#20 The Drinker

I used to love her

Well well well… what do we have here? A total change of identity?! In July of 2023, I got an Oura ring. Almost immediately, it informed me that drinking wine was bad for my sleep. So I started to experiment with not drinking wine. My sleep improved.

And thus began my journey of no longer drinking alcohol.

First let me say that if you had asked me three years ago if I’d consider myself a nearly non-drinker I would have laughed so uproariously that the scotch in my glass would have sloshed out a bit.

After my initial realization that drinking wasn’t super good for my sleep, I cut back significantly, maybe having just a few drinks a month. Then something funny started happening. Something so chilling that I want to say it in a whisper, just to be safe: (whispers) I stopped liking the taste of wine.

OMG who said that?!

But it was true. Something about it just didn’t taste right. And I’m not a simple woman who is content with regular things, and who has never flown to Paris for a long weekend just to go shopping—despite what you may believe. Needless to say, I was drinking nice wine. Wine that you would normally swirl in your glass while making a pondering face. And it just wasn’t cutting it. Luckily, champagne still tasted good so on the more and more rare occasions where I would imbibe, I’d order a glass of champagne and call it a day.

Even then, I wouldn’t have said I wasn’t a drinker.

Then in July of 2024, my man and I decided to do 75 Hard. I don’t normally do things that random men on the world wide web tell me to do, but it seemed like a fun challenge. For those of you who don’t know, 75 Hard consists of (you guessed it) 75 days of: no drinking alcohol, doing something with your diet, working out twice a day for 45 minutes each (with one workout needing to be outside), and drinking a gallon of water a day. So from July to September I had no adult beverages.

When I was done with 75 Hard (due to my inability to do math, we actually did a 78 Hard, but no matter), I simply had no desire to pick up drinking again.

I had a martini on my birthday in December, and was unwell for three days afterward. Then I had a sip of champagne in February, which was fine. But that was it.

I’m not writing a no drinking manifesto here, but I will say that my life hasn’t really changed in the ways I thought it would. I’ve gone to a destination wedding at an all inclusive resort and didn’t drink. I regularly meet friends for dinner and order mocktails, or just drink water (turns out, you can totally just drink water with dinner!). When I’m craving the crispness of a beer, I’ll order an NA one and call it good.

I’m not a different person. I sleep better, yes. I’m clear-headed, yes. But the biggest thing for me has been what I think it is for most people who are sober-curious: what is my identity without alcohol? It’s a shocking question to even feel the need to ask yourself, right? Because the truth is that if you’re asking, the answers are likely to require you to take a different, less comfortable path. That was true for me. Now that I’m nearly two years into this low to no drinking experiment, I’m just a person who doesn’t really drink but that doesn’t always turn down an edible. I’m not some sober bastion just out here raw-dogging reality.

That being said, I don’t see myself going back. I just don’t like the way alcohol feels in my body. Like I’m wearing a too-tight pair of jeans and heels over two inches, it’s just not for me at this stage of my life.