A Sober Mind (a year without drink)

January 8th, 2019 marked one year of not drinking. 

When it came up in conversation throughout the year, which was less often than I had expected when I embarked on the experiment, people tended to ask similar questions: did you have a problem with alcohol that made you want to stop, or had someone in your family? Why stop if you didn’t feel like it was hurting you? Don’t you miss a good beer/ glass of wine?

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

-Socrates

My answers stayed pretty consistent throughout the year- I hadn’t felt that I had had a problem with alcohol (nor my family); I had felt that I, like most adults, had had an alcohol habit. It’s easy to drink a beer a night, especially when it is free and is the way artists socialize after shows. That said, I’d like to emphasize that before stopping I had considered my drinking on the “light” side of the scale.

When you first stop drinking it is striking how nearly every day can be an occasion to drink (“It’s Friday! It’s her birthday! It’s New Years/ It’s Christmas/ It’s your birthday; a producer is in town, it’s the premiere party, it was a good day, a bad day, a BBQ, a fondue, someone brewed their own beer,” and so on). While I very rarely drank more than three beers even on a ‘big’ night, at the end of 2017 I was often having one beer or glass of wine on most nights, and this habit had started to bother me. How much healthier would I be, how much more money would I save if I cut this out of my life?

Another thing- since I didn’t find having one beer harmful, if given the choice I would usually have a beer over choosing to not have one. In this sense I found reducing my consumption by 100% easier than by 90%. It took the decision making about alcohol out of the process, and allowed me to focus on the other questions relevant to the situation- How was I feeling? What did I want to accomplish the next day (and how would staying up late affect that)? How important was it to me to spend this time with these people? Sometimes the answer was ‘very important’ and I had a great many nights with good friends, and sometimes the answer was ‘not so much’ and I would go home happy that I had made a good choice, unworried that had I been ‘on their level’ I might have had a good time.

Energy Levels

I think for some people alcohol gives them energy, for me it always made me tired and sluggish, both during the drinking and the next day. I didn’t miss that. I thought I would stop getting sick when I stopped drinking. This did not happen. I still got sick. 

One benefit to my energy levels came from not having to make the decision to drink or not drink every time the opportunity presented itself. Studies on will power have shown that will power is a finite resource- it can be mentally and physically draining to have to resist urges against things you’d like to do (eat sweets, drink alcohol, go on social media). Turning something into a ritual, a habit or an absolute removes this decision and reliance on will power to make the “right” choice each time, and thus frees up that energy to be spent on other things. Like connecting with people, or dancing.

“The major difference is the change in mindset – that taking a break from alcohol is not something you’re giving up but a chance to gain a clear advantage in so many areas of life.”

-Andy Ramage, founder of One Year No Beer website

Socializing

I tended (unsurprisingly) to go to bars less. Maybe because I’m in a happy, stable relationship and wasn’t looking to meet anyone (which for me always seemed more likely in the social settings where alcohol is often found), maybe because I didn’t miss bars that much. How many times had I gone out and it was loud and I couldn’t talk to the people I was with and I was uncomfortable and there wasn’t much to do but drink and I came home tired and frustrated, 20 bucks poorer? Of course I’ve had fun times at bars too, but what I liked- talking to people, doing things, didn’t require alcohol. My experience going to bars sober was this- you’d be surprised how few people care what you’re drinking. When was the last time you personally went around the table checking glasses? 

What did I do instead? Often in the evenings I would go climbing, and found that even on Friday and Saturday nights (the gym closes at 11 on weekdays for the after-work crowd) there were a ton of people out there, happy to be socializing with other climbers and challenging themselves physically. I played a lot of games with Stef and other friends, both at home and at the games bars in Montreal like Le Colonel Moutarde when we wanted to get out of the house. We played guitar and ukulele, read books, hosted dinners, hosted brunches. Bars are one place to hang out with a group of people, but there are many, many more options that are equally or more interesting.

Alternatives

What did I drink instead during this time? 

Eve hit upon a fun solution of mixing a syrup such as grenadine with bubbly water when backstage after a show, I also drank a lot of kombucha, tea and hot chocolate. Alcohol is tricky because one of the ways that it makes you feel good is through a delivery of quick carbs- something I notice I long for at the end of the day. When people talk about how good cutting beer is for their waistline, and their wallet (and on the whole, they’re probably right), I think it’s good to be aware and honest with yourself about what’s replacing that beer. It’s not always a tall glass of tap water. Then again, often it is and you do save empty calories and money. Bonus!

I tried non-alcoholic beers every once in a while, since even other bubbly drinks just don’t taste like beer and I missed it. Being at first a shy teetotaler in bars, I would try to order non-alcoholic beers discreetly, and found that most waitresses have a habit of loudly reminding your whole table that “You know there is no alcohol in that beer you’re trying to order, right?” I got over feeling awkward about it pretty quickly- not many people asked about it, and if they did, quite a fair number were eager to share their own experience quitting alcohol for a month, or caffeine, or sugar, or something else, which led to a number of interesting conversations. 

Did I miss drinking? 

Yes. Throughout the year, one occasion or other would make me miss it. I didn’t miss feeling sluggish and grumpy and unproductive in the morning, but I did miss a glass of red wine, a hoppy IPA, a refreshing hefeweizen. That didn’t really go away, but it certainly became easy to say no after the first couple of months. In the beginning I wavered between how long a break from alcohol I would take. I had done one month a couple of times before, so I wanted this time to do at least three months, maybe six, maybe a full year. I don’t think I actually came out and said I would do a year until at least month five, I was afraid to commit and let myself down, or ‘miss out on something’. After a few months though, I realized I wasn’t missing anything I couldn’t live without- I could still go dancing and hang out with friends that were in town, stay up late if I wanted to, thoroughly enjoy a game or a dinner or a premiere party sober.

Work and Play

I worked a lot. As an independent contractor it’s possible to extend your workday to include most waking hours, and I had come to associate having a drink with a way to declare the workday finished. Because of this, I thought it might be healthy to clarify my relationship to work and relaxation independently from my relationship to alcohol. That’s still something I struggle with, and have heard about from others who had the same experience while sober.

Sometimes during the year I felt like I worked too much, like I didn’t know how to have fun anymore. On the other hand, Barcode landed our first $25,000 grant, made our first theatrical show and got the Audience Choice Award and a Silver Medal at Cirque de Demain. I just finished revising a book I’ve been working on, on-and-off, mostly off, for the last two and a half years. Barcode acquired our first administrator and agent, the lovely Sophie Picard. I applied for, and hopefully will receive within the next month, my permanent residency to Canada. These are all things I’m proud of that took substantial effort, and it’s hard to know how alcohol would have affected them (the rest of Barcode, while already being habitually lighter drinkers than I was and also occasional abstainers, did not do a dry year, yet certainly contributed heavily to these accomplishments).

It was a busy year with lots to do, whether or not I was drinking. I think a major benefit of not drinking was that I ended up questioning that habit and how it related to the rest of my life, and trying to figure out ways to deal responsibly with the pressures of work and relationships instead of ignoring them with the temporary fix of drink when things seemed overwhelming. Just look at the books I read in 2018. A lot of them had to deal with productivity, small business management finding lasting happiness, and how to communicate better. Heck, at the end of 2018 we even went to therapy as a group with Barcode to deal with our working relationships, an experience that might have been one of the most helpful things we did all year.

Reintegration

As I write this, it’s now been more than a year since I stopped drinking. I didn’t dive right back into drinking on the 365th day, I’m waiting for a moment that feels right to start again. I want to reintegrate alcohol into my life as a fun occasion rather than a routine. To be honest, I feel trepidation to start again, but I believe that finding a balance is necessary to a happy life, and I hope that this year has given me the perspective and conviction to contain alcohol to the amount of space I decide it should have in my life, rather than it being an unexamined habit.

In India I met a man who told me that the thing that would be hardest for you to live without is the thing you most need to give up at least once in your life. In that sense alcohol was far easier to abstain from than I imagine other habits would have been- caffeine, sugar, processed foods, and animal products spring readily to mind. But cutting out alcohol definitely gave me a clearer view of the other habits in my life, and the conviction that I could change them if I tried.

It would be hard to make a case that my life was worse for the time I spent sober. The situations I already found uninteresting (late nights in loud bars) I just avoided, and the times I did want to be with people I happily spent with them and enjoyed waking up tired but not hungover. After a year I’d say I’m better able to cope with issues that come up (interpersonal relations, work issues, finances, etc), probably because I’m more likely to observe and confront and find solutions to them rather than ignoring them.

Finally, would I recommend trying it? Yes, I think for one year of your entire life (or 1-6 months) it’s not much to sacrifice, especially for everything you stand to learn about yourself.