On Why I'm Quitting Alcohol

Essay 52

Something that’s been on my mind all through January, a vague plan, to quit drinking even a little, not even a drop, to stop, and here’s why:

1. Because I’ve stopped believing in the lifestyle advertising of alcohol, that it would be gastronomically distinguished, or mixologically refined, the natural heritage, the whatever grape, the support of the small business, it’s a lie.

2. Because you can see it in people’s faces as they get older, and I am getting older.

3. Because quitting alcohol is the cheapest, fastest, simplest way to acquire a major superpower and make my life drastically better.

4. Because I’ve recently seen people I respect drunk for the first time and not in the least at their best; in fact I’ve never seen anyone improved by drink, ever.

5. Because two drinks in I get melancholic, three I start crying, at night I have nightmares and sleep lightly or not at all, and the next day I’m depressed or sick or both—I don’t think I’ve ever had any alcohol tolerance, I just used to smoke cigarettes and that helped.

6. Because drinking makes me want to smoke cigarettes; it makes me accept (but not like) bad food and bad sex.

7. Because it’s an expensive way to make myself unhealthy, sad, and fat, and to embarrass myself, or feel that I do, in public.

8. Because we drink to soften life’s regrets but most of my bad memories from adulthood involve drinking—the rages, the heartbreaks, the slumps; because drinking promises to ease the pain over what’s lost but I’ve lost things in my life because I or someone I was with was drunk.

9. Because this will be a great way for me to filter friends and lovers better—does it still work sober, are we having fun with the lights on… can you live with remembering me to the fullest?

10. Because I’m curious to see what happens if I do.

I’m sharing this in case this is you.