You do not have to hit rock bottom to stop drinking. You don’t need to identify as an alcoholic, experience a major consequence or prove that your drinking is “bad enough.” Questioning whether alcohol is making your life better is reason enough to experiment with living without it.
For a long time, I thought there were two kinds of drinkers.
People who could drink normally.
And alcoholics.
That was it.
There was apparently a very clear line between the two, and as long as I stayed on the correct side of it, everything was fine.
So I looked for evidence that I was fine.
I had never gotten a DUI.
I wasn’t drinking in the morning (yet).
I wasn’t hiding bottles (yet).
I wasn’t missing work.
My marriage was intact.
My kids were taken care of.
I owned businesses, paid bills, exercised, volunteered, showed up for things and generally maintained the appearance of a woman who had her shit together.
Case closed.
Except I was thinking about alcohol all the fucking time.
Not necessarily drinking all the time.
Thinking about it.
Would I drink tonight?
Did we have enough wine?
Should I stop and get some?
Was I drinking too much?
Maybe I should take a break.
How long?
Thirty days?
Could I drink on vacation?
What about weekends?
Maybe I could just drink wine.
Maybe I could have two glasses.
Why couldn’t I just have two glasses?
Was everyone else thinking this much about drinking?
Did I have a problem?
And then, inevitably:
But it’s not that bad.
That sentence kept me stuck for a very long time.
Because I thought something had to become bad enough before I was allowed to change it.
What Does Rock Bottom Even Mean?
When we talk about quitting drinking, we love a dramatic story.
The lost job.
The ruined marriage.
The arrest.
The hospital.
The morning someone wakes up and finally realizes they cannot continue living this way.
Those stories are real and important.
But they also accidentally taught some of us something dangerous:
If your life hasn’t fallen apart, maybe your drinking isn’t a problem.
Yikes.
I spent years comparing my drinking to an imaginary person whose relationship with alcohol was much worse than mine.
And compared to her?
I was doing great.
Except that’s a pretty shitty measurement for whether something belongs in your life.
I wasn’t asking:
Does alcohol make my life better?
I was asking:
Has alcohol made my life bad enough that I’m justified in giving it up?
Those are two very different questions.
I Didn’t Have a Dramatic Rock Bottom
I stopped drinking on August 30, 2021. Five years later, alcohol-free life looks very different than I imagined it would.
There was no intervention.
No spectacular final bender.
No single horrifying thing I’d done the night before.
I was just tired.
I was tired of thinking about drinking.
Tired of negotiating with myself.
Tired of waking up at 3 a.m. feeling anxious.
Tired of trying to remember exactly how much I’d had.
Tired of wondering whether I should stop.
Tired of deciding I probably didn’t need to stop because I could point to someone who drank more than I did.
Mostly, I was tired of alcohol taking up so much damn space in my head.
Eventually, something clicked.
Maybe I didn’t need to determine whether I had an official Problem with a capital P.
Maybe I could simply decide:
I don’t like this anymore.
That was enough.
You Don’t Need to Call Yourself an Alcoholic
This was another thing that kept me circling the decision.
If I quit drinking, what did that mean about me?
Was I admitting I was an alcoholic?
Did I have to say I was sober?
Was I never allowed to drink again?
Did I need to go to meetings?
Was I supposed to stand up somewhere and announce that I was powerless over alcohol?
I wasn’t sure any of those words or identities fit me.
So for a while, I thought maybe stopping wasn’t available to me.
Which makes absolutely no sense when I look at it now.
You can stop eating something because it makes your stomach hurt without developing an identity around it.
You can stop hanging out with someone because you don’t feel good around them.
You can leave a job before your boss throws a stapler at your head.
You can change your life before it becomes unbearable.
And you can stop drinking alcohol without first deciding what that makes you.
I eventually landed on alcohol-free because that’s the language that feels most like me.
But the label isn’t the important part.
The life is.
The Question That Helped Me More
Instead of asking:
Do I have a drinking problem?
Try asking:
Would my life be better without alcohol?
That question changed everything for me.
Because I could debate the first question forever.
Was I drinking too much?
Maybe.
Compared to whom?
How many drinks counts as too many?
Did it matter that I could go days without drinking?
Or months of pregnanacy?
What if I only drank wine?
What if I wasn’t physically dependent?
There was always another argument available.
But Would my life be better without it?
That was harder to bullshit my way around.
I suspected I’d sleep better.
I’d have better mornings.
I’d spend less money.
I’d stop having the 3 a.m. shame-and-anxiety spiral.
I’d have more energy.
I’d stop negotiating with myself.
I’d remember everything.
I’d trust myself more.
I didn’t know if all of those things would happen.
But I knew I wanted to find out.
You Can Run the Experiment
This is another place I think we make quitting alcohol unnecessarily terrifying.
We immediately jump to:
FOREVER.
Never again.
No champagne at your daughter’s wedding.
No margarita in Mexico.
No glass of wine in Italy when you’re 72.
And suddenly you’re sitting on your couch on a random Wednesday trying to make beverage decisions for a hypothetical vacation 25 years from now.
Of course that feels overwhelming.
You don’t have to decide forever today.
You can just get curious.
What happens if I don’t drink tonight?
What happens if I don’t drink this weekend?
What happens if I give myself 30 days?
What happens if I stop long enough to find out what I actually feel like without alcohol?
Treat it like information gathering.
Notice your sleep.
Notice your mood.
Notice your energy.
Notice your anxiety.
Notice how often you think about drinking.
Notice when you want a drink and what happened immediately before the craving.
Notice what you miss.
Notice what you don’t.
You don’t have to prove anything.
You’re gathering data about your own life.
The Hardest Part Might Not Be Not Drinking
One of the biggest surprises for me was realizing how many jobs I’d given alcohol.
Alcohol meant the workday was over.
Alcohol meant celebration.
Alcohol meant vacation.
Alcohol meant connection.
Alcohol meant relaxation.
Alcohol meant reward.
Alcohol meant fun.
Alcohol meant I could finally stop being productive.
So when I took alcohol away, I didn’t just have to figure out what to drink at dinner.
I had to figure out how to do all of those things myself.
How do I relax?
How do I celebrate?
How do I transition out of work mode?
How do I sit with people when I’m uncomfortable?
How do I have fun without manufacturing a different version of myself first?
How do I feel sad without trying to make the sadness disappear?
How do I tolerate boredom?
How do I rest without needing a reason?
Those questions have had a much bigger impact on my life than the question of whether I should drink.
Because eventually, alcohol became irrelevant.
The questions didn’t.
Your Life Doesn’t Have to Be on Fire
Five years after I stopped drinking, this may be the lesson that has followed me the furthest beyond alcohol:
You don’t have to wait for something to become unbearable before you’re allowed to change it.
I wish I’d understood that sooner.
I thought leaving meant failure.
Stopping meant admitting there was a problem.
Changing my mind required evidence.
I needed a convincing argument.
I needed witnesses.
I needed a verdict.
But sometimes the reason is simply:
This doesn’t feel good anymore.
I don’t want to spend my life this way.
I’m curious about something different.
Those are reasons.
Good ones.
And this applies to so much more than alcohol.
Jobs.
Businesses.
Relationships.
Habits.
Commitments.
Versions of ourselves we’ve outgrown.
We don’t have to burn everything to the ground before we’re allowed to walk away.
If You’re Wondering Whether Your Drinking Is “Bad Enough”
I can’t tell you whether you should stop drinking.
And I don’t think someone else gets to decide what your relationship with alcohol means to you.
But if you’ve found yourself Googling whether you drink too much…
If you’re making rules and then renegotiating them…
If you’re taking breaks mostly to prove you can…
If you’re spending more time thinking about alcohol than you’d like…
If you’re reading essays about quitting drinking while simultaneously building a case for why you don’t actually need to quit…
You don’t have to wait for things to get worse.
You don’t have to earn your way out.
You don’t have to call yourself anything.
You don’t have to promise forever.
You are allowed to get curious about what your life might feel like without it.
I spent years wondering whether my drinking was bad enough to stop.
I was asking the wrong question.
It didn’t need to be bad enough.
I just needed to want something different.
If you’re exploring your own relationship with alcohol, I’ve written much more about my alcohol-free life here.
