Your round (and, you’re round!): A reflection on giving up alcohol

In November or December of 2023, I decided to commit to dry January again for, I think, the fourth time in my life. On January 2nd of 2024, I decided to take the whole year off. On January 2nd and 3rd, I finished up the beer I had left from the holidays and I haven’t had any alcohol since. This constitutes the longest stretch in my adult life that I’ve been completely alcohol-free.

Before I start, and this may surprise some people who I’d readily forgive for thinking differently, I just want to make it clear that I’ve never had a drinking problem. I haven’t quit drinking because alcohol impacts or has started to have a negative impact on my job, my relationships, or my ability to function in society. I also haven’t been told to stop drinking after advice from my doctor. In short, there’s no “big” reason why I’ve stopped. Well, not a big extrinsic reason anyway. This isn’t meant to be a reflection on “my struggles with alcohol”. That narrative belongs to addicts of any stripe, who have a much, MUCH harder time with alcohol than I’ve ever experienced. People who are able to overcome addiction have my admiration, respect, and those who are still caught in its web have my unwavering support.

Before I give you the reasons why I quit, maybe a little background would be appropriate. 

(*** NOTE – if you wanna get to the “hey Kev, why on earth HAVE you quit drinking???” part, feel free to skip ahead to the next note – I’ll flag it up so you can skip this bit)

Growing up in a working class Northern English family, alcohol has always been a part of my cultural DNA. You go to the pub with your parents as a kid and it’s not a big deal to see adults drinking and to see adults “a bit wobbly”. When you’re old enough (somewhere around 10ish) you might be given a little sip of sherry or half a lager at Christmas. It takes the mysticism out of the thing and makes it less of a forbidden fruit that must be tasted at all costs. I’m not sure this actually reduces binge drinking in later life, but it’s how I grew up. 

Joining the Army at 16 didn’t really do anything to take me out of the path of booze culture. The military isn’t exactly a place where moderation is the norm or is encouraged at any level. The generally-accepted “wisdom” is that soldiers do a tough job and need to blow off steam. Alcohol abuse rates in the British military are around double that of the civilian population (11% vs 6%) according to the most recent study I could find. Drinking to excess is openly celebrated as being something of a cool, lad-y thing to do. Or at least it was from 1989 to 1999 when I was serving.

Around fifteen-ish years ago, I think, I discovered a love of craft beer. That is, beer that is brewed on a smaller scale by smaller breweries and typically sold in smaller numbers.  I won’t go full “insufferable-mustache-wax-and-soapbox-carrying-craft-beer-wanker” on you and most of you who know me know that I don’t actually care whether or not you drink awful, sugary, commercial American light lagers (that’s not a dig at Americans – that’s the style of beer produced by Coors, Molsen, Labatt, Budweiser etc.). I might tease you about it and I could definitely tell you exactly why I don’t like the flavour of the beer that the big corporate breweries manufacture nor the ethics they have, or more usually don’t have. For the sake of brevity, I will say that I found that beer didn’t have to “taste like beer” and that over the last decade, we’ve seen a rise in breweries in Saskatchewan that produce some of the best-tasting beers you’re going to find anywhere in the world. The massive array of styles and flavours that I’ve had access to, whether through the local beer scene or very generous friends who travel gives me, I think, a solid foundation from which to talk relatively intelligently about beer.

Since fall/winter of 2016 I’ve had the massive pleasure and privilege of working with 21st Street Brewery, collaboratively developing artwork and names for dozens, if not into the hundreds of beers. I’ve also been really lucky that my friends at the brewery, Chris and Casey, have let me join them for tasting/strategic brainstorming sessions etc. and as such, I’ve had a fairly unique inside look at the workings of a microbrewery and the creation-to-packaging lifespan of beer. It’s fascinating, fun, and extremely fulfilling “work” that I enjoy immensely. 

Through this love and exploration of craft beer and becoming a part of the Saskatchewan craft beer community, I’ve made a ton of really good friends and met a lot of really cool people within and without the industry. These people have all been passionate about sharing their love of craft beer and promoting excellent local businesses and I’m proud to have contributed to our local craft beer scene in a small way over the last decade; whether just by steadfastly refusing to buy beer from large corporate breweries, or advocating for the very many fantastic folks who are doing the brewing and selling of local craft beer. Beer has greatly enriched my life over the last decade or so. 

(*** NOTE – if you skipped the boring background fluff, come back in and continue reading here)

I like (good) beer. I like the flavour of good beer. I like the “ritual” of drinking good beer; using nice glassware, letting certain beers warm slightly to a better temperature, looking for different qualities or flavours etc. I like the community that exists around drinking. I like discussing it with friends; “nerding out” about things I’m passionate about is something I love to do. And yes, I like the buzz it provides. The latter though has never been my main reason for drinking. Well, that’s what I thought; I’m not sure it’s 100% true now that I have some separation from it, but I will qualify that I’ve never been someone who has used alcohol as an anesthetic. I should also say, perhaps, that I don’t partake of the left-handed cigarette, the devil’s lettuce, I’ve never danced with Mary Jane, I’m not a midnight toker etc. (you get the point) I also realized a long time ago that I’m extremely fortunate to simply not have a genetic predisposition to addiction. Dry January has never been “difficult” for me. Giving up caffeine was easy, other than the severe headaches as I severed that dependency. So maybe that was a mild addiction, but I consider it more of a habit, as, like I say, I just stopped drinking coffee and never once hankered after it once I did. I’m also not equating this with actual addiction. I wouldn’t be so flippant or arrogant to assume that I could take up and easily give up smoking, or class A drugs for example.

But to reiterate, I haven’t been drinking to fill some void in my life or mask any problems in it. My life, overall, is pretty damned amazing. I have a great family, the best friends a guy could want, a ton of creative fulfillment, a good job with a steady income, a very nice home (not palatial by any means… despite rumours to the contrary, I don’t have a moat!) which will be fully paid-for in about seven or eight more years. I’m straight, white, male, (lower) middle-class and middle-aged, and I don’t struggle with any mental or physical health issues (other than the usual 50-year-old man ones!). Life isn’t throwing up that many barriers to happiness for me and I’m more content now than at any point in my life to now. I’ve never needed substances to “take the edge off”.

So why in the name of all the gods that never were have I stopped drinking? That’s the question isn’t it? If I don’t have the addiction gene, why not just cut back? Why not just do Dry January again? Why quit? It’s somewhat hard to articulate completely, but this is why I wanted to write it all down, to see if the act of doing that reveals any of these answers for me as much as anyone else. 

Maybe the first thing to say is that on January 2nd, when I decided that I was going to take the year off, I knew, immediately and incontrovertibly, that it was the right thing to do: the right thing to do for me at this particular point in my life. There was no Damascene revelation, it was more a process of a few weeks or months where I’d been starting to think that I might want to do this and the idea becoming clearer and clearer in my mind. But at the point of making the decision, I was utterly sure of and resolute in it. 

Like coffee, I began to suspect that drinking beer was at least partially a habit as much as it was a “hobby” (as a lot of craft beer drinkers like to consider it), or something done exclusively for the sensory pleasure of drinking beer. Again to qualify this; for at least a decade, I haven’t drunk more than one can of a beer I didn’t like the flavour of (and in some cases, not more than two mouthfuls, if it was just objectively bad). I wasn’t buying cheap, shitty beer, or vodka, or cheap liquor. I was always drinking really good craft beer. However, this niggling suspicion grew into a fairly inescapable certainty that I was drinking, not just “partially” out of habit, but most likely “mainly” out of habit. The fact that there are so many new and interesting beers being released by local craft brewers was camouflaging the probability that I was buying a couple of four packs, and at the height of my indulgence, 20 or more beers for the weekend. Add in two or three four packs during the week that I’d have and you can see how the idea of drinking-out-of-habit formed. Now, I’m not naive. As I said before, now that it’s been a few weeks since I last had a beer, I’ve reevaluated my position and I’m pretty sure now that “the buzz” was definitely more a part of the equation than I wanted to believe. The soft buzz you get from a four pack of good beer is very pleasant. It’s how it initially gets ya.

Once I’d made up my mind that the balance had tipped over mainly into the habit circle of the Venn diagram of boozing, I decided to stop. Simple as that. Annoying isn’t it? I get it. Not everyone can just give things up like this. I know I’m lucky that I’m not genetically predisposed to addiction. I know I’m lucky that my obstinacy and stubbornness is actually a benefit in this situation (it can definitely be a disadvantage at other times). But it also confirmed to me that I’ve simply never had a “drinking problem”. I’ve just always enjoyed drinking – and often drinking a lot. That’s the other part of this equation; my body seems to process alcohol pretty efficiently. I’ve drunk 8 473ml cans of 6-8% beer many, many times, then been up for work, or soccer the next day at 9 with not much more than a bit of a thick head and a fuzzy mouth. I’ve also had some of the most horrendous hangovers known to man when I’ve really kicked the arse out of it!

When I look back though, I’ve definitely lost thousands of hours to the effects of being pleasantly, or sloppily, drunk or a bit, or a lot, hungover; thousands of hours I could have been doing things like writing, or reading, or doing any number of the creative things that I enjoy. I’ve also had some fantastically fun nights being very drunk. So, it’s not like it’s all negative! But, that’s the main reason I stopped; I don’t want to do something like drinking just out of habit. 

I was also thinking about what George Carlin told Jon Stewart in 1997. He was talking about how he noticed the diminishing returns of his drug use. It starts to take more from you than it gives. I realized that I was in a similar position; I wasn’t getting that much out of drinking any more. And while it wasn’t “costing” me anything significant, it definitely wasn’t bringing me as much pleasure as it should have been. As Carlin said to Stewart, that should always be a red flag. Luckily he was able to recognize it and act on it and so was I.

There are two other, very different, reasons I decided to give up the booze for 2024.I thought that I’d like to try being completely sober for a full year, just to see what that’s like. I’ve been drinking for the better part of 34 years and I figured that it would be interesting to see what the difference would be. I like changing things up now and again to stop myself getting into any sort of rut. 

The last reason is the one I came to last, but is arguably the most important one; I’m not an idiot. I know that even if up to this point I’ve not had any serious negative health impacts from drinking, I’m fifty years old and those 34 years of fairly well caning it will eventually catch up with a person. Unless you’re Ozzy Osbourne, you’re probably not going to walk away from over-consumption of alcohol with a completely clean bill of health. But the other part of this is my physical fitness. I want to minimize my potential health risks as I head into the rest of my fifties and beyond. Between 2018 and 2019 I set (and achieved) a personal goal of losing forty pounds. I did this through a combination of exercise and a more watchful eye on my diet. A back problem in the summer of 2022 meant I couldn’t run though and the slide back to a weight of 210 pounds (I’m 5’7” – this is an unhealthy weight any way you cut it) began and accelerated at an incredible speed. Since I stopped drinking I’ve been out walking fairly regularly and tonight was able to run (for short sections of a longer walk) for the first time since July 2022. I’ve missed running. I’ve missed the endorphin kick of it and the time spent just in my own head with my legs moving and the pavement sliding away under my feet.I’ve missed the general feeling of being healthy. I’m on the way back to that now and I’m already back down to 193 pounds with my aim to get back down to 168 by the end of the year. I know I’ll hit that target. This weight loss is at least in part to cutting out beer; it’s made it easier to refocus on regaining my fitness. 

I know the question you might have is the same one several people have asked me; “do you miss it?” The honest answer is “no”. I really don’t. And I genuinely thought I would, but honestly, the moment I decided to stop, I stopped thinking about it. During dry January, I’d always be looking forward to February 1st and having a beer. Once I mentally committed to taking 2024 off, I stopped thinking about beer. I do find that somewhat odd, but quite satisfying at the same time. Every now and again when I’m in Sobeys picking up beer for someone else, I see a new beer and think “I bet that’s good!”, but I never think “I wish I could try it!” 

The usual follow-up question to “why?” is “do you think you’re done for good?”. At this point I’m not sure. I could start drinking again in 2025 and if I did I would almost certainly cut that back severely – maybe to a four pack twice per week or in social situations. But I’ve been in a few social situations since January 2nd and haven’t found that I’ve enjoyed them any less, even if other people around me have been drinking. I don’t mind that they are, I just don’t have any desire to join in. I’d say that right now, I’m about leaning about 65/35 toward this being a permanent state of affairs. I’ll never say never and maybe I’ll have a few beers once a year, on July 10th. But outside that, I think I might be done for good. The positives of not drinking are definitely outweighing the negatives for me right now. 

Since January 1st, I’ve definitely been even more creatively active and an unexpected side effect has been that I’ve been reading more again. I love reading, but if I’ve had a few beers, I don’t always remember what I read, so I’ve tended not to bother. I’m still not a prolific reader, but I’ve read every single night since January 3rd and have finished five books in that time. I also sleep better, never wake up with a hangover (obviously) and am always able to drive anywhere any time. These are things you don’t necessarily think about as disadvantages when you are drinking. But they become things that you wouldn’t want to give up the longer you have them. 

There was one very small and, in retrospect, very silly hesitation I had about quitting. As a lot of you know, I’m a podcaster. I host one show on my own and two others with cohosts. The shows that I cohost rely heavily on the relationship between me and another person. Whenever I recorded those shows before January 3rd, it was pretty much always while drinking. I did have a moment’s pause to wonder whether I’d still be entertaining or funny (for a given value of entertaining or funny – I’m told that people observe this quality in me and I take that at face value) without the booze. I don’t think most people have even noticed the difference and I like to think that I’m still as forthright, silly, and witty (again for a given amount of witty) without the booze, so that is a relief and a welcome affirmation.

So there we go, that’s the story. 

I quit drinking because I wanted to, not because I had to. I recognized that I was drinking out of habit more than anything else and decided to change that habit. I don’t miss drinking. I never think about drinking  (I’ve heard that people who quit smoking spend considerable mental energy thinking about smoking). I don’t have any burning desire to go back to it. And I’m still actively involved with the brewery and am 100% comfortable around anyone who is drinking. Most importantly, I don’t think it’s changed my personality one bit, so depending on which side of the fence you sit vis-a-vis my personality, that’s either a good thing or a bad thing! For me though, it’s been a great decision that I’m very happy I made. 

For all of you who are still drinking, please support your local independent breweries and the fantastic people who run them. 

Cheers!