6 Months Into the Alcohol-Free Lifestyle, I’m Sticking with It

Why “spontaneously” ditching drinking was the best decision ever for me.

It was 5 a.m. on a Saturday night as I hastily stumbled out of a yellow cab to unleash myself onto the streets of Brooklyn. Not fancy-Williamsburg Brooklyn, middle-of-nowhere Brooklyn, where you certainly don’t want to be on your own in the middle of the night.

I was wearing a golden DIY flower crown and a bodysuit covered in sequins. It was pitch black and I was tired, all I wanted was to go home. But I had no choice but to get out of the car instead.

It was Halloween, and we were on our way from Warehouse Party #1 to Warehouse Party #2 (aka, the after-party). And by we, I mean myself, the guy I had just met at Party #1 (and made out with in one of the porta-potties), and his friend.

I scrambled to get out so suddenly because from one moment to another, I was completely engrossed by my company.

The guys were making fun of the cab driver’s Indian accent, and they were not subtle about it. As vicarious embarrassment flooded every fiber of my body, I asked the cab driver to stop and jumped out without an explanation.

A brilliant idea, dressed up like I just came from Burning Man, alone on the streets of Brooklyn’s sketchy parts.

Needless to say, I was not sober.

I found myself an Uber within a few minutes but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a mildly unsettling encounter with a stranger that left me slightly uneasy. But I wasn’t scared, because again, I wasn’t sober.

How did I get myself into this situation? Into a cab with people that so clearly did not share my values (namely, basic human respect)?

All that’s clear is that I was not clear.

I was not clear because I had been drinking, a lot. I had been drinking for probably a solid ten hours at that point. My special skill had always been to conceal my drunkenness from my friends, so when they left the party at 4 am to go back to Manhatten and I told them I wanted to stay (alone), they let me.

I woke up the next day and didn’t really feel shame, because nights like these happened very rarely and I believe everyone should “live a little”.

But I just felt really out of alignment.

Is this how I wanted to “live a little”?

This is not me, I thought.

This was one of the last times I was drunk. The only other drunk night that followed was New Year’s eve, where I made the brilliant decision to spend my precious New Year’s night with a not-good-for-me ex-fling. It was fun but completely unnecessary.

You Don’t Need to Be Addicted to Alcohol to Get Curious About What Life Is Like Without It

After that little story, you might think I had an alcohol problem. I promise you, I did not. (Hah! That’s what all addicts say, I know. I really don’t think I did though — at least not how one traditionally defines one.)

Did I have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol at times? Probably yes. Did I ever drink alone, drink more than a few times a week, drink until I blacked out, or sabotaged my life with my drinking? Definitely not. I was always able to control alcohol, and without a sense of loss of control, there’s no addiction.

I was simply following the “work hard, play hard” mentality, balancing out my 80-hour workweeks in a soul-sucking corporate job with the occasional all-nighter.

After one too many wild party nights I remember once Google’ing, “how to know if you have an alcohol problem,” and the consensus of a couple of internet quizzes was — I did not have one. I was fine.

Hooray!

I didn’t think about the topic too much.

But after my questionable decision-making on New Year’s Eve, I decided it might be smart to do a little more investigation. I went to a friend’s birthday party a few weeks later and, out of curiosity, decided not to drink. Not because I was trying to quit, more just to see what it felt like.

It ended up being a fantastic experience: I still had a ton of fun, stayed exactly as long as I wanted to stay, and had a stimulating conversation with probably the only other sober person at that party. The kind of conversation that leaves you inspired and filled up, the kind of conversation that makes the party not only bearable but enjoyable for a depth-seeking introvert like me. The kind of conversation that made me feel like I lived a little. The real me.

Not drinking at a party where everyone was drinking was extremely untypical for me. I had always loved drinking.

My Love Story with Alcohol

My love story with alcohol started when I was 13 (thanks to Europe) and continued to evolve for nearly 15 years. I was always a devoted drinker. I boasted to people about how I got suspended from boarding school for getting caught with Vodka Orange when I was 15. I was proud that I was able to drink a bottle of wine during my peak party days and not “feel” much, let alone be drunk.

I never turned down a drink, and always continued drinking as long as the night went. I never misbehaved or became “the annoying drunk friend” though. I was an insecure overachiever so I approached drinking the way I approached most things in my life: with black or white thinking, perfectionism, and other people’s perceptions of me on the top of my mind.

There were several reasons my relationship with alcohol turned from an acquaintance into a love story. It gave me a lot.

Alcohol allowed me to temporarily tone down my introversion and be fine with being around many other people. It turned down the volume switch of my environment just enough so that the empath in me wouldn’t be overstimulated. It also allowed me to skip the small talk with strangers and friends alike and go straight into conversations with the kind of depth that I genuinely craved. And, as for most people who on occasion overindulge, it allowed me to escape my mundane daily life and made for many fun stories.

But also, it was fairly effective in (temporarily) filling the void.

The Void

“The void,” the cause of my everlasting misery, was what made me overdo everything I touched. “The void” was what had me doubt my self-worth every single day for the majority of my teens and 20s. “The void” was what drove me into an eating disorder and recurring episodes of severe depression. “The void” made me drink and shop and eat compulsively. “The void” was also what made me question whether I wanted to live at several times in my life.

“The void” was also my best-kept secret. Everyone knew me as a sociable, fun, smart, and reliable go-getter. A partner in crime for most things, and certainly for most parties. But as I out-partied myself and was drowning in my NYC-bubble slowly leaving behind my mid-20s, “the void” kept getting bigger. And the harder I tried to fill it with stuff from the outside, the bigger it got.

I “Spontaneously“ Dropped Alcohol After a Healing Plant Medicine Journey in Costa Rica

Throughout the years, the effects of “the void” were slowly but surely becoming unmanageable. Neither my spiraling eating disorder nor my recurring episodes of depression and PMDD responded to traditional treatment (talk therapy) in any meaningful way. As a result, I was either isolating myself from others or numbing myself with various substances when I was around them. It allowed me to temporarily escape the miserable reality of my life. It allowed me to live with the void, but still have some fun and forget about it on occasion.

But as things were getting worse, my desperation and hopelessness grew. I started to feel a sense of urgency. Something had to change now before it all went so downhill there was no going back.

This is where you might think I decided to quit alcohol.

It was not.

When I say I gave up alcohol “spontaneously,” I say so because I never had any intention of doing so. It was simply not a thought I entertained.

Instead, what I went on to do was go on a week-long Ayahuasca retreat in Costa Rica. I wrote about my experience here, so I won’t go into detail beyond what’s relevant to this topic.

In preparation for my ceremonies, I was advised to adhere to the so-called “Ayahuasca Dieta”. For two weeks before (and ideally after) drinking the plant medicine, you’re advised to abstain from any meat, dairy, sugar, nicotine, coffee — and alcohol. I had absolutely no problem not drinking for a month.

The trip ended up being tremendously healing. I learned what “the void” was all about and when it was created, and made my first real attempts at healing it. I returned from that trip as a changed woman, with a full heart and a much, much smaller void.

Over the following few months, I had very little interest in alcohol. I simply wasn’t craving it. That physical craving for a glass of Rose on a sunny Saturday afternoon, or a cocktail after a stressful work week, was mostly just gone.

I began to understand why Ayahuasca was being so hyped as a cure for alcoholism. I didn’t even have any intention of quitting drinking but still did. Of course, it most likely wasn’t just the plant medicine, but also all the other pieces in my life that were falling together. But I fully credit Ayahuasca for making quitting so incredibly easy, by removing almost all physical cravings.

How Being a Non-Drinker Became a Cornerstone of My Spiritual Evolution

I can count the times I drank alcohol in 2020 (after my Ayahuasca retreat in early March) on one hand. There were times when I thought I was craving it and so I gave in, which was often aided by a well-meaning friend in the search of a drinking companion. But every single time I would come to the conclusion that it was not worth it: either the wine didn’t taste as great as I thought it would, or the sensation of being tipsy didn’t feel as enjoyable as anticipated, or the aftermath the next day wasn’t as manageable as I thought it would be (yes, even after just one or two glasses of wine).

I became “Sober Curious,” a term coined by author Ruby Warrington who started a movement for people seeking the alcohol-free lifestyle not because they had to but because they wanted to.

Warrington defines being “sober curious” as choosing to question or get curious about every impulse, invitation, and expectation to drink, versus mindlessly going along with the dominant drinking culture.

And that’s what I did over the following months. The more I got curious, observed, and reflected, the more I realized the reasons I was drinking were only because it was fun, but also because:

• I feared I would upset my friends if I didn’t, and I was longing for connection and meaningful memories
• I always enjoyed some liquid courage to take the edge off social settings
• I felt the need to numb something, or just escape my life for a night

Somewhere along the way, my mindset changed from “not drinking would be impossible” to “I absolutely would love to be a non-drinker.”

In fact, this desire subconsciously manifested way before my Ayahuasca experience. Once a new friend of mine explained to me she was not drinking at her own party “because she just didn’t like alcohol that much” and for some reason, I thought “wow! how cool!” rather than “how boring”. How cool that you don’t rely on anything but yourself (and your friends) to have a good time.

But what would people think if I told them I was not drinking? Would they think I had an alcohol problem? I had made it my life’s mission to cover up “the void” (and any other imperfection I had alongside it), so the last thing I wanted people to think was that I was struggling with substance abuse.

In Quit Like A Woman, Holly Whitaker argues that there is no such thing as an “alcoholic”. Instead, she advocates for using the terms drinkers and non-drinkers, just like smokers and non-smokers.

Objectively, there are enough reasons to be a non-drinker by choice.

I’m not here to tell you why alcohol is bad for you, you probably already know that. Ok, maybe a little. It’s a neurotoxin that shrinks your brain, damages several of your organs over time, results in fatigue, negatively impacts your mental health, changes your behavior, and impairs your memory. Let alone the hangovers, as a result of which you waste hours to feel human again. And those hours slowly but surely evolve into days by the time you leave your 20s behind.

But we all continue to drink because it is so. much. fun.

Embracing the Alcohol-Free Lifestyle Has Improved My Mental Health, Confidence, Clarity, and Presence

In Sober Curious, Warrington argues that one of the reasons we seem to enjoy alcohol so much is because it down-regulates the part of our brain that is concerned with what other people think about us. Alcohol also allows us to “transcend” our regular consciousness.

And who doesn’t want a break from that constant internal chatter we experience?

Especially if you’re a self-conscious (recovering) perfectionist with an inner critic as loud as ten New York firetrucks like me.

Escaping our regular state of consciousness is not lastly what makes overindulgence in alcohol so rewarding.

But as I drastically reduced my drinking and eventually stopped, I noticed several changes that became much more rewarding than drinking:

1. Being able to be fully present in any situation: I’d been meditating for years in order to learn to be more present. It took me surprisingly long to realize that alcohol was doing the exact opposite. The more I paid attention to it, the more I noticed how it was always taking me out of the moment (or the conversation), rather than deeper into it. Since I drank mostly in social settings, that meant I was always less present around my friends. My intention to be an active listener and be fully present in my relationships turned into one of my key motivators for embracing the alcohol-free lifestyle.
2. Being more confident to show my authentic self: We all want to fit in and be liked, and so did I. And to do so, I developed the valuable skill of adapting to the person in front of me. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if it becomes too much, you will eventually be out of alignment with yourself. You will say something you don’t mean because you think the other person wants to hear it, or you’ll end up in a cab with a stupid arrogant asshole that real you wouldn’t be remotely interested in. Being fully present comes with being fully you, at all times. I also in a sense became proud of my non-drinking, as I realized I didn’t rely on anything outside of me to have an engaging conversation or simply let loose.
3. More focus and clarity: As my priorities shifted, I envisioned my life to look increasingly different. And with that, the place for alcohol in it just became smaller and smaller. It became more important to be able to fully enjoy my Sunday morning yoga than have a fun night out. I wanted to spend my money on traveling and retreats and not on overpriced Manhattan cocktails. And by not drinking, I now got to enjoy what feels like 50–75% more of my weekend. I spend Sunday mornings working out or pouring myself into a passion project, rather than lounging around all day ordering takeout trying to overcome the hangover. I feel much more aligned, and being alcohol-free has given me the focus and clarity to continue building the life I desire.
4. Improved mental health and more manageable moods: Not to say that I don’t struggle from time to time anymore, but the range between my highs and lows feels drastically reduced. For someone with mental health issues, depleting your dopamine reserves with alcohol every other weekend is simply a losing game. You’re making your life more difficult than it needs to be. With the very predictable comedowns after an alcohol bender out of the picture, my life feels much more manageable now. My mood is more stable and my episodes of depression have reduced in intensity, duration, and frequency.

Alcohol Is the Crutch of Modern Society

It’s the only socially accepted drug, one that 70% of Americans regularly take. It’s incredibly hard to quit. And it’s the only substance where users unable to quit are diagnosed with a disease.

What made it possible for me to “unintentionally” quit something that most people would never consider quitting if they didn’t have to?

As a disclaimer, I believe my plant medicine experience definitely aided in this process. But, similar to what Holly Whitaker describes in “Quit Like A Woman”, what also helped tremendously were all the things that I did to heal “the void” to begin with: meditation, yoga, getting back into my body, journaling, fostering my intuition, making changes to my lifestyle to align more with what I value, becoming my own best friend, learning to self-soothe and mother myself, learning to move away from black and white thinking, healing my traumas.

Will I never drink again? Not even a fine glass of wine with a special meal, or a glass of champagne at my wedding?

That I don’t know.

All I know is that in the current moment, I have absolutely no desire to do so, and I don’t really know what would have to happen for that to change.

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