Dry January, I Suppose
I accidentally (but also on purpose) stopped drinking a year ago. For the first month or two I was legitimately annoyed by how much better my body and brain felt, mostly because “Dry January” and “Sober October” and “taking a break,” as concepts, never really did anything for me—why would one needlessly suffer through an entire month, sans color and joy and wine? Besides, I'd already tapered down to just a few nights a week, and rarely before 7pm, and never a drop more than the “x” I'd decided on, and all sorts of other rules and restrictions and internal bargaining that, in hindsight, took way more energy than simply not drinking in the first place.
Acknowledgment of these mental gymnastics was the aforementioned “on purpose” part, though that came after the fact. The “accidentally” portion arrived first, in the form of what was probably some sort of COVID-adjacent chest cold, from which I emerged clear-headed and feeling good after a couple of weeks of not drinking and thought, “f*ck it, let's see how long I can keep this up.” Cut to January 2025, and I can't imagine not having done this for myself.
It wasn't easy—once you reach your 40s, any longtime habit has unknowingly become less of a thing you do and more a part of who you inextricably are, and that (among other things) certainly took some time to sort my way through—but also, ultimately, it wasn't as impossible as I'd always assumed it would be. California sobriety help/ed/s, especially in the beginning, though the more time passes the more just being sober-sober manages to occasionally bend and fold itself into the same sort of gentle fuzziness offered by other/more altered states of being. Who knew.
So how long can I keep this up? That I could not tell you, but thinking about drinking gives me anxiety, and the positives—from the normal-cortisol-levels of it all to unprecedentedly wholesome sleep patterns and a shocking, like shocking, lack of inflammation—outweigh any downsides of the work it took to get here. In all truth (and sure, in the rosy glow of hindsight), there really were no downsides. Which means for now, and for at least a while to come, I just cannot find a compelling enough reason to pour myself a glass of wine.
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