On Alcohol

I never really thought of myself as someone who would quit drinking. If you had asked me even a few months ago, I would have said alcohol was just part of my life. Something social, something relaxing, something that fit naturally into the rhythm of things. It was familiar. It was normal. It was what people did. I didn’t have a dramatic reason to question it, and because my drinking looked like everyone else’s, it never occurred to me that I should. I always believed I had control, that I could take it or leave it. And to be fair, I could take breaks whenever I felt like it. But even that was part of the illusion, because those breaks were always about proving something to myself rather than coming from any genuine desire to stop.

It wasn’t until I revisited Annie Grace's The Naked Mind and then read Jason Vale's Kick the Drink...Easily that something started to shift in a meaningful way. There wasn’t a rock-bottom moment or a crisis or a confrontation. It was much simpler than that. It was the quiet, rational realization that alcohol wasn’t doing anything for me. In fact, it never had.

Once I saw that clearly, the desire to keep drinking just faded, almost like a light being switched off. And when I looked back, I began to understand how my relationship with alcohol formed in the first place, why it endured for so long, and why it ultimately doesn't deserve a place in my life.

Where It Really Started

My relationship with alcohol didn’t begin with the first drink I had in high school. It began long before that - in childhood, where I learned, without realizing it, to carry more weight than I could handle. I grew up quiet, anxious, and often bullied, but what happened at school paled in comparison to what was happening at home. My mom had MS and was a quadriplegic for as long as I can really remember. I have a few faint images of her walking, but they feel distant, like old dreams. For most of her life, she needed full-time care. Our home was not the calm, supportive environment a kid needs. It was tense, volatile, and unpredictable. I went through abuse myself, but the hardest moments were the ones where I watched my powerless mom be mistreated. Those experiences lodged themselves deep inside me. They shaped how I understood the world and my place in it. They made me cautious, on guard, and deeply unsure of myself.

By the time I reached my early teens, all of that had manifested in depression and a feeling of not belonging anywhere. I didn’t have the tools to talk about what I was experiencing, and I certainly didn’t have the confidence to express what I needed. So I did what a lot of kids in that situation do - I tried to disappear into the background. I survived by staying small, staying quiet, and staying out of the way. And because I never learned how to process any of what I was carrying, I entered my teenage years with a nervous system wired for fear and a mind desperate to escape itself, even if I didn’t know it at the time.

The First Taste of Escape

High school gave me an external reset. I somehow found my way into the popular crowd, which felt like a fresh start. From the outside, I looked like someone who had finally found his place. But internally, nothing had changed. I was still anxious, still insecure, still craving belonging in a way I couldn’t articulate. I envied kids who spoke freely, who seemed comfortable in their own skin, who could laugh easily without second-guessing what they sounded like. I wanted that ease so badly, and I had no idea how to access it.

Then alcohol came into the picture.

I didn’t enjoy the taste at first (as both Grace and Vale remind us, no one really does) but it didn’t take long for me to appreciate what it did to my personality. It softened the intensity of my anxiety. It gave me this feeling of looseness and warmth that was completely foreign to me in sober life. I became louder, funnier (at least in my mind), and more willing to put myself out there. For the first time, I felt like the person I assumed everyone else wanted me to be. The social world that usually made me tense suddenly felt manageable.

Of course, I sometimes pushed too far. There were nights when I drank so much that I ended up puking, and back then, I chalked it up to just “going too hard” or being young. I didn’t understand what I do now - that my body wasn’t punishing me or failing me; it was protecting me. Alcohol is, in the literal biological sense, a toxin. Vomiting wasn’t a sign of overindulgence; it was a sign that my body recognized poison and was doing whatever it could to get it out. But as a teenager, I wasn’t thinking about biology or long-term consequences. All I knew was that alcohol made me feel like a version of myself I actually wanted to be, even if my body paid a price for it.

And for a kid who never felt like he fit anywhere, that was enough.

Adulthood and the Quiet Illusion of Control

My drinking habits followed me into adulthood, evolving but never disappearing. In my twenties, I drank whenever I could. Partly because I loved the way it changed how I felt, and partly because drinking was synonymous with socializing.

I didn’t have much money back then, so I drank within the limits of what I could afford, but the desire to drink was always there. As I moved into my thirties, building a career and starting a family, the opportunities to drink became more structured, but the pattern didn’t change. If a situation allowed for alcohol, I took it.

And somewhere along the way, it also became part of my routine. I had the classic evening wind-down drink, the pint beside me as I wrapped up emails at night, the reflexive pour after a long day - all of it wrapped in the familiar cultural excuses we tell ourselves. I told myself it relaxed me, or helped me transition into the evening, or took the edge off stress. None of that felt problematic. It all felt normal. And because I didn’t fit society’s definition of someone with a drinking problem, I saw no reason to question it. I just wanted alcohol for the same reasons everyone else claimed to: to unwind, to loosen up, to “treat myself,” to make life a little easier. It never occurred to me how revealing it was that I needed a substance to do any of those things.

Looking back now, I can see how dependent I really was. My tolerance kept increasing. I needed more and more alcohol to reach that familiar numbness. And although I didn’t think of it this way at the time, I realize now that wanting a drink anytime it was socially acceptable is still a form of dependence. The fact that it looked normal didn’t make it healthy.

As I got older, the cracks in the façade became harder to ignore. Sleep suffered. My anxiety increased. Deep down, I knew the drug was affecting my overall health and well-being, even if I didn’t want to admit it. My patience shortened. And I could feel myself drifting away from the identity I valued - the disciplined, high-performing version of myself that I pride myself on being. Alcohol chipped away at the edges of that identity, slowly but consistently, even though I kept telling myself everything was fine.

I went through familiar cycles of moderation. I’d drink too much, wake up feeling awful, swear I would slow down, then repeat the pattern. I’d take breaks to “prove” I didn’t have a problem (including one stretch that lasted more than six months), and then return to drinking as if the break itself was evidence of control. And the irony, which feels so obvious to me now, is that the very act of needing to prove I didn’t have a problem was actually the clearest sign that I had a dependence on the drug.

But moderation always came with an internal battle: a cloud of negotiation, guilt, excuses, and self-talk. Instead of giving me control, moderation made alcohol feel bigger than ever.

It wasn’t until I made the decision to stop drinking altogether that I realized how much noise alcohol had added to my internal world - and how much peace came when that noise finally stopped.

Clarity

The shift happened when I was rereading The Naked Mind and then picked up Jason Vale’s book Kick the Drink...Easily. I went in expecting the same experience I’d had years earlier: some insights, some reminders of the downsides of alcohol, and maybe a short break afterward. But Vale’s logic hit me in a way I wasn’t expecting. He didn’t moralize or dramatize. He simply explained what alcohol is and what it does to the brain and body. He pointed out that alcohol doesn’t give anything; it only removes the discomfort it creates. It doesn’t relax you; it relieves the mild withdrawal that starts the moment your last drink wears off. It doesn’t make you more confident; it numbs the anxiety standing in your way. It doesn’t add joy; it temporarily masks discomfort.

And one idea in particular stopped me in my tracks: his assertion that there’s no such thing as an “alcoholic” in the way society likes to define it. He argues that the label exists mostly to make the majority of drinkers feel safe - because as long as we’re not at the extreme end of the spectrum, we can pretend everything is fine. But dependence doesn’t start at the stereotype. It starts when we believe alcohol gives us something we can’t access on our own. It starts when we rely on it for confidence, relaxation, sociability, humor - any of the things we think it enhances. And reading Vale’s description of this landed with uncomfortable accuracy. I wasn’t the stereotype of an alcoholic, not even close, but I was absolutely dependent on the perceived benefits of alcohol. I relied on it to be the more confident, relaxed, funnier version of myself - the version I believed other people wanted.

Once that clicked, everything shifted. The rational part of my brain (the part of me that runs companies, solves problems, and makes tough decisions) couldn’t argue with it. If I believed I needed alcohol to be a certain version of myself, then by Vale’s definition, I was dependent. And once I let the simplicity of that truth sink in, the illusions I had built around alcohol started to crumble. Alcohol is a toxin. I had been ingesting it my entire adult life because I believed it helped me socially, emotionally, and psychologically, when in reality it was doing the opposite.

From that moment on, I didn’t feel the need to moderate. The desire to drink just wasn’t there anymore. Once I saw alcohol clearly, the logic of not drinking became so strong that it didn’t feel like a choice. It felt like alignment - like my rational mind and my deeper instincts had finally caught up with one another.

What Life Feels Like Without Alcohol

Since I stopped drinking, I’ve had several social outings (dinners, gatherings with friends, networking events) and all of them have gone infinitely better than I expected. I had fun. I felt engaged. I remembered everything. I didn’t spend half the evening negotiating with myself about how fast I was drinking or whether I should slow down. I wasn’t worried about saying something I’d regret or waking up with a foggy head. There was no cloud hanging over me, no mental tug-of-war. I was simply present.

Vale’s point that it’s the people and the environment that make something enjoyable has proved true again and again. Without alcohol, the entire experience feels clearer and more authentic.

One of the biggest surprises so far is how much I actually like the sober version of myself. Without alcohol, there’s a steadiness to my confidence that wasn’t there before. I don’t need to manufacture a lighter version of myself. The real version shows up just fine. And because I’m not altering my brain chemistry, I feel more in control and more aligned with who I want to be.

Another thing that’s changed is how I view myself as a father. I used to think it was normal to model drinking around my kids, that they should see it so they wouldn’t treat alcohol as forbidden or taboo. But now, with some distance, I see how deeply I bought into the cultural illusion that drinking is a default adult behavior. I don’t want my kids thinking they have to drink to belong or relax or socialize. I want them to see a version of adulthood where presence and comfort with yourself don’t require a substance.

The same is true in my professional life. As a founder and leader, I am sharper, more patient, and more grounded when I’m not drinking. I used to accept the fog and the slight dullness as normal. Now I see how much clarity and capacity alcohol quietly eroded. Removing it feels like removing a layer that I didn’t realize was blocking me.

Looking Ahead

Stopping alcohol hasn’t felt like a sacrifice. It hasn’t even felt like “quitting” in the traditional sense. It feels more like finally seeing something for what it is and choosing not to engage with it anymore. Alcohol wasn’t adding anything meaningful to my life. It was just creating noise, both physically and mentally, and once I understood what it was actually doing to me, I couldn’t convince myself it was worth it.

What lies ahead feels open and exciting. I’m showing up as my truest self - present, clear-headed, emotionally available, and steady. The part of me I spent years trying to access with alcohol was never actually hidden. It just needed space to breathe.

And for the first time in my life, showing up exactly as I am feels not only possible, but genuinely good.

It feels like freedom.

I'm free.