Twelve Months Without Alcohol

A drunken night and The Scale of change…. Or…My life without alcohol…..
So, I have not blogged in forever. No matter, nobody reads my blogs in the first place. I actually have been writing the past couple years but it’s been more for therapeutic reasons and to clear my head. Major shout out to my long-time friend Kelly Jankowiak. The only other girl I love, other than my wife and daughter. She knows me very well. So here we go… Sometime back in October of 2019 my family was over at Kelly and Chris’s (The Carques) house. Something we have done many, many times over the years. Kids play, parents drink, we enjoy music, conversation, talk about life, what is bothering us, politics, social media nonsense, family drama, Netflix shows, education, our kids, etc. At around 10 p.m., and after three hours of inebriation, Kelly decided to go to her bathroom and come back out with a scale. Yes, a scale. To this day, I have no idea what the hell she was thinking or doing. Who grabs a scale in the middle of a party and decides it would be a good idea for a bunch of drunk 40 year-olds to weigh themselves? Kelly does. Alcohol will make you do strange things, but it may have saved me. I didn’t know this at the time. I volunteered to get on the scale. I didn’t care, it’s just a scale. And, well, I had been drinking. I weighed 214 lbs. Chris was next, then our friend Nick, and so on. Everyone laughed at each other. Good times. We left the Carques that night around 11. I woke up the next day and was hoping the 214 I saw on the scale was somehow inaccurate. I weighed myself on my own scale. Accurate. Damn it! I had noticed my work pants were getting tighter, but 214 was unacceptable. (To put this in perspective, when I graduated from high school I was 160 lbs. After college, 180 lbs. I spent my 30s between 180-190. I’m six feet tall, so even though I wasn’t morbidly obese, I was officially fat. No bones about it, I was overweight and out of shape. I wish I could tell you I started dieting and working out the next day. I could tell you that, but it would not be true. Dec 2, 2019- The talk. Yuck. My amazing wife, Erin, texted me in the morning and told me we needed to talk. I was horrified. I already knew what it was about. My drinking. More importantly, my lying about my drinking. We went to dinner that night and Erin told me she could handle the drinking, but it was getting to be a bit too much. What she could not handle was the lying about the drinking. I’ll give her credit- she did not give me an ultimatum or guilt me into not drinking. Hell, she didn’t even ask me to stop drinking. It was more like, uh, maybe dial it down a notch. Deep down, however, I knew I had to. Even if only to prove it myself. Ironically, my plan was to stop until New Years Eve and then back to drinking! Hip hip hooray! Well, today is November 18, 2020, and I haven’t had a drink since. It has been just about 12 months since I last had alcohol. Quite the journey. There’s a few things I learned. The following is not meant to be preachy or to scare anyone that reads this. My wife still drinks, and I am totally cool with it. This is just my personal assessment of my year without booze. Something I had to do for me. Habit or addiction? I’ll admit, the first 2-4 weeks without alcohol was difficult. Actually, very difficult, and anyone that tells you differently is either not being truthful or was not a daily (4-6 days a week) drinker like I was. Alcohol is a drug, drugs are addictive. But it is also a choice. At 4:00 p.m. (my favorite time of day to start) I had a choice to make to either drink or not drink. Now, I’ll never understand why the label states ‘drugs and alcohol’ when it should probably just be ‘drugs’. I think because alcohol is so widely used and advertised, it makes people sleep better at night if alcohol is labeled, well, alcohol. Compartmentalized if you will. I won’t get it to the science of it but alcohol is ethanol, and ethanol is basically poison. Was my drinking a habit or an addiction? My answer to this is another question…. Does it matter? If I am ingesting a toxin that is not good for my heart, liver, or brain, does it really matter if I’m calling it my habit or addiction? It’s all in the words, and words make people (myself included) feel better. Habits can be positive or negative. I have a good habit of taking out the trash and emptying the dishwasher. I have many bad habits. Addiction can only be negative. It’s a scary word, people do not like the word. I get it. I do not like it either. The justification and power of denial. The majority of people consume more alcohol as time goes on. When I think of my own drinking habits (see, I still won’t label it an addiction lol), this holds true. I used to drink 1-2 times a week, but as time went on and my tolerance increased, I drank more nights a week, and consumed more alcohol during each session. And as time went on, my breaks of 1-2 weeks OFF from drinking seemed to rarely happen. Many people are not ‘take it or leave it’ drinkers. I certainly was not. And many people who are ‘take it or leave it’, eventually become daily drinkers. Me. I then began to justify my alcohol intake internally (which lead to major anxiety). These were not good justifications (reasons), but here goes: I deserve it... I worked hard this week, I deserve some cold beers. This was favorite reason to drink. Milestones, weddings, birthdays... Let’s celebrate with some beers! My daughter turned 7, let’s bring it on home with 10 beers. Makes zero sense. I’ve been to two weddings this past year. Not one drink. I had a great time, wait for it, BECAUSE of the people (my friends) I was with and the experience. I think I was often tricking myself into thinking that alcohol was the reason I was having a good time. It’s not, it was the people I was with. I have learned that alcohol has not made me a better dancer. I’m terrible with or without it. I’m stressed out…. I used this one a lot. What I have learned is that alcohol intake increases stress, anxiety, and blood pressure. Over time, it creates more stress and anxiety; it does not relieve it. This one is tough because I did not learn this until I went about 5-6 months with alcohol. If alcohol is a depressant, how could it possibly relieve stress? It cannot. And if it makes you happy or in a good mood (which I admit, for me, it did) then how come I wasn’t super happy the more I drank? It was the opposite. The more I drank, the worse I felt. Then I’d wake up the next day and feel like crap. I’m bored. This was a common excuse, and I am ashamed I ever used it. I couldn’t find anything better to do than to drink pinot noir? I have four kids, and I tricked myself into thinking I was bored, so I’ll drink for 2-3 hours. Comical. I like the taste... Great reason! And I do like the taste of beer and wine. But again, probably not the best reason to justify drinking 6-8 beers every other night. I like ice cream, but it would not be smart to eat a half gallon of it every day. I guess that is what’s funny about alcohol. It’s bad for me, I know it’s bad for me, but I was drinking a lot of it every day. If I used that same rationale for McDonald’s, what would happen? I like Big Macs, they taste great, I know they are bad for me, but I am going to eat 2-3 of them daily. Doesn’t add up. ____________________________________________________ Will I ever drink again? I am on the fence about it because the more I stay away from alcohol, the happier I am. So, yeah, it is hard for me to justify it right now, when things are so much better for me when I’m not drinking. Positives (reasons to limit alcohol or to stop)… Physical health/weight loss... Like I said earlier, I did not stop drinking immediately after stepping on that scale. It was around six weeks later that my wife gave me the talk. After the talk, I stopped cold turkey. I am an idiot, I’ll admit, but even I was not going to risk my marriage. I was still fat, but I wanted to change that. I knew that, for me, I could not get into shape if I was still drinking. So, I told myself if I could go ten weeks without alcohol, I would start working out. It never made sense to me to start working out while drinking four to five times a week. I knew I would just be disappointed in myself. So, I started working out in February, and yes, the weight came off. And of course it did… a little exercise, better diet, and a weekly 4,000 caloric deficit…how could it not? My blood pressure also is at a normal level for the first time in my life. I find it hilariously ironic that less than a year ago size 36 inch pants barely fit, and now Kelly is telling me I’m too skinny, to ‘eat a burger’. She never said this when I was getting on the scale. The irony! Finances... This is an easy one but I was spending around $3000 a year on alcohol. To put this into perspective…if I took the money I spent on alcohol the past twenty years and put it into a Roth, with an average return, I’d have around $138,000. Nothing more to say here. Trust... I think my wife (you know, the most important person in the world) is finally starting to trust me. She no longer says ‘be careful’ 14 times when I go somewhere. Was it nagging? No, not really. She was never sure if I was going to go out and have a few beers. Her trust in me is worth so much. I think it took her awhile, but now I only hear ‘be careful’ one or two times a day. And that is just fine by me. Energy... Simple. I have more of it. I used to always be tired and sluggish. Now, I am 41, and have four kids, so I do get tired from time to time, but my energy levels are through the roof. I wake up at 4-5 a.m. ready to go. Skin/hair... Weird to list this as a positive, but my hair doesn’t fall out as much in the shower and my skin has a different feel to it. This may be a placebo effect because my diet is better, but figured I’d mention it. Mental health... I feel a sense of freedom. Now, this is hard for me to explain and extremely personal but I’m going to try…I’ve never considered myself a person who had to deal with depression, but my best friend (other than Chris Carque) was my brother. I mean, we were 15 months apart, so you can imagine that bond. Ironically, he died because of depression. I’ll always deal with his death. I think of him several times a day. I drank a lot more when he passed, but I refuse to believe I had problems with drinking because of his death. That would be a total cop out, and a disservice to my brother. In Conclusion… when I was drinking, I always felt like a weight in the pit of my stomach. Sometimes it felt like a shadow, or a cloud or a dark feeling. Again, hard to explain. Sometimes I even tried to drink away that feeling. It never worked, but the alcohol numbed me enough into where I forgot my emotions/depression. Not healthy by any means, but that is what I did. It is almost like I was drinking to forget my problems, or my issues. And I’ll admit, by nature, I am a very confident person. I will also admit that my life is great. Personally, I love my wife and my kids, good career, nice house, cool mini-van lol. In theory, I had my ‘sh!t’ together, but the drinking always bothered me. I couldn’t beat it or fix it, so I felt like alcohol always had this grip on me, like it controlled me, and I felt ashamed that I allowed it to have power over me for so long. And this is what was hard for me because I’ve always considered myself resourceful and solution-based. But I was failing when it came to controlling my drinking. I was losing. If I’m being honest, I felt embarrassed by it. I have all these great things going for me in my life, but I can’t control my drinking? I felt lost and almost hopeless, and I would try to cut back but then something would happen, and I’d start drinking again. Then I would beat myself up over it and feel ashamed. This caused anxiety, sometimes panic. It was an awful, vicious cycle. So, with that uplifting message out of the way, I am happy to report that I do not feel that way anymore. That is what 12 months has done for me. It has given me a new perspective about alcohol, and the role I want it to have in my life. Cheers!