I didn't plan to write this. It started Saturday morning with a hangover, the second one in two days, and one question I couldn't shake. Do I actually like to drink?
I tried to answer it honestly. I like the idea of a good whiskey, a nice stout, sometimes a clean vodka. But I don't particularly like the taste. I never drink at home. I don't drink during the week. So what exactly am I doing on the weekends?
I looked at the week I'd just had. Thursday night with family, four drinks over dinner. Friday night with good friends, four more. I tell myself I drink once a week. Surely that’s not a problem? Both mornings I felt like crap. I skipped the gym, ate greasy food, and craved sugar. These outings turned into two lost days. I called all of this under control, which is a funny phrase, because it assumes something was once out of control. I've been there. Years ago I drank to black out and stayed hungover for days. I don't do that anymore. I don't drive after drinking, I call an Uber, and I don't fight, argue or cause problems. I’ve been led to believe problem drinkers have a rock bottom. A accident. A DUI. Divorce. But I still spend money Is rather some on something tangible.
Then I looked at the rest of my life. I work out five days a week. I research supplements and longevity. I do everything possible to be a better version of me. This contradicts that. I wrote two books this year and went back to school. I started a new business. I listened to Andrew Huberman once, and the message was simple: there is no upside to alcohol. It’s poison pure and simple. Acceptable by society for some reason. Probably because it generates profits. As a cop it was the route of anlmost every issue so encountered. Sexual anssault, abuse, domestic violence, automobile fatalsities. I never observed ann upside.
Meanwhile, everything I do to improve myself points one way, and this points the other.
At almost 60, every edge counts, and one day of drinking costs me at least a day or two of mushy or three days of mushy thinking every time. So the first question had an answer. It isn't about the drink.
The second question was harder. If I don't like it, why do I do it?
The first answer was that I talk. I bottle everything up all week: the wins, the snags, the people who frustrated me, the problems I solved. I say none of it. Then Friday comes, and I want to share, and the only way I've found to do it is with a couple of drinks. Sometimes it's a celebration and sometimes it's a complaint session, but it never comes out until I'm loosened up. My wife is surprised by how much went on all week that she never heard about. A healthy person would talk as it happened. I wait for liquid courage.
But that wasn't the whole answer either. Talking to my wife doesn't need a drink. What I really do with alcohol is fit in.
I read people for a living. I watch body language, I listen for the gaps in what someone says, and I notice what they don't tell me. I do it well, and I don't give much of myself away. That's useful in an interview room and a lousy way to sit at a dinner table. I'm not a sports guy. I don't follow what's on TV. Nobody wants to hear about the book I'm writing or the class I'm taking. Small talk has always been hard for me, and part of me keeps watching and analyzing and overthinking. A few drinks turn that part off. Then I can just be in the room.
That's the real answer. I'm not drinking for a buzz so that I can belong.
I don't think I have a single friend who doesn't drink. I've lived in the same place for 25 years, and I go to the same restaurants and bars with the same people, and what we have in common is alcohol. The marina on weekends, the motorcycle rides, the family dinners. Everything social involves a drink, and everything professional doesn't. I don't know if I'd find these people interesting without one. I don't know if I'm in the wrong crowd, or if I need people who raise my standards. I don't know what I'd do for friends at 59 if the answer is that I need new ones.
I picked up Ed Latimore's Sober Letters to My Drunken Self. I've tried sobriety books before, and most of them don't work for me. They lean on faith in God, or on meetings with strangers, or on therapy that keeps digging into the past. I'm not saying those don't work for other people. They aren't for me, not right now. I'd rather take control myself, look at the mistake, and do it better. Ed's book made sense because it asks the same plain questions I'd been asking myself. His idea that drinking is tied to not knowing where you fit hit close.
The last obstacle was a word. Never. I have trouble with it. It's so final, and at my age I've learned how many finals sneak past without announcing themselves, like the last time you pack a kid's lunch. I don't want to mark the end of a chapter when I don't know what the next one looks like. I don't want to be the high-and-mighty "I don't drink" guy either. I hate that guy.
So I'm not going to say never. I'll run an experiment.
I started on October 4th. Thirty days without a drink, ending November 3rd. I talk all the time about doing hard things: lifting heavier, pushing myself. This may be the hardest one, and I've been putting it off for 59 years.
The experiment is one part can I can go thirty days without a drink. One part can I belong and talk without one. So I'll talk to my wife during the week instead of saving it all for Friday. I'll tell my sons ahead of time what I'm doing, since they both drink. A few close friends will get a heads up. Everyone else gets a soda and lime, which worked fine at my last conference. The only thing I noticed there was how drunk everyone got, and how fast I wanted to leave. I'm going to point the part of me that reads people at curiosity instead of surveillance. One real question, then listen to the answer.
If your for some solid advice or been here let me know. If you’re gonna hate on me just keep scrolling.
I’m not sure where this leads but writing it down makes it a commitment so that’s a start.
I don't know what I'll find. I'll keep you posted.
— B
Brent,
You found the more interesting question: “What is drinking doing for me?”
Your answer about belonging is a powerful one. Alcohol can become so woven into friendship, ritual, place, and identity that it becomes hard to tell where the relationship ends and the shared habit begins.
Thirty days is a good experiment to observe what remains when one variable is removed.
I like your final instruction: curiosity, not surveillance. Pay attention to what you miss, whom you miss, when you want to leave, and which relationships still feel alive without the drink in your hand.
There may be more information in those answers than in any argument about alcohol itself.