How I stopped drinking

🚫This is not advice. I repeat: this is not advice.

Drinking problems don’t always look like serial nights of blackout benders. They can be so subtle that you convince yourself you don’t have a problem at all. That’s what happened to me, but the problem went unnoticed for a long time because I was never a big drinker. A two-drink evening was a wild night. Three drinks? Consider me out of commission for the next week.

Then a couple of things happened.

I got old

Hangovers in my twenties were annoying, but tolerable. Some orange juice, some breakfast tacos, and I was a functioning human.

But my thirties? No such luck.

When I turned 30, I went out on a binger karaoke night with my friends. It was a great birthday, but I was ruined for days. Nausea, headaches, more nausea, body aches. It was awful. If you are a human who has aged out of your twenties, and you drink, you’ve probably had a similar experience at one point or another. And if you haven’t: just you wait.

But the year I turned 35, things got worse. Much much worse.

Drugs are one hell of a drug

Ok, “things got worse” isn’t totally accurate. Things actually got better! Like, a fuck load better! For my mental health.

I have ADHD – wow, pikachu-shock-face. I was diagnosed when I was 32 and my treatment journey was bumpy, to put it mildly. You see, I’m part of that lucky 30% of space cadets for which stimulants don’t do shit. I also tried non-stimulants. I tried anti-depressants. SSRIs. SNRIs. Anxiety meds. Supplements. Diet and exercise. And yes, motherfuckers, I even tried meditation.

In 2024, I finally found something that worked for me: Lamotrigine! Praise be her name!!

It’s typically prescribed to folks with bipolar disorder (which I don’t have) but something about its glutamate-antagonistic features seems to quell my anxiety and help me regulate my emotions. I’m still a space cadet, but I spiral out of control much less.

This drug changed my life.

It did not mix well with alcohol.

The booze stopped working

I started noticing in 2024 that I was having much more severe reactions to alcohol. I would feel nauseous within hours of having a single drink. I was throwing up multiple times per month, simply from having a beer or two every week with friends at happy hour. It got to the point where I couldn’t even feel *remotely tipsy *without wanting to throw up. I tried cutting back, but it became painfully obvious (literally) that any amount was too much.

The drink that finally did me in was in December that year. I had a single, 12 ounce, light beer.

I threw it up when I got home.

Suddenly, booze had no perks. Alcohol was now all vomit and no vibes.

The perfect storm of hitting my mid-thirties + new meds was forcing me into a new way of living.

And it sucked.

Quitting alcohol sucks

My life is much better without alcohol, but only for my specific medical bullshit reasons. If my stupid body could handle alcohol, I would still drink. But it can’t, so I don’t.

As I said before, I had a drinking problem. But before that dreaded 12-oz light beer in December, I didn’t believe it. The label “alcoholic” felt comically extreme for my situation. Besides, I knew alcoholism. I’d lost a friend to it a few years prior, in the worst way possible. So no, I couldn’t have a “drinking problem”.

But I kept trying to drink less, and I kept failing. Alcohol was a part of my social life. None of my friends ever drank excessively – or even close to their limits. But where did we spend our time? Wine bars, breweries, backyard happy hours. At every dinner party, every movie night: booze.

Always, always alcohol. Never in excess, but always there.

I learned the hard way that just because you’re not a “true” alcoholic doesn’t mean you can’t have a drinking problem.

Removing alcohol felt like removing a core element of my social life. I’d been conditioned to think that booze-in-hand = friendly good times. Blah blah dopamine, and all that.

But I had to stop. And it sucked, for months.

I started writing

Let’s rewind. It was summer of 2024, and I began writing again. Specifically, I brushed off an old story that had been collecting dust in the drawers of my mind for years. A Western fantasy romance. It was just an idea. I decided it would be a fun project.

Within weeks, I was consumed. I would spend whole evenings writing, typically with a gin and tonic. It had been years since I’d achieved such flow. In fact, it grew to be so enjoyable that I found I didn’t even want the drink anymore. I could lose myself writing for hours, only taking breaks when nature called.

Finding something to make – specifically something joyful, something frivolous, something fun – turned out to be the most powerful tool in my sobriety arsenal.

Becoming a weird little freak

After that fateful December 12-oz light beer, I went cold turkey. This is crazy, because I’ve literally never gone cold turkey on anything in my life. I’m a total wuss. But this was different. I had no choice.

It was hard at first. Really hard. I missed the lowered inhibitions. I missed feeling relaxed and chatty. For the first few months, that loss of social ease sucked ass.

And then I had my (agnostic) come-to-Jesus moment: if I wanted to feel uninhibited in social settings, I would just have to learn to be a weird little freak.

It became a fun challenge. Want to feel that same joyous freedom? Fuck what people think, and say the weird thing. Be direct. Make the joke. Talk to strangers. Do things that scare the piss out of you. Laugh a lot. Play a lot.

So that’s what I did. It helped.

Everything in moderation, including…

A month ago I had my first drink since December 2024. It was preplanned. I was running my first 5k that Saturday and I wanted to celebrate with a single mimosa. Past Annie – ahem, pre-lamotrigine-Annie – would have spiraled about this decision. Look. More evidence that I can’t stick with any plan long term, I’m a flake and a fickle person and I’m going to die alone.

But that’s not what I did.

My running buddy and I laughed and talked and bitched over brunch, and I enjoyed the fuck out of that mimosa. I had a gnarly headache the rest of the day, and honestly, I was fine with that. It was a great reminder that yep – alcohol still fucks me up real bad. I had no problem going back to Dry-town. No backsliding.

Loosening my death grip on sobriety, letting go of the shame, and treating myself like the adult I am helped me make a good decision that day and the ones that followed. This is what moderation looks like for me.

✋Your moderation is not the same as my moderation. REAL cold turkey is a way of life for some. It’s good for some.

What’s next?

Alcohol is such a lovely thing when it doesn’t fuck you up. But if it does, like me, or if it does, but not like me, that sucks, but also, it’s okay. I know it’s annoying to hear but the obvious thing is true: there are so many other ways to get your kicks, completely sober. This is not me trying to preach the dry gospel, it’s just a fact.

And guess what?

I haven’t stopped writing that Western fantasy. In fact, I have an editor now – a real flesh-and-blood editor, that I pay with real human dollars. Things have come a long way.

In fact, I’m writing this post the day before I leave for an artistic research trip. It’s actually a comic book series, and for the next week I’ll be drawing inspiration from Moab and Bryce Canyon and all the pretty wonders of Utah. I’ll be soaking up the sun, trying to stuff all the inspiration I can legally fit in my suitcase, and doing my best to live in the moment.

I’ll try to share some pictures.

But I hope I forget.