On Going Sober

Even if it’s just for 50 days.

A couple of months ago, a friend of mine told me he was taking a break from drinking. A fanatic lover of wine—who I rarely ever saw without a glass in hand—said he was using the hiatus to reestablish an exercise habit and hopefully drop a few pounds. I couldn’t help but think about the wear and tear drinking may have also done to his liver. Maybe his cells would regenerate into something stronger? I watched for weeks as he dropped lime wedges into soda water and pounded freshly squeezed orange juice, silently rooting him on. After making it successfully through two weeks of sobriety, I celebrated with him by sharing a bottle of Georgian wine I’d recently purchased—a move I began to question the following week when I decided to take a break of my own.

As I write this, I am 25 days sober—a feat I’ve accomplished by pausing my wine subscription, drinking non-alcoholic beer and avoiding my friend in the evenings around the time I’d usually join him for a “splash.” It is the first time in my life I’ve ever hit the pause button on alcohol consumption. I wanted to see what it felt like. I wanted to see if I was capable of doing it. Now, halfway to my goal of abstaining from alcohol for 50 days, I am starting to question if I ever want to go back. My heart is screaming, “Yes!” But my head is pleading, “No.”

I grew up in an environment of drinkers—raised visiting my dad in the dive bars he worked in, having my own first drink at the ripe age of 12. My family drank, my friends drank, my co-workers in the restaurant industry drank, and all my partners drank. And when I say they drank, I mean they draaaank. It wasn’t until I began dating my current boyfriend, who rarely drinks, that I started to realize there is a whole population of people out there who make it through entire weeks without pouring themselves a single drop of alcohol. I realized that I was not the norm—that the people I spent my life with in bars were not the norm. It blew my mind.

I have a love-hate relationship with alcohol. I love the craft of a well-made spirit, beer or wine. I love the flavor. The reasons I hate it are too complex to unpack here, but what I will say is that I am far more productive, active and composed without it. One of the things that has helped me keep going these past 25 days—and scares the shit out of me at the same time—is the Huberman Lab episode on alcohol. Spoiler alert: alcohol poisons your body and degenerates your brain. The memories of those nights blissfully sipping natural wine with friends—and my conscience reminding me how wonderful it is to wake in the morning feeling energized and full of vitality—now play tug-of-war, using my arms as each side of the rope, threatening to rip my anatomy in two.

For now, I’m riding it out—seeing where my 50-day commitment takes me, processing what my life might look like without alcohol, and not villainizing it either. I have a fair number of friends now who’ve finally kicked their drinking habit and will happily never go back. I just don’t know if that will be me—yet.