I quit drinking for a year
In early January 2025, a family friend was over for lunch. One of my many guilty midwit pleasures is a love of New Year’s resolutions, so I asked her if she had made any. She said no, but mentioned that she had some relatives that were doing “damp January”. In case you’re not aware, Dry January is a challenge many people do to quit drinking alcohol during the month of January. These folks were doing a variant in which, instead of not drinking, one simply drinks less. For some reason, this triggered me. I thought, “Are you kidding? You can’t even stop drinking for a single month? Do you know how pathetic that is?” And then, “Fuck you! Fuck you for doing damp January! You know what, I’m going to stop drinking for a year !” To be clear, these thoughts were directed at people I’ve never even met. In retrospect, I wonder what was going on with me emotionally. But I take resolutions seriously, so I felt committed. We are now 15 months down the timeline, so I’ll make my report. This will sound odd, but I swear it’s true. Not drinking was so easy that it was almost easier than my previous baseline of not-not-drinking. Before starting this resolution, I didn’t drink much—perhaps two or three drinks per week. But I often thought about drinking. Every time I saw friends or went to a restaurant, I thought, “Should I have a drink?” Usually I decided not to. But making that decision required effort. After a few weeks of not drinking, that question never even came up. Drinking was simply not a thing I did, so I never needed to negotiate with myself. Theoretically, you could allow yourself one drink a month instead of zero. Theoretically, that should be easier. But I’m pretty sure I’d find it harder, because alcohol would still be an option , a thing to consider. Early on, I sometimes wanted a drink. But gradually I noticed that I didn’t really want a drink, I just wanted a thing . I can’t find a precise name for this concept in psychology, but often, some deep part of my brain seems to scream, “I WANT A THING.” It could be alcohol, but I found dessert worked just as well. I suspect that a new shirt or meeting a new dog would also work. I was not able to stop my brain from doing this. When it demanded a thing, I gave it a thing. I just substituted a non-alcohol thing. So, over the year, I became interested in desserts and even-more interested in tea. The struggle was The Chocolates. Shortly after I made this resolution, my mother gave me a bag of chocolates that each contained a bit of whiskey. In general, I don’t keep chocolate at home. If anyone gives me chocolate, I immediately eat all of it and then text the giver, “Thanks for the chocolate, I ate it instead of dinner, it’s all gone, this is what will always happen if you give me chocolate.” But I couldn’t eat the Chocolates, because they contained alcohol. I managed to get guests to eat a few. A couple of times I came close to draining out the alcohol and eating the chocolate container. I even considered throwing them away, but that felt wrong. So instead I spent a year glaring at them and waiting for them to apologize for the anguish they were causing me. This represented half the difficulty of this resolution. I do not recommend it. Keep your things separate. Have you heard that alcohol is bad for sleep? Because alcohol is bad for sleep . I’ve always known that was true, abstractly. But sleep is variable. If I didn’t sleep well on an individual night, I was never sure: Was that because of the alcohol, or was it random variation? After a year without alcohol, I am very confident that yes indeed, alcohol is bad for sleep , because my sleep during 2025 was much better than in previous years. Sure, like anyone else, I still sometimes wake up and start thinking about oblivion rushing towards me, and how everything I love will vanish into time, and how all that was once future and hope inevitably becomes static and dust, and how the plague of bluetooth speakers continues to spread across the globe. But now: less! I wish there was a drug I could take that would give me energy and improve my mood and make me physically healthier and smarter, all without side-effects. I don’t think such a drug exists. But we do have the opposite! So, sadly, I’ve come to believe that alcohol is basically the perfect anti-nootropic. That’s not because it makes you dumb while you’re drunk. (True, but who cares?) Rather, that’s because it is bad for sleep , and therefore makes you worse across all dimensions the next day. I did find not drinking to have one clear downside: It’s just not that much fun to hang out with people who are drinking if you are not drinking yourself. To be clear, this is a limited effect. It’s only an issue at bars or certain parties where people are there to drink . I don’t go to many such gatherings, but when I did, I felt it was less fun. It’s not that I missed alcohol. Instead, my theory is that drinking parties are a sort of joint role-playing exercise: “Let’s all get together and collectively reduce our inhibitions and see what happens.” It’s fun not (just) because everyone is taking a recreational drug, but because it’s a joint social experience. If you don’t drink, then you aren’t fully participating. It seems like it should be possible to reproduce this effect without alcohol. You could imagine other ways to push the social equilibrium out of balance. Like… Masks? Or weird environments? Or mutual disclosure games? Should people get together and do a group cold plunge? Unfortunately, all these are complicated and/or carry some kind of social stigma. So until we figure something better out, this is a real cost of not drinking. It was minor for me, but it probably depends a lot on where you are in life. All other effects were minor. I guess I saved money at restaurants. I actually lost a bit of weight over the year, despite all the extra desserts, though I can’t say for sure if alcohol was the cause. Otherwise, once I stopped thinking of alcohol as an option, I rarely thought about the resolution at all, except when I saw those damn chocolates. Towards the end of the year, I started wondering if I should quit drinking forever. But I never came to a conclusion, because I rarely thought about alcohol. I considered having a drink at midnight on New Year’s eve, but I happened to be on a plane that crossed the international date line and thus skipped New Year’s eve. And then… for the first few months of 2026, I still didn’t drink. That wasn’t because of any decision. It just never seemed appealing because (a) sleep and (b) I’d broken the mental link between want thing and drink alcohol . Eventually, I ate the chocolates, and I had a glass of wine when visiting some friends. If I can continue rarely drinking while almost never thinking about drinking, I’ll probably do that. If I slowly slide back into always thinking of alcohol as a live option and always negotiating with myself, I might just resolve to quit forever. So that’s my story. Obviously, it’s heavily colored by my own idiosyncrasies, so it’s hard to say if it offers any general lesson. I do think people underrate the long-term health impact of drinking. The effect on heart disease is debated, but everyone agrees that any alcohol increases the risk of cancer. Still, the long-term effects from occasional light drinking probably aren’t huge. What’s really underrated is the short-term effects, via worse sleep. If I had to give advice, it would be this: If you drink, and you think you might be better off not drinking, why not try it? Maybe you’ll find that champagne is essential to your happiness and drink it every night, to hell with the costs. Maybe you’ll find a different baseline, or maybe you’ll quit forever. Whatever you decide, you’ll have full information.
Career
Writing
Programming
Ruby
Go
AI
Business
Data Analysis