This will be a longer form post that I'll return to over the next couple of days. This is about drinking and my relationship with alcohol. I think this will be the first time I've written extended thoughts about my relationship with it. I imagine I'll have more to say in the future.
I felt the need to make a big change on December 6th, 2025. Nothing crazy happened. I'd gone out for drinks with my buddies the night before. We had a good time. We went to Ivy and Coney, one of our usual dive bar haunts. Had beer and malort shots. I think I kept drinking by myself once we all left. I had also been through a break up in November. I had been stuck in an unhealthy pattern of drinking for at least two years that was starting to impact my life. Perhaps the most outwardly noticeable consequence of this behavior, to me at least, was that I'd occasionally call in sick to work for two hours in the morning. Just to take my time because I was hungover. And not necessarily from having too many drinks out with friends. It may have been because I had a bottle of wine the night before. Or some whiskey. So, I'd show up at work by 10:30 just because I felt like shit. I also was not sleeping well. My mood was often sour, melancholy. I was not exercising like I wanted to. My blood pressure was high. My relationships were strained.
When things stressed me out, or made me feel bad, or if I was bored, I would reach for alcohol. And so, the problems compounded. Alcohol --> don't sleep --> am cranky/anxious/depressed --> don't exercise --> don't do the things I want to do (like reading) --> drink more alcohol. I told myself that drinking was a social activity, something to take up time. I had nice, fun routines at the Raven and Lyman's Tavern. My friend's and I had good, rowdy times. Everything was more fun. The reality was, though, the rest of my life was suffering. Whatever fun or temporary relief from boredom I gained from drinking made the rest of my life measurably worse.
The patterns of life are much more manageable sans-alchol. That is abundantly clear since I've mostly quit in December. My mental health has improved. My sleep is better. I exercise more regularly. My physical health has improved. I think my blood pressure is even better. I don't feel like I'm working against the current to improve my circumstances.
Since December 6th, I've had two instances where I drank alcohol: Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. I almost made it through both of them, but relented near the end of the nights and had bourbon. But that's it. I've made it through all of January so far without drinking. This is an incredible accomplishment and I'm super proud of myself. It's been a long, long time, since I've gone this long without drinking. Life is not magically perfect, but drinking does not become an unnecessary drag or weight on me. I don't feel like I'm just waiting around to die.
I started drinking my freshman year at Florida State University. I didn't get invited to parties in high school. I was afraid of that crowd. But at my first big party in college - an ultimate frisbee club party - I was enraptured. I rapidly got drunk. I loved the social atmosphere. I thought I was hilarious. I loved the goofiness and shenanigans of it. I thought I was cool and more likely to talk to girls. And so I lived for parties in college. Outside of that, I don't think I did much of anything to develop a social life. I didn't know how at a 40,000+ student university. I was somewhat plugged into the Presbyterian campus ministry, but that was a group of misfits. I dropped out of the frisbee club after a year and tried to just go to their parties. I was loosely in a smattering of other clubs. But I didn't seriously try to embed myself in anything.
On a campus the size of FSU, it's hard not to create a narrative where everyone is plugged in and having fun except you. My roommates had their own groups and extended networks. My brother had fraternity and other friends. I didn't have much. So I drank. I tried to meet people at parties. That was my social life. Eventually, in my senior year, I was just drinking all the time. Buying beer and wine for myself. Getting drunk at home by myself. In my darkest moments, I'd cry myself to sleep. I thought about ways to die. Drinking was exacerbating a larger feeling of loneliness, stagnation, and lack of hope for the future. It was contributing to depression. That depression reached a crest and I called a hotline. The operator asked if I'd told anyone about my thoughts. I said no. She asked if I would tell my parents. I finally gave myself permission to do that. That opened up a conversation with them and brought my depression to their awareness. I'm sure it caused them great strain, but it was the right thing to do. The phone operator doesn't know it, but they may have saved my life. They definitely helped me move through a hard moment and break into another, less lonely one. It wasn't the end of drinking, but it was when I began to treat my depression and anxiety.
As I write this, I realize that drinking was intimately tied to development of depression. I had limited social skills, lack of confidence, and fears that made it difficult to navigate FSU. I turned to alcohol. This exacerbated my problems and didn't help them. Telling the story of my drinking is also telling the story of building confidence, facing tough emotions when sober, depression and anxiety, and growing up.
I graduated and started Bike & Build. It was a fun trip, but my drinking buddies and I would get wasted in every city. It was like a booze tour of America. The horrific ending of our trip left me traumatized. I was also moving back to Orlando with no prospects or plans. The bike trip had just been delaying that hard reality. This was a headlong collision with difficult circumstances that I wasn't prepared for, especially with my humming depression in the background. I got home and started taking Acutane for a severe acne outbreak I was experiencing. This, and my continued drinking, and the difficulty of being home, supercharged my depression. My parents were there for it all. That sat by me and listened as I curled up on the couch or couldn't get out of bed. Eventually, they helped me go to therapy and to a psychiatrist. I started meds, which helped. Perhaps the biggest complication of depression was my struggle to sleep. I wasn constantly exhausted. I would lay in bed awake for hours. The medicine immediately helped with that. This period was extremely challenging because it was where I experienced depressions effects in their purest form. Catastrophizing, hopelessness, sleeplesness. I couldn't pull myself through and nothing brought me joy.
Mom and Dad were patient and saintly. They helped me move through this period with grace, love, and care. Without them, the process of healing and growing through depression would have seemed nearly impossible. Eventually, I landed two gigs in Washington, DC: 1) a summer internship with an affordable housing advocacy nonprofit, and 2) a year long internship at a progressive magazine. I jumped at the chance to fly the coop. This was an exciting, different time. I was learning a lot about career paths and myself. It made a huge difference in my understanding of the world. I was breaking out of my preconceived notions of how life and work-life should go that I developed at Florida State. But I was still drinking.
Fortunately, one of my best friends lived in DC, so I had easy access to a wider social network. My DC pals were smart, fun and chummy. I was finally part of a larger group of friends. This was something I struggled with at FSU. I thought of myself as a loner, with a handful of lose friendships. I envied people that were part of a group. I wasn't sure I was capable of that. But discovered I was very capable. People liked me. I still lived to party too much, but this was acceptable in DC. Everyone went out. Everyone had happy hour and house parties. The problem was, I was still covering for other insecurities. I hadn't dated. I didn't have romantic experience. I thought I needed alcohol for this. So alcohol continued to be a crutch, and impediment, to developing skills, in this case romantic ones. This was a bad mix and, needless to say, didn't help. It wasn't always bad, but being sober minded was key to overcoming insecurities.
Alcohol was a part of my romantic relationships. I drank too much. Not that it lead to anything bad. But it was a central part of my social activities. I went hardest at parties. I had one more beer than everyone else. I drank by myself. Alcohol impact my intimate relationships in ways I probably didn't identify. After graduating from grad school, I went to visit my then-girlfriend in South Africa. Though it was a wonderful time, I drank along the trip. Every stop, every stay usually included alcohol. I think she was tired of it and exasperated. There were deeper anxieties about the relationship, and alcohol got in the way of discussing them healthily.
It didn't work out. I continued to drink. I got obliterated on NYE after we broke up. I punched a stop sign and broke my hand. I was 30 years old by this point. Far past the point where those shenanigans were ever acceptable. But, it was a self-inflicted wound. I have since been in a relationship since moving back to DC. For much of it I drank. I drank through insecurities and doubts. I avoided hard and uncomfortable feelings. I drank to mask my loneliness and frustration with life. I had enough of that on December 6, 2025. I drank two times following that: Christmas Eve and NYE. Both times were unnecessary.
I didn't stop out of embarrassment or because someone told me I needed to slow down, though that could have been the case numerous times. I've drank myself into a several embarrassing, even lightly shameful behaviors, that were worth pausing to assess my relationship with alcohol. I stopped because it was clear it was a net negative on my life. I felt terrible. It exacerbated my sadness and loneliness. It wasn't bringing me new friends. I mostly drank by myself. I needed a change. I talked about stopping openly with people. This helped reinforce a feeling of accountability. I went to a couple of AA sessions. I didn't say my name or speak up, but it worked. I didn't feel like drinking after.
It hasn't been as hard to stop as I might have thought. It was difficult at first - you have to clear the first impulses to drink and push through old habits. But I got past that without much trouble. Now, it's quite easy to spend nights by myself, sans alcohol. And I can be around others while they drink, though I don't have as much endurance to stay out.