How I Gave Up Drinking Without Giving Up Drinking

A contrarian approach to sobriety

Hi, I’m JJ and I’m an alcoholic.

Whatever the hell that means…

I don’t like labels. Much the same way as I find little meaning in the political dichotomy of left and right, absolute terms like ‘alcoholic’ or even ‘addict’ annoy me because they fail to address the multiple variables in individual circumstances that come together to constitute causation.

Instead, labels like ‘alcoholic’ attribute problematic behaviour to some mysterious immutable malfunction; some genetic abnormality that renders the subject forever afflicted, and bound to a chaste existence of pious abstinence, lest he fall once more into the black abyss, never again to emerge.

This is the wisdom of Alcoholics Anonymous – held as gospel and imparted to the new initiate in earnest tones that always fall just short of sanctimonious: You are not like other people. You have a disease that cannot be cured, and we have the answer.

I must stress that I have only utmost admiration for the fellowship of AA and its many offshoots – the work that is done in these groups and the lives that have been saved is nothing short of miraculous. If asked whether I would recommend AA as an option for someone struggling with the bottle, I would answer unequivocally yes every time.

I myself have attended a handful of meetings. Most of these were as the invitee of a friend who had opted for the path of total abstinence and seen his own struggle reflected in my behaviour. I found much to be inspired about in these meetings, but there was also a dogmatic overtone that offended my contrarian nature.

A therapist once told me that I did not fit the clinical definition of alcoholic because I was able to go for many days at a stretch without a drink. At the time I was ‘living my best life’, enthralled in my own hedonistic pantomime. My marketing job afforded me ample opportunity for workday boozing, indeed my boss at the time was an old adman with a nine-bottle-a-day wine habit whom I both looked up to and consciously emulated.

So cavalier was my drinking that I would often show up to my therapy sessions half drunk, and I would sit there rhapsodising about my life and my problems feeling very cinematic and ironic, while my poor therapist tried not to be too judgemental – after all I was paying her $180 per hour. And indeed, I thought, why shouldn’t I drink before therapy? I’m paying good money to be here. And anyway, it loosens me up and helps me articulate myself.

Perhaps what I needed to hear from her at that time in my life was that I was indeed an alcoholic, for I clearly remember feeling vindicated by her diagnosis. If I didn’t fit the clinical definition, then obviously there was nothing to worry about. And I continued to drink with a ravenous passion for the next six years.

This is why I don’t like labels. Just as the colloquial label of ‘alcoholic’ can oversimplify a complex physiological and psychological issue, and ascribe a blunt, permanent solution without regard to nuance, the clinical label of ‘alcoholic’ can be too narrow and thus fail to diagnose a serious issue, such as the one I was clearly manifesting.

The point was that I had a drinking problem, and it was getting worse. But realistically, no label, whether ascribed by friend or clinical professional was going to change my ways – I was a committed drinker and I wasn’t going to be told what to do.

Ironically it is this same pigheadedness that eventually furnished me with a means to control my drinking problem. Having reached rock bottom in late 2019 (another story for another day) I knew I had to do something. But I also knew a few things about myself and the nature of my addictions. One of the few benefits of being such a self-indulgent drunk as I was, is that you tend to study your own behaviour closely as you might a compellingly flawed fictional character in a book or movie. In doing so I had worked out the following key truths about myself (these are the nuances I mentioned above):

1. I tend toward extremes, not just with alcohol, but anything that produces a dopamine hit – drugs, food, sex, you name it. But this was also true of activities like exercise and creative expression. My problem was not that I was specifically ‘alcoholic’ but that my brain was overly fond of the dopamine response.

2. I am usually able to effectively control my dopamine-based urges when they lead to bad outcomes, and also to effectively channel the urge toward positive behaviour. For instance: I successfully quit smoking cold turkey at age 25, and I dropped over 20kg from my peak weight and learned how to control my food intake while simultaneously finding great pleasure in taking up running.

I knew I was capable of controlling my urges, so why had I gotten to a point where I was drinking before work in the morning and downing a bottle of wine at lunchtime? Simple: I had not admitted to myself that it was a real problem.

There is nothing profound or original in this first step toward recovery that I have just identified. Everyone knows that admitting one has a problem is where every journey of healing must begin. Without this crucial ingredient, nothing can change.

I did not experience this realisation in a blinding instant of enlightenment – it was more of a gently creeping certainty that solidified over the course of a few months, and was helped in no small part by my AOD counsellor at the time, Fran – a wonderful woman to whom I owe a great deal. But nevertheless, once in possession of this certainty, I was able to formulate a plan.

Here my contrarian pigheadedness asserted itself – for one, because I simply do not like being expected to operate within a prescribed doctrine, but also because I already knew that it wasn’t the alcohol per se that was the problem, but rather my failure to address this particular addictive behaviour. Logic dictated that now I had admitted it was a problem, it was likely I could control it as I did my other compulsive behaviours such as eating and smoking.

I began by setting a goal: I would surpass my longest ever sober stint, which had been an ‘Abstinent April’ in 2017. That was it – at least 31 days sober. Then I would take stock and see if I could drink for a weekend before resuming my sobriety for another extended period.

I did 33 days sober and then I got drunk for two days. I then required a further two days of moderate consumption to wean myself back to sobriety. At the end of this four-day planned relapse, I had a few key learnings:

1. The sense of achievement (dopamine) I received from achieving my longest ever sober stint outweighed the sense of release and reward I got from the booze I consumed that weekend.

2. When I started drinking again things at home got worse – my girlfriend and I were at each other’s throats.

3. I found myself gladly anticipating my next sober stint – how long could I go this time? 40 days? Even longer?

I did 38 days and then spent just two days indulging my old friend the gin bottle. The reason I know these numbers two years later is because I wrote them down. I got myself a calendar and put a big checkmark on each day that represented 24 hours without alcohol passing my lips. This daily logging system is something I have maintained to this day, and I believe is one of the crucial factors in my ongoing success in controlling my drinking.

I have been ruthlessly honest when logging my drinking days – even one sip of beer would constitute a cross on the calendar date instead of a check. I have found that this level of scrutiny reinforces the resolve not to drink. There is of course flipside to this in that if a lapse does occur then there is little motivation to stop drinking for that entire day, but on balance I find the system provides a net benefit.

Another benefit of logging my daily progress is what marketers call ‘gamification’. Much as one is motivated to keep playing a computer game or a slot machine because of the flashing lights, dings, pings, and accumulating points tally, one is motivated to maintain a sober stint when reviewing the calendar daily, and more importantly, to surpass the last one.

This has driven me to strive for longer periods of sobriety throughout the year and I have found myself prioritising these to the point where I have either opted out of certain social engagements in favour of maintaining my streak, or indeed, the holy grail of sobriety – attending said function without drinking.

I now have a spreadsheet, as well as a physical calendar, that I use each day to log my progress, and thus I’ve been able to plot my various sober stints against the subsequent periods of daily drinking on the following graph:

As you can see, the reopening of the world in early 2022 after two years of covid hysteria, and the attendant flurry of travel and social engagements, put quite a dent in my hitherto steady progress. And despite my unequivocal disdain for the lockdowns and the bad actors who propagated them, the opportunity to stay home and do nothing without getting FOMO that this downtime provided was of immense help to me in the initial stages of my recovery. The challenge I would face upon resumption of regular life post-lockdown was not something I had adequately prepared myself for, as you can see reflected in the 2022 segment of the graph. But I have since come back stronger and achieved my longest run to date of 80 days, or at least I will have on 9 July 2022 – for the last bar on the graph is a projection, but one I make with 100% confidence.

Herein lies the strength of my system – I am now able to make such projections because I am so invested in my ongoing project, that not meeting this next target is simply not an option. To have a drink before this date (at which time an old friend from out of town is coming to stay, and I’ve decided this calls for a little party) would be tantamount to a complete betrayal of myself.

Following my friend’s visit, I plan on a further sober period of six weeks before going on an overseas holiday. When I return from that holiday, I will then look to surpass my previous 80-day run. And so on.

Another useful aspect of my spreadsheet of sobriety is that it allows me to extract useful longitudinal information such as the percentage of the year that I spent sober. For instance, in 2021, there were 301 out of 365 days where I did not touch a drop of booze, or 82.47% of the year. I aim to beat this in 2022. It’ll be tight due to my sketchy start, but I think I can clear last year’s total by a couple of percentage points.

I am also able to examine common problem periods, such as Christmas/New Year’s. In the 2020-2021 period I drank for 31 consecutive days. The following Christmas I was determined to significantly cut this down, and I managed to reduce my festive stint to 17 days.

There are of course myriad factors, both intrinsic to sobriety and in the form of fringe benefits that hugely reinforce and motivate this ongoing effort, things like increased productivity, better sleep, a more harmonious home-life, and more money in my pocket, but these are all topics for another day, as my purpose here today is to discuss the basic mechanics of my current sobriety system.

It is ironic that this system is fuelled by the same two factors that made me such a terrible drinker: My stubborn refusal to do things the way others have prescribed, and my partiality to a good whack of dopamine. My pigheadedness compelled me to find a tailor-made way forward that did not demand permanent abstinence – because let’s face it, drinking is fun! And my tendency to chase the reward hit of dopamine has enslaved me to the recurring sense of achievement I get when I one-up myself on my sobriety goals.

Is my system perfect? Of course not. Is it a substitute for the benefits of total sobriety? No – there have been and will continue to be times when I have behaved badly and done things I’ve regretted while drunk; crucially though the frequency of these events has been minimised whereas it used to be a weekly, and often daily occurrence. Will this system work for everyone the way it is working for me? I doubt it, for people are nuanced – as I pointed out earlier, there’s no such singular thing as an ‘alcoholic’, just people with varying predispositions toward chemical dependency. But if it is working for me, I find it probable that others could benefit from it too.

Perhaps the most crucial question is – will my system work for me long term?

While I can say with certainty that I won’t be having my next drink until July 9, I can’t answer this question. All our futures are unknown. All we can do is to intimately know ourselves, be cognisant of the many variables we are likely to encounter, and plan accordingly. And that’s essentially what my system has evolved into – a planning matrix. It is a means by which I can ensure my goals are achieved while still allowing myself the luxury of an indulgent weekend or holiday from time to time. Importantly though, the goals come first.

This was not always the case, and were I to plot another graph for the preceding decade using the same criteria, the ratio would easily be inverted, and then some. And it is when I picture this inversion that I know I have achieved something remarkable here.

Again, I stress that this is not a sobriety story as we have commonly come to know them in our culture, and I expect many AA stalwarts would look down on my claims here as the frenetic hubris of an addict who cannot fully admit to his problem. I would respectfully disagree, while reiterating once more that if you or someone you know are battling a drinking problem, then an AA meeting is a great place to start.

But what I’m doing appears to be working for me at the moment. I have changed my life immeasurably. This may change again in the future – but such is life. It is a work in progress; a process of trial, error, and constant recalibration. And this is the final and perhaps most important aspect of my sobriety system – it is not static, but geared toward constant incremental improvement. If I achieved 82.47% sobriety last year then I’m aiming for 85% this year, and 87% the year after. In turn, this imperative motivates me to restrict my periods of indulgence to a few days, rather than a week or two because every day’s sobriety counts toward that tiny shift of the needle.

I am of course aware that theoretically I will one day reach a threshold beyond which no further improvement is possible. This could mean I find that 36 out of 365 days is the minimum number of drinking days I need – or 90% sobriety for the year. Or it could even mean I reach 100%, for it is indeed true that the longer I do this, the more I find to enjoy about being sober, and the greater value I place on each day free from hangover, and the tremendous opportunity each of these affords me for growth and creation.

It could, of course, go in the other direction. As such I do not take anything for granted and am perfectly happy to call myself an alcoholic if that simplifies things for people.

But I don’t like labels, and I don’t like to take absolute positions on things. As Ozzy Osbourne once said when asked by a reporter if he was sober: ‘I’m sober today.’

I could add an appendix to that statement: ‘And it’s been 55 days since my last drink.’ But we’ve already covered all that, so let’s just end where we started – with a simple declarative statement: I’m JJ and I’m an alcoholic.

But if that’s true then so is this: I’m JJ, and I don’t drink.