perfect equation of alcohol in + abstaining days out, I’d overcome the shame spiral of a hangover I always woke up to.

Some of the fun times — top left, post-college reunion, complete with jello shots from a syringe (I have no idea who the girl is that’s holding the syringe), right and bottom left are more recent COVID drinking shots.

When COVID first hit, two years prior to that March 19 girls night, every day was an opportunity to cut loose and day drink. This was not unique to me — many of my friends and peers around me were working from home. With the ease of no commute, work was more efficient, so we were all done earlier, and with nowhere to go and nothing pressing to do post-4pm, happy hour was a daily occurrence. I started to drink nearly every day without even realizing it. Not always a lot — certainly not like the black-out years — but I was drinking most days.

After about a year of recalibrating to the new pace and qualities of pandemic life, I knew I needed to reassess my habits around alcohol. I did the thing that has always served as a good method for me: first, I simply bring awareness to the thing that I need to change. I start to notice what feels off, and I start to get my head around the scope of that thing. For me, tracking works when awareness has gone dormant. I started tracking a bunch of different habits once we were deep into the pandemic and it was clear I needed to change some of the carefree ways in which I’d been operating (drinking being one of those things). I could no longer exist like every day was the last day on earth and there were no consequences for my behavior. I was 41 by that time, for God’s sake. Days of carefree almost anything were a thing of the past.

When I started tracking my drinking (using a simple habit tracker I found online), I was shocked by the weight of those drinking days. At the end of each month, I’d set a new goal for the following month. All the goals were related to drinking less. I did this with some success and moderation for about a year. Then, it was the excess of the holidays, a failed attempt at Dry January, and six more weeks of letting myself down before I got to that night, March 19, and betrayed myself again.

I woke up March 20 and was resolute in my need to change this thing that wasn’t working: I needed to stop drinking. For now or forever, that part I wasn’t sure about. I tried not to be rigid with my resolution, but I did commit fully. I can’t explain what came over me that Sunday that was different from all the other times I tried to change my behavior, all the other times I woke up and felt shitty. It was like I had finally reached my ceiling capacity for my own bullshit.

I started talking to my therapist about my deep, true desire and latest pledge to stop drinking. Having gotten sober decades before, she was an amazing resource for me, sharing a lot of tools that are available in sobriety (different tools than the faulty moderation ones I could never get off the ground). I confessed to a wonderful nutritional counselor that I was seeing that I was afraid I couldn’t do it — I was afraid I couldn’t actually stop drinking, even if I desperately wanted to. (It felt good to say that out loud, to admit the thing of which I was most afraid.) I started to immerse myself in “quit lit” — podcasts, books, websites, blogs, and other content related to sobriety. I read some of my favorite books during this period (including Drinking: A Love Story, We Are the Luckiest, and Quit Like a Woman among them). I found great podcasts on the science of alcohol and how it poisons your body (that’s the TOX in intoxication — poison!). I’m lucky to live in this world of countless and completely available resources for sober life.

It wasn’t easy to stop drinking completely. The first couple of months were the hardest. Temptation was everywhere. We had Carolyn’s birthday party at a winery just two months after I quit and the temptation that day was almost too much to bear. My cravings and impulses to do the old familiar (fill up a glass, throw it back, and repeat) were fierce all day. At one point, I was holding Carolyn’s half-empty wine glass while she fixed her shoe or something (dumb move on my part, in hindsight). I stared at the liquid and brought the glass to my lips. Luckily, I was turned off not only by the lukewarm leftover liquid, but also by the smell coming off of it. It was a brutally hot May day so warm, backwashed Virginia Viognier was not that tempting up close, to tell the truth.

When my therapist and I talked about what I would miss about alcohol, what was so hard to leave behind, I thought hard. It wasn’t the social element — I learned long ago that I don’t need alcohol to be social. It wasn’t the taste or the smell, now that I thought about it. It was the buzz. The warmth that spread from my stomach outward, tingling through my body and its extremities, finally landing in my head. That first buzzed feeling was the thing that kept me coming back to alcohol for more than 20 years.

“How long would you say that really good buzzed feeling lasts?” she asked, once we determined that was the hook.

“I don’t know, maybe… 20 minutes? 30 minutes, tops?” I said. “It can’t be longer than that, and I’m really just chasing that first buzzed feeling with every subsequent drink for the rest of the night. And I can never recapture it.”

“So think about it — is that 20 or 30 minutes worth it? To concede full days to shame and hangovers? To feel like you’re not living up to your full integrity and potential? To keep re-enacting this cycle of promises and disappointment?”

It wasn’t hard to see that my equation just wasn’t ever going to work out.

I’m grateful that I had support in my work to stop drinking — all the things I’ve mentioned here, but also my partner, Carolyn. In solidarity, she largely stopped drinking with me when I quit. (She still has a glass every now and then when we’re out to dinner and for special occasions.) I have good friends who have been outlets for me during the whole journey, especially a few who got sober before me and were on the other end of the phone when I was having a strong craving and needed immediate support. All around me, as I stopped drinking, I started to notice other sober or sober-curious friends. It’s been fun to connect with people about this new thing that we have in common.

About 8 months after that last drink, I had my first sober Thanksgiving. Did I want a glass of red wine (or several) throughout the day as I watched others imbibe? Yes, I did. Did I eat a gummy to enjoy my own no-shame-involved buzz? Yes, I did. Same with my first sober Christmas, first sober birthday, first sober vacation (to NEW ORLEANS! I have to say — props to the Crescent City for their copious cocktails on the menu at every restaurant we visited!), etc. etc. etc. By the time I got to six months without alcohol, I honestly felt like I had so much momentum, I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to keep this promise to myself.

A few notable things have improved with quitting alcohol, and those improvements keep me disciplined: the day-after shame/hangover/anxiety is gone. For good. My sleep has improved for the most part (perimenopause is now trying to wreck that…). My nutrition and fitness goals are easier to reach when I’m not eating like my body is a human garbage disposal on those hungover days. My mood has shifted in noticeable ways. I’m less irritable (less being the key word… I still do be a cranky crabby, it’s in my nature!). I’m still tired at the end of a long day of parenting, but I’m not checking out by dinner to numb myself with a glass of wine or three anymore. I’m present for bedtime, dinner time, the hard feelings, the good snuggles, all of it. I don’t always wake up feeling 100% rockstar status, but I never wake up feeling hungover. These cumulative feelings — and all the days of keeping my promise to myself — are worth more than a 20-minute buzz ever was.