How quitting alcohol turned my view of life upside down
A couple of months ago, I was stopping by the convenience store to get my son a slushy after his hockey practice.
As he headed over to the machines to craft his pop-and-ice concoction, I veered left to see if I’d won $40 million dollars.
Spoiler alert: I did not win $40 million dollars.
But I did have a weird experience while I made my way over to the scanner.
For just a moment, I had a strange sensation. A twinkle of doubt.
If I slipped the ticket under the scanner and the screen told me I’d won $40 million dollars right there and then … would I be happy?
Drowning
If you’d asked me six months ago, the answer would have been a lot easier. I would have been overjoyed.
That’s because I had no idea what to do with the rest of my life.
Six months ago, I was well and truly lost.
Yes, I had a successful traditional career and a beautiful family, but in terms of my internal happiness and self-confidence, I was in a very low place.
The commuter life, the office life — that was never for me.
Back when I was a journalist, I was very good at being anywhere but the office. I would be typing away from home, from airports, from arenas … literally anywhere but a drab, traditional office setting.
I also didn’t want to work for someone else.
I’ve never enjoyed having a boss — even a good one.
I want to do what I want to do. I want to answer to me.
Can you tell I have issues with authority? It runs in the family.
I always knew intrinsically that the only way I could be truly at peace was if I was:
a) In motion
b) Creating something
c) Accountable only to myself
But there was always something in the way: alcohol.
I’ve written about this a ton already, but it’s a very important part of the story because it’s the one barrier that was keeping me from starting to move toward the life that I actually wanted … one where I would sit down one morning and consider whether or not I’d actually want to win the lottery.
The long and winding road
After trying and failing with a succession of get-rich-quick schemes, I sat down one day last August and took stock of my skills.
Although, if I had to do it all again, I probably would have become a graphic designer or an artist, I came around to accepting that the one valuable, above-average skill I had was writing.
This was tough to swallow in a way because my previous career had left me with indifference to the craft.
Journalism was something that I fell into because I didn’t really know what else to do at that point.
I turned out to be really good at it, becoming a section editor of a major daily newspaper by age 29.
But I am not, by nature, an extroverted person, and journalism is an uncomfortable career path for an introvert.
For someone who didn’t particularly enjoy talking to people or even being around people, it was certainly a curious choice by me. I graduated from university and went straight to work.
I will never forget the snowy, slushy November morning when I was driving to the office two months into my career and the realization hit me: “I’ve made a huge mistake.”
I’ve always deeply respected my sister for a choice she made when she was young.
She went to university to become an accountant and, as a hyper-intelligent perfectionist, she almost certainly would have been a partner at some firm before long.
But she realized and accepted that, despite her talent and her decision to pursue it, she hated the work.
She never did become an accountant.
At the end of the day, though, I can’t complain. I got to do and see some amazing things as a journalist, and the path it put me on led me to this life, this moment right now.
I wouldn’t have my two beautiful, kind, amazing kids. I wouldn’t be feeling truly optimistic heading into a new year for the first time I can remember.
I wouldn’t be considering whether or not I actually want to win the lottery.
Life veers on course
Back to alcohol for a second.
It was writing that caused me to start drinking in the first place — the sadness and malaise I felt over going all-in on a career I hated.
I knew that to start building a second career as an independent writer and content creator, that is, doing the kind of writing I actually liked, I needed to stop.
Over time, alcohol kills your optimism and drive to do anything but drink alcohol.
It messes up your dopamine levels and destroys your sleep and makes you sad and bored, then masquerades as the solution to all those problems.
I was caught on the booze hamster wheel and needed to get off of it before I could accomplish anything.
As much as I wanted to escape the commuter life, until that point I was too lazy and/or drunk to work on escaping it.
I won’t go into any more detail about the reasons and process for that — there are literally like 100 stories on my profile about it — but the important part is that quitting drinking opened the door to starting to build the kind of life that would lead me to consider not winning the lottery.
I started writing, first about quitting drinking, then other stuff. And then I started making videos.
And then I started getting paid for writing and making videos on my terms and my schedule.
And this was exhilarating.
This was, finally, the life I always wanted, albeit on a very small scale (for now).
But it opened my eyes and it made me proud of myself for the first time in a very, very long time.
When a win is a loss
Some people think any art done for compensation is impure.
I love to write and I’m having fun making videos, but if I didn’t have a way to keep score with myself, would I still do it?
Maybe?
Would I do it as much as I am now? Would it excite me to the extent that it does?
I don’t think so.
I thrive on deadlines, which is one reason I was so good at journalism.
As an ADHD person, if I don’t have something to focus on and something to focus me, I’ll think about everything and accomplish nothing.
That’s why I’m not sure it would be so good for me to win the lottery.
I don’t think the prospect of building a publishing business from scratch would have the same oomph if I had $40 million dollars sitting in the bank.
Leaving your job because you won the lottery feels cheap.
Leaving your job because you created something bigger and better out of thin air sounds extremely fun.
As I went to check that ticket the other day, the prospect of winning scared me a bit.
I think if I built a $40 million business, I would be so driven to nurture and care for it. I love to create things. That excites me.
You know what would be really easy to do with $40 million in the bank that I didn’t earn and nothing I’ve built professionally to care for?
Drink, probably.
Money is not a cure
I think I’ve known for a long time, in my core, that more money in and of itself would solve nothing.
When I was in my mid-20s and a much more shallow guy, I wanted a BMW.
It didn’t even need to be fancy, a BMW 3 Series would do. Maybe, even though I hated my career, it would feel good to drive a BMW.
In my early 30s, however, I was driving down the road one day following a BMW 3 Series, and I asked myself: “Would I be happier right now if I were in that car 10 metres in front of me?”
Nah. At the end of the day, I would just be depressed in a nicer car.
You always hear about these people who win the lottery and wind up broke and/or dead before long and wonder: “how could that be?”
How could someone be given everything and still be miserable? How could they throw it all away?
But I can see it.
I know this sounds very cliché, but the secret to happiness isn’t money after all.
It’s creativity, process, and purpose.
For me, money is a crucial tool and a necessary part of that process. I do need it in order to build a business and feed my family.
But the money, in a vacuum, wouldn’t solve a damn thing about why I was so miserable before.
It definitely wouldn’t have stopped me from drinking.
So, with professional purpose, a boost of self-confidence, and the wind at my back, I’m OK for the first time that the screen said “not a winning ticket”.
Win the lottery? I think I’ll pass.
This is an updated version of an earlier article.
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