Is this thing on?

You're here for a reason.

I was shocked to learn I wasn’t the only person that woke up between 2-4 am every morning, unable to get back to sleep, feeling generally anxious about what the hell my life had (is) become(ing).

(Of course, I’m a full-time idiot, so why not just grab my phone and let the blue light burn a digital sunrise into my mind and solidify this unscheduled wakeup?)

Did you know it’s alcohol waking you up? I had no idea… I just figured it was my bad luck, or stress, or getting older, or all of the above. Not the case though, turns out it was alcohol, and I found out by reading a book about quitting drinking for 30 days.

At this point you’re wondering “Well how the hell much did you drink, Nick?”

Well, if you had asked me that a little over a year ago, I would have given you the soft lie, the downgraded answer, the socially palatable answer: “ehhh, a couple beers or so.” If you’re like me, you’ve probably tried to hide or at least obfuscate your drinking quantities, habits, patterns. Or, if you’re also like me, you simply unabashedly celebrate how much you drink. Or, perhaps you’re like me, and you’ve looked at the criteria for Alcohol Use Disorder and fudged enough answers to say you don’t have a problem. Depended on the day with me.

You see, there’s an interesting thing about alcohol (ok, most things in life): there is always someone worse off than you. Someone who drinks more, way more, maybe screws up their life in unforgivable ways, and is in your mind, an “alcoholic.” But you’re not that because you have your act together. Good job (ok, it pays well enough), functioning family (ok, that’s a stretch no matter what), you exercise (a bit) and have friends (who you like to drink with). Your life isn’t impeded by alcohol, but rather, enriched by it.

No, I get it. That was me.

But I didn’t answer your question about how much I drank, and here’s where it all starts to get real. Where I admit to you, dear internet friend, and write in digitally permanent ink who I am and who I was. But my goal in this whole thing is to help inspire others to quit, and I’ve personally found inspiration in reading the stories of others who quit. So, it’s my turn to ante up.

I drank alcohol most nights of the week for a number of years (more than 5, less than 10). I drank 3 or 4 beers (loved the IPAs) and maybe a shot here or there. I would get buzzed, but never sloppy. I planned a lot of events around drinking. I drank to celebrate, I drank to commiserate, I drank because I was bored, and I drank because I wasn’t bored. I liked to drink on an empty stomach to get a quicker buzz. I liked to drink alone and I liked to drink with others. You probably never would have guessed I had a problem, because hell, I couldn’t even guess it (ok, some people probably did think it and just never told me). Almost sounds like a damn Chumbawamba song. Only in the rearview mirror do I now see how much of a problem it was.

Make no mistake, alcohol has altered your brain chemistry and stacked the odds against you quitting. Quitting drinking can be one of the toughest things you’ll ever do.

But it’s been over a year since I had alcohol. And the benefits have been phenomenal, truly. My goal in these posts is to describe my journey, encourage you to quit drinking, and put myself out there as hopefully a beacon in the dark for you. I’ll also share what, retrospectively, must have been some subconscious training by sharing shocking research about how bad alcohol is for you (funny how that doesn’t make the front page). But I also want to share the highlights, the positive research around quitting, the things that made a big difference for me, and the stories about what you might face when you undertake this journey.

My goal is to help you get back to that place in life where living feels electric, full of possibility, deeply connected, overwhelmingly beautiful, and soft around the edges. To dispel the fear of thinking you’ll end up as the death of the party, or walk around with a stick up your butt because you don’t drink. Yeah… my goal is to make you think and laugh.