How coincidental this appears on my timeline today, it's my 12th year sober today. I started drinking heavily when I turned 21 and it spiraled until an all day, every day thing. I even had pancreatitis when I was 28 and even when it was obvious why I just refused to see it. One night when I was 30, a drunk family member got into a physical altercation with me and I asked a friend to pick me up so I could leave. On that trip, he simply said "have you ever considered that you might be an alcoholic?" I don't know what was different about this time, but I immediately realized it -- holy shit. I never drank again after that.

Once I quit I immediately was "my old self" again. I got back into playing video games, listening to MY music instead of whatever was palatable to whomever I was drinking with, dedicating all my time and energy into my kids and my nerdy hobbies.

It might come across as silly but, if you have someone close to you who has a drinking problem, it might be worth asking them about it. They probably won't be receptive to it until the time is right, but who knows? Maybe that time is when they ask for a ride from you at 2AM.

Probably the most interesting concept in there was how the author admits that Alcohol was a "net-positive" in life. Which adds a whole different flavor to the article. The decision to stop drinking alcohol takes a different meaning when a person can be intellectually honest about the situation.

I'm personally interested in society's relationship with alcohol now. There has been a huge change over the last decade and I don't think anyone fully understands it. Alcohol consumption is down from what I understand, but so is ALL risk-seeking behavior - which can include things like pursuing romantic relationships and starting businesses. Meanwhile there is a massive downturn in psychological well being.

Does anyone have any unbiased studies on this phenomenon? Has there been a more thorough investigation on the matter?

Three years. You really need to be your own person to handle it, given how alcohol hasn't just permeated the fabric of society, but is the fabric in many situations. For me being available to perform at the top of my game 24/7 is something I enjoy very much e.g. getting a call to do a mercy flight at a moments notice from the island I live on, at night in IMC, knowing it's no problem because I'm sharp - now that's a great feeling.

I think if you're going to go sober, doing something like volunteer fire or another field that lets you feel good about being available 24/7 when others might not be, really helps keep you motivated and appreciate the new state of being. Also just pushing yourself mentally or physically - e.g. training for a marathon or ironman - it lets you actually reap the rewards rather than feel like you've lost something.

Six years sober here.

I guess I'm fortunate, but I have zero interest in anything alcohol related. I don't do NA beers or anything like that. I also don't go out to bars or hang out with those that do drink. It's not that I will feel tempted, I just don't have any interest in drinking. I believe that i was compensating for boredom when I was drinking. Now, if I'm bored at night, I just go to bed. I'm so glad I have no more next morning recalls of obnoxious things I might have said the evening before. My health is better too.

7 months here so the post was an interesting read. I feel like I'm still learning how to function being sober, like what the upcoming holiday season will feel like being sober. I also find myself thinking maybe I can responsibly enjoy alcohol at some point, although deep down I know that isn't true.

What resonated most about the blog post was loss of things I used to do with alcohol. I'm still just avoiding those activities, but I'd love to get to a point where I'm comfortable sitting in a bar without the need for alcohol. In a way, it feels like I'm having to learn how to exist in this alcohol free world.

Man, this brought back memories.

One thing that took me a weirdly long time to figure out was why I was drinking so much.

Turned out it was an injury that had kind of mostly dulled itself out of my perception, but it negatively affected my mood. Booze brought back my happy self. Once I quit, I became moody again. Took a few years and a life change massage that unexpectedly brought back the back pain. I have to regularly get massages but I'm pretty much back to my happy self now.

No booze in almost 12 years (in December).

P.S. For any heavy drinkers, consider finding a better pain management method. Booze is just a crappy medication when used for that purpose.

I am fortunate enough to where alcohol has never been much of a vice for me; I never got to a level that anyone would call me an "alcoholic" though I think I was getting a little close to that after I had a pretty bad breakup when I was 22.

About three years ago I was diagnosed with sleep apnea and decided that that was as good an excuse as any to draw a line in the sand and stop drinking for good. It's not like alcohol is good for me, and I also kind of realized that I only ever enjoyed being drunk about 1/10th of the time. The remaining 9/10th I feel like I either just get really sleepy or really sad.

I had exactly one drink in 2024 during Halloween, but other than that I haven't had anything since September of 2023. I don't really miss it, and quitting alcohol took very little effort on my end. Quitting caffeine on the other hand...

I think this ought to be the goal with any important (but well-defined & bounded) venture in life: own it so thoroughly that it becomes routine, uninteresting, assumed, and boring.

When it has become boring, it no longer consumes brainspace, freeing you to pursue further goals. It effectively has become part of the platform upon which you implement the specifics of your life.

Going on almost 2 years sober here and I don't regret it. I have an NA beer or alcohol-removed wine maybe 1x/every other week or so and it's a much healthier relationship overall, totally agree with the sentiment of "mornings under control"...and just every more so!

Loved this read and perspective.

Been sober myself for about three years now and it wasn’t hardly as difficult as I used to tell myself.

Here’s to another year!

When did "sober" take over from "teetotal" for someone who will long-term abstain from alcohol?

I'm sober right now but won't be tonight when I have a couple of glasses of wine in front of the TV.

i was a heavy drinker. but stopped when i was at the rock bottom of my life. Now ocassionaly may be once in a month i use to drink just to get some cognitive rest.

The biggest advice I can give to someone is that you have to replace the alcohol with something else. For me and a lot of other people it’s weightlifting or running. That’s what I look forward to instead of having a beer. In my specific case I got AllTrails and then made it a goal to “collect” as many different runs as possible by getting a verified complete on those trails. I now have 400+ unique, verified complete trails on my app now.

I am "sober" no idea for how long. Alcohol never was important or a regular thing for me, stopping to use it was just a natural extension from getting an adult

> that Alcohol was a "net-positive"

Statisticly: It may be a net positive in a scenario where you go to a party and drink once and by whatever coincidence meet your special-spouse-partner-for-ever. Then this is counted as net positive as well.

The reality is rather: Alcohol is a HUGE net negative on every layer for every individual etc. And regarding corp drinking by the way: I have never seen any relevant decission that was done drunken at a bar (like painted in all these business bullshit warstories)

And all stuff people tell after the second beer at the corp drinking bar is ALWAYS just pure bullshit, you should rather leave.

Yes, I was also surprised with this narrative because that's exactly how I have treated my drinking years, And I very rarely see this type of honest look back in the community. A lot of self-reflections are either self-flagellating or vilifying alcohol.

I find it very positive for myself to basically look back at any period in my life and be honest about it without re-purposing it into something that it wasn't.

Alcohol was a net-positive in so many ways for me. I talk more about that aspect in the 6 month post here: https://www.bobbytables.io/p/six-months-sober

I have armchair thoughts but would love to see more studies on this. There's no doubt that reduced consumption, taken in isolation, would be a good thing. However, if this is correlated with an increase in social isolation, the benefits would be more complicated.

Seems plain enough to me, we don't feel safe so we aren't taking risks. And we don't feel good because we don't feel safe.

Just going to throw out a follow-up here since I own a bar and work barman to fill shifts from time to time:

Athletic IPA or hazy IPA are my favorite NA beers. Athletic does a spectacular job of NA in general. Also Guiness NA - the can with the blue stripe on top - absolutely delicious. Also Bitburger 0.0% is pretty good. Really don't like Heiniken or the other mainstream beer brands that have checked the NA box.

As far as NA cocktails go I really like anything with Cayenne in it or a bit of spicy or sour. Kombuchas are also great for sipping I find. I must warn against Pathfinder NA spirit - I don't know what they put in it and if you read the ingredients I'm not even sure they know - but I've noticed a mental fuzziness the next day that I don't care for.

Also if you are bar staff and someone orders an NA they may want it in a glass even if you serve cans, so that others don't realize they're not drinking. As a non-drinker it's super nice to be able to stand in a group with a glass of beer without any questions. This works particularly well if it's a trade/industry event where the group doesn't know you and they're all using booze as a social lubricant. I'm a little sneaky in this respect because I'll go to the bar solo, grab myself a NA beer in a glass and I've been in groups where they're exchanging drinking stories and I'm just like "uh, yup, cool man."

If you're curious how one can work bar while being a non-drinker i.e. how do you know what you're serving? In Washington state it's illegal to drink while serving bar, so our team tastes and spits when needed. I do the same - so I'm basically tasting drinks for customers e.g. making sure wine isn't corked, making sure a cocktail is made well - but spitting and after 3 years just have absolutely no inclination or desire to swallow any alcohol anyway. But as I said, any barman in this state has to be a non-drinker on the job so it works out.

I've never found a NA wine I care for. Would be great if an Athletic-like brand emerges in that space. LMK if you're aware of one.

> alcohol hasn't just permeated the fabric of society, but is the fabric in many situations

First, congratulations on three years clean. I respect anyone who can cut things out that they find problematic for them. However, the framing of alcohol as a social necessity isn't really true anymore. Alcohol consumption is in a widely publicized decline and alcohol companies (similar to mobile games in this regard) are aware the majority of their revenue comes from anti-social heavy drinkers. Just about the only circles I'm aware of that still run on booze are college greek life.

"Sober" is commonly used by recovering/recovered alcoholics to mean they are no longer drinking. It implies that they were drinking too much, to the point where intoxication was a semi-permanent state. I've heard the word used this way for decades and I'm pretty sure it goes back farther.

For a causal linguistic reason, my guess is it's because sober is a fairly common word otherwise and is very easily pronounced, whereas teetotal is much weirder to say and has a pretty specific meaning, so one may go a long time without seeing or hearing it enough to really stick.

The etymology is also strange - it originally meant "T-total" abstinence from alcohol as in "total with a capital T". A funny word, we probably could have done better.

I think of “teetotallers” as being vocal about their abstaining, some to the point of strident abolitionism. Whereas my “sober” friends seem to speak of that more as a personal condition than a zealous cause.

I’ve gotten the sense from twelve-step types of friends that, for them, the “sober” sobriquet goes along with this idea that an alcoholic is never “cured”: that sobriety is always contingent, and that they’re always one drink away from sliding back to “a drunk” again.

I'm sober, both in the immediate sense and in the sense that I haven't had a drink in 23 years. I know that drinking is not a good thing for me, for many reasons.

If you want to go home and have a beer or whatever - have a good time. If you want to go to the bar later and have a drink - maybe I'll go with you and sip a fancy mocktail or something, we can take turns buying rounds. If you want to get wasted and party all night - have fun, I had a lot of fun nights that way (please don't drive though).

I'm not opposed to anyone else's drinking. I just know I can't.

Teetotal implies an opposition to all alcohol use. A teetotaler is against you drinking. I'm not opposed to that at all, I just choose for myself to be sober, for a myriad of personal reasons.

"Sober" in this context means "having overcome a dangerous alcohol habit/addiction". Pretty standard alcoholic terminology. Furthermore, much as they might enjoy a drink, alcoholics who have "gone sober" MUST abstain, as alcoholism is seen as lifelong once acquired and the risk of lapsing into self-destructive behavior is too great after even just one drink.

"Teetotaler" usually refers to a person who abstains from alcohol on general principles (does not like the effects, taste, thinks it's a moral vice, etc.).

sober simply means "not drunk", so using it for "haven't been drunk for X amount of time" isn't that extraordinary

and looking at google ngram, teetotal is just a much rarer word out of the two (like 100x), so it's just more likely to not get transmitted down the generations (I certainly do not know how to use it)