11 Things I Learned When I Stopped Drinking

I didn’t realize how hard it would be to stop drinking. I had even taken a month off in January 2014, just 12 months earlier, but it was much harder this time around.

I don’t think drinking had been a major problem for me, but it certainly wasn’t helping. Since I’m always testing new things and experimenting to see what will help me, I wanted to see what not drinking would do.

In New York it’s hard not to drink. Almost everyone drinks. Most people in NYC use drinking as the primary activity when getting together. When you are celebrating a promotion at work, it’s common to go out for drinks. When you’re feeling somber because you just got dumped, it’s common to go out for drinks with your friends. When you’re enjoying an exciting evening out, drinking is the default.

I found myself drinking about 4 nights a week. Not a lot of drinks each night, just a few.

Some nights I would drink a lot and it would make the following day unproductive. Sometimes on the weekends I would stay up really late drinking and it would throw off my sleep schedule the next week.

We learn from a young age that drinking kills brain cells. But once we start to do it, we realize how fun it is so we forget, or ignore, the fact that it’s actually bad for us.