I Quit Booze. It Was the Right Choice. I Have No Idea How to Handle the Other Part. (2024)

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Dear A.J.,

I have nine months of no booze and it’s as promised—slightly better for the body, heaps better for the emotional stability, but hard to know how to not long for the community of so many people I must now forgo … my tribe: the Malbec-swigging, patio-sitting, afternoon-nap-taking tribe. I suppose I could do the last two actions. I guess my question is, HOW LONG will this longing go on?

Please lie to me. Kindly.

—Swigless in San Diego

Dear Swigless,

Malbec or no Malbec: Either choice requires an agonizing amount of longing, I’m afraid. I attempted to stop drinking—or stop drinking destructively—for close to 15 years. I tried to moderate in various different ways. You know—“only drink beer,” or “only drink wine,” or “never do Fireball shots before noon”—before I finally realized that the only thing that would work for me was total abstinence. If I keep going, I’ll have a full eight years sober on July 15.

I can tell you that, for me, the desire to drink has all but disappeared. But I still find myself, in the oddest moments, longing for the sense of ease and contentment that came from sitting inside a bar for many hours, only to go to another for after-hours, only to go to someone’s place for after-after-hours, wherein we might pass a plate of drugs around until it’s time to walk out into some version of the morning, one that will surely be unwelcome, because it will force me to scramble together an excuse to whomever I have disappointed or betrayed. (“Sorry, my phone died,” et cetera.)

Recently, I was sitting on a flimsy piece of outdoor furniture in a small community theater awaiting my 6-year-old’s music recital. It was an early afternoon on a Saturday and they had a cooler full of White Claws and numerous other cans of carbonated tequila-infused blackberry-cider-rita monstrosities. I didn’t want to drink anything boozy and instead opted for four of those crackly plastic water bottles (sorry, Earth) and felt fine.

And yet—I’d worn a heavy fisherman’s sweater on an almost 80-degree day. It’san outfit I’d often wear during my maddening sleepless hangover days. I even dug around the pockets to make sure a mangled plastic baggie was still floating around in there. It was (empty).

Still, I experienced a tense thrill, and then out of nowhere: The Longing. I imagined a late night somewhere shady, hanging out until the only place to go was someplace shadier (like Drawing Room), and then, as I still worked a vodka tonic, the sun daggering in. Oh, no, I’d think. What will tell my wife? “My phone died.” Now I must die, too.

But, nope. I was sober, up early, and at the recital clearheaded, clear-hearted, and clean-conscienced. My boy played “Seven Nation Army” on the drums and he hit the ride cymbal so hard I’m sure he bent it. I was filled with gratitude and love—two things that never existed in my life before I stopped drinking.

I’d like to commend you for making it asfar as you have on your own journey. You’re right: The Longing doesn’t go away.Four days,9 months, 40 years—it’s all the same when it’s reduced down to the 24-hour increments most people associate with sobriety. I don’t know if you’re doing 12-step work (and I’m not here to recommend you go that route), but I do think it’s important for you to drill down what you want from abstinence: the same life with less headaches or heartaches, or a completely different one, filled with deeper relationships and new adventures. (New headaches and heartaches, too, but at least there will be that oft-elusive clarity.)

While we’re here recalibrating ourselves, Swigless, let me ask you a couple questions that may help you remember why you stopped swigging to begin with:

• Do you miss the mornings full of regret and sweat and a black tongue?

• Have you ever lost your credit card and had to wait all day until the bars reopened to see if you left it at one of the several you went to?

• Have you ever wet yourself on the stairwell in your apartment complex, or soiled yourself while your partner cooked you dinner at home?

• Have you woken up with swollen ankles, or dried vomit in your beard?

I’m asking these questions to you, as a friend, because all of those things happened to me within the last three months of my drinking. I pray it didn’t come to those things for you. But there are reasons you stopped drinking, reasons that have pushed you to make it this far. Make a list of your specifics—the things your swigless life no longer includes.

That list will be a tool, not a miracle salve. Not drinking will still be hard sometimes. So my final, most important question for you, dear, dear Swigless, is this: Can you fight through the longing? Because I can attest that there is magic on the other side of that longing and that is where you’ll find your path. Perhaps your snoozy Malbec patio tribe will no longer feel like the only people on Earth who got you the way you want to be gotten.

For me, I’ve always been in search of a tribe even though I’m not at all a tribe person. Where is the tribe for people who find the idea of tribes corny and soulless? I want to join the Anti-Tribe Tribe. That is my tribe and perhaps it is yours. Instead of Malbec, me and you will now drink the blood of our enemies on a patio in hell. (I’m kidding, obviously. But I mention this option only to assure you that there will be incredible opportunities to socialize with others you feel a kinship and ease with.)

You are, in spite of the Longing, on the right course. The truth is that nine months is a short amount of time for you to figure out who you are now,and what is good about that person and that life, now that there’s no more of your usual drunken hangouts to go to. It’s gonna take whatever amount of time you have left on Earth to find out who that version of youwill bring into (or keep) in your life. I don’t know exactly where it is you must go, but—and I speak of this from my experience and from the experience of others—I’m sure if you head back to that patio, you will remember very quickly why you thought it was time to change the scene.

If you stick to the road you’re on right now it will lead you to someplace different. What is there is uncertain—but you will be farther away from where you are now, and that is all that matters right this minute. So keep walking. You’ll find your people or they will find you. Maybe we’ll bump into each other along the way.

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