Getting (and Staying) Sober
25 May 2025I quit drinking at 21, and so far I’m glad I did. I’ve managed (for the most part) to stay sober since then, and I haven’t found any compelling reason to go back. This is the story of how I got sober. My intention here is not to preach. I will not be drawing the conclusion that everybody else should get sober too, nor will I be advocating for the wholesale ban of alcohol. If somebody chooses sobriety because of this post, great; if not, I’m no worse off. I do, however, hope that this piece demonstrates that there is some value in asking the question “is this worth continuing?”
The Long, Long Road to Sobriety
I started drinking when I was 16, probably. I don’t have a single memory that sticks out as my first time being drunk, or my first beer, or my first blackout. Precision isn’t important. There were parties in basements, cheap beer, and (awful) flavored vodka. When I drank, I drank heavily, but generally no more than my peers. My experience was, I think, typical for the Midwest suburban teenager.
That’s not to say that there weren’t early warning signs that alcohol was not right thing for me. For one thing, after a party was over I still wanted more. It wasn’t enough to already be drunk, I felt a compulsion to keep going. Usually I’d grab a beer or two on my way out from the party and drink it in the Uber home. Sometimes I’d steal a shot or four of Bailey’s from my parents’ liquor cabinet. There always had to be something extra.
Sometimes I pushed myself beyond my limits. I remember one occasion where I drank far too much “America-flavored” Svedka (a truly horrible beverage), came home, vacated my stomach all over my room, and passed out on the floor. The next morning I was booked by the authorities (Mom and Dad), who made the astute observation that it was not normal for their 17-year-old son to be cleaning his room at 6 AM. I was grounded and sent to pull weeds, though there was no worse punishment than what my body was already inflicting on me. At that point I should have thought “Maybe I shouldn’t drink that much ever again.” Instead, the lesson I learned was “The next time I drink that much I’m gonna need to pace myself better.”
Similar hangovers taught me similar lessons, and by the time I got to college I was a professional. I always had a meal before I went out drinking, if I was going on a bender I (mostly) stuck to beer, and I kept my fridge stocked with Pedialyte for the morning after. Still, college was a different beast: socially, emotionally, and alcoholically. I went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an excellent school in the middle of the most alcoholic state in the Union. Drinking was the social scene. I was either out at bars or at the fraternity house every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Alcohol in Madison was also dirt cheap. Plenty of bars ran specials where one could get a beer for less than a dollar.
I struggled with the adjustment to college. UW-Madison was the first place I felt unrestricted in what I could pursue with my life, and it was overwhelming. Also, I had had good friends in high school, who remain good friends to this day. I felt isolated starting from zero on campus. I found myself with less structure, and put a lot of unnecessary pressure on myself. Being in a fraternity at Wisconsin, there wasn’t much of an outlet to reduce stress besides drinking. I always got my work done before I went out, but I used that as an excuse to drink to excess whenever I went out. I can probably count on one hand the number of days that I went out, had three or less drinks, and went home. This led to some pretty severe emotional dysregulation. Sunday afternoon through Thursday afternoon was a sprint to finish all my coursework and readings, Thursday evening through Sunday morning was a bender.
By the end of my freshman year, I was a wreck. I had taken a sales internship in Madison for the summer, but I only made it halfway through. I was so wracked with anxiety that I was drinking a six pack of PBR every day after work just to stop my heart from racing. By the time July rolled around all I could manage to do after work was crawl into bed and watch hours of Penn and Teller’s “Fool Us”. I still stand by that show as a treatment for acute anxiety, by the way. It’s really hard to focus on panicking when a guy is making a card appear in some guy’s wallet in the audience.
Independence day weekend something broke. My brother was driving me back from a weekend with my family and my hands went numb, my heart was racing and there was a sharp pain in my chest. I had him drop me off at the hospital, where they cleared me as (physically) healthy. I went home and hoped I would feel better the next day.
I didn’t. Anytime I was upright I was panicking. I got lucky that weekend that some of the aforementioned good friends from high school came up to visit me that day and immediately noticed something was off. They took me to the hospital for the second time in as many days, where I was given enough Lorazepam to sedate a horse, plus a month’s supply to take home. I quit my internship, moved back in with my parents, and started the long process to functioning like a normal human again.
I was given a prescription for antidepressants, and started to see a therapist weekly. I was ready to go back to school in September, having been dutifully taking my medication and avoiding destabilizing influences. But the Badger State wore me down. By the end of that first semester of sophomore year I was drinking again, then in the spring of my sophomore year COVID sent me back home. This period was characterized by slightly more moderate drinking than my freshman year, though the entire pandemic period has become somewhat muddled in my memory.
Junior year wasn’t much better than freshman year. The campus social scene was restricted thanks to the pandemic, and I wasn’t doing much to get out of the house. I was on and off my antidepressants at random intervals, and I was again struggling mentally. One night in March, I went out with a friend to watch a UFC match. My original intent was to go watch the match and go home for an early night in. Unsurprisingly that plan fell through and I ended up closing down the bars. I drank somewhere between one and three gallons of vodka Red Bull, smoked at least a pack of Parliaments, and by dawn I was in a hotel hot tub on the East side of Madison taking tequila shots.
Which, now that I write it out, sounds like a pretty fun night. Unfortunately for me, there were consequences to having that much fun. When I got back to my apartment I had a panic attack. I walked about two miles across town to the same ER I had been in two years earlier. Predictably they told me to go home and take my anxiety medication. I made it about half a block down the street before I broke down in thick, frenetic sobs. Years of conflict between my psyche, my body, and my relationship to alcohol all came out at once. All the tension, all the confusion, all the shame and helplessness just poured out of me. I didn’t know what to do anymore. I don’t remember how I got home. I remember taking a Lorazepam, sleeping until 8 PM, taking another Lorazepam, and waking up the next morning in another panic.
My mental state was a complete mess. Totally wild and uncontrolled thoughts, like a Jackson Pollock in my frontal lobe. I was coming off of almost twenty-four hours of benzo sedation combined with the tail end of a two day hangover and withdrawal from my antidepressants, which I hadn’t taken in at least two days. Again, I got lucky. There was already an appointment scheduled with my therapist that day. I felt like I had hit rock bottom. My therapist reminded me that rock bottom is a casket. I don’t remember what else we talked about the rest of the session, but I do remember feeling like everything was going to be okay. I knew that drinking wasn’t right for me, and I was ready to quit.
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Getting Sober for Dummies
The first step to getting sober is identifying your favorite flavor of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. This takes time. My first week of sobriety I ate a pint of Ben & Jerry’s every day. I also dropped five pounds. Turns out beer is a lot of calories. Some purists might say that you shouldn’t replace one bad habit with another. To them I offer a simple thought experiment. Suppose that you want to quit drinking, but the only thing that keeps you from drinking is smoking cigarettes. The cigarettes will kill you by 60, but the booze will kill you by 45. Maybe in an ideal world where quitting drinking cold turkey is feasible, you live to 75. Given that the actual world is not ideal, and so the world where you quit cold turkey isn’t accessible, the better option is the one that kills you at 60.
The second step is to find a way to keep busy. I did this with a computer equipped with two monitors and an arcade racing wheel. Every night, I sat down, ate my pint of Half Baked, and completed lap after lap after lap of the Nürburgring-Nordschleife while watching The Boondocks. I gave my mind absolutely no room to wander. Weed also helped. I ended up quitting the green stuff later on, but that’s a much less interesting story for another day.
In the end it wasn’t that hard to break the habit. I was, at that time, acutely aware of the negative effect that drinking had had on me, and alcohol had very quickly become unappealing. I viewed (and still view) the process of sobriety as the process of, every minute, every hour, every day, making a choice to drink or not to drink. Because I knew how terrible the effects of alcohol could be on me, the choice was easy. The rest of college I didn’t touch alcohol once.
There seems to be an idea out there in the culture that getting sober means making some divine pronouncement that one is done with one’s bad habits, and swearing them off forever. After making that grand gesture, the temptation just melts away and the addict never has to worry about their addiction again. If one takes this path, then a perverse logic can take hold. “I’ve overcome my addiction, therefore I don’t have to worry about it. If I don’t have to worry about my addiction, then I can [insert addictive habit here] again without any problems.” This, of course, can lead to ruin.
Instead, I have found it much more useful to keep in mind the following truth: it’s possible that I will drink again. Someone could kidnap me and force whiskey down my throat. I could mistake an alcoholic beverage for a non-alcoholic one. I could just have a bad day and decide to buy a bottle of rum. In fact, I did drink again after college. I’m never sure whether to count it as a relapse or just write it off, because (unlike a traditional relapse) it was a thoroughly considered decision. I talked with my doctor, with my therapist, and with my friends, and decided to try drinking again to see if it would feel any different now that I had graduated. I didn’t go on any major benders (except one excellent night in Sheboygan), but I found after a couple months with booze that the preceding fifteen months without it caused me to lose my taste for the juice. I haven’t had any alcohol since approximately August of 2022.
I don’t keep track of the exact number of days of sobriety, nor do I celebrate milestones. It doesn’t matter how long I’ve been sober, any day could be the day I decide to throw it all away. Sobriety, for me at least, requires vigilance towards one’s surroundings, dispositions, and decisions. That’s not to say it hasn’t gotten easier. At first it was a manual process, I had to be very careful about the situations I placed myself in and my behavior in those situations. Four or so years in, the process has become pretty automatic. That’s not to say I’m not careful, it’s just that being careful has become a habit.
The Bigger Picture
I’m not an expert on addiction or sobriety by any means. I can’t tell you whether or not getting sober is right for you. Ultimately, if it is, that’s a decision you have to make for yourself. I said at the start, I’m not here to preach. I will, however, make the case for asking the question “is this worth continuing?”. It’s very easy for a habit to get out of control. I started drinking, save for some very early red flags, in the same environment and in the same pattern as many others in America do. I learned rather quickly that I cannot sustain a healthy relationship with alcohol. It was only after seriously asking the question “is this worth continuing?” that I was able to make the necessary changes to better my life. Most habits will likely be worth continuing, some habits might not be, and if they aren’t worth continuing, then maybe it’s time to pick up some Ben & Jerry’s. Unless the negative habit is Ben & Jerry’s, in which case, I don’t know, start smoking cigarettes.
I’ve come to accept that I’m part of a relatively small subset of the population for whom a healthy relationship with alcohol is just not feasible. It might be nice to go out and share a beer with colleagues now and then, or to have wine with dinner here and there, but I just can’t handle it. Most people will probably find that their habits don’t have the sort of extreme effects on them as alcohol has had on me. If that’s the case, then so much the better for you.
If, however, something in my story has struck a chord, something about my experience resonates with you in a deep and significant way, and you feel there’s a decision coming that you don’t want to make, remember:
Rock bottom is a casket.