In late May of 2020, I was driving through my neighborhood in Maryland and decided to just go home instead of stopping by the local beer store.
Earlier that week I was sitting in my yard drinking a Corona, looking out at a fig tree and a Japanese maple that I had planted. I really missed my friends and family. I’d cancelled a vacation in March to avoid coronavirus woes, and I hadn’t been back to the office since March either.
I realized that drinking in my yard was the epitome of pointless - alcohol wasn’t going to bring my friends closer to me or make me feel better about how alienating COVID-19 measures had become. If anything, I would drink a beer and read a book, and sort of feel relaxed, but mostly I felt anxious, still.
And if beer was pointless during COVID, wouldn’t it be pointless all the time?
It is not beer that I wanted or missed, I missed people, I wanted interesting conversations.
So, I stopped. In the upcoming days where I had a choice to buy more beer or not, I just skipped it.
The other reason I stopped drinking was my careful tracking of my running goals on Strava. I saw myself running and getting faster and better, and drinking just didn’t seem to be something that would help my running goals. Earlier in 2020 I had hit a personal goal of running 6 miles in 60 minutes. While I was still having the occasional beer or two while hitting that goal, I thought about how well I could do if I just nixed beer altogether, and I got pretty excited about what I envisioned.
The improvements I’ve seen in life are very good, I’ve detailed them below.
Financial:
I estimated that I spent at least $40 a week on alcohol. This would probably be much, much more if I had a week where I would go out with friends in DC and pick up even one drink on my tab. ($40 sounds laughably low when cleverly-named DC cocktails roll in at $15 each).
I used to stay out until 1 am at DC bars with friends, talking about nothing more than - you guessed it - politics. So, if I had a 1 AM Politics Night, my weekly alcohol spend would be more like $70.
I think if I were to do the same thing now and kick alcohol, I could, I’d just stay up until 1 am drinking kombucha or diet coke or something.
Fitness:
Even with stopping alcohol, I have some issues with sleeping. My sleep got better, but it’s not perfect yet. Admittedly I pump too much caffeine into my system, and I have a kind of undercurrent of anxiety about COVID that I can only occasionally shake off with exercise. Sometimes the COVID anxiety just doesn’t shake off, but if I do stuff, I feel better. The main improvement right now is that if I feel myself getting anxious, I start doing tasks or reaching out to my network instead of drinking a beer. I did just order a Sleep Number bed too after about 10 years on an old mattress so I will keep you posted on that, too.
When I stopped drinking my running performance went off the chain. I started running 3-4 miles on weekdays and built up towards a 10 mile run every weekend. The 10 mile runs were a challenge because I became so dehydrated - Maryland/DC in the summer heat is pretty tough.
Not everything went perfectly when I started to run a lot, though. One day I became so dehydrated and sick after a 10 mile run that I ended up throwing up (losing even more water), and struggled to even keep down water and ibuprofen, and had to sleep for the rest of the day. It was pretty nasty - 10 miles isn’t a marathon or anything, but it’s the furthest I’d ever run, even after training for 5ks in high school and for 10ks in my 20s, I’d never really hit a 10 mile run until 2020 at age 34 and alcohol-free.
Life:
For me there are two levels to being alcohol-free: Deep and shallow. I am able to handle deep and shallow problems with equal measure, instead of drinking them off. The problems might be as small as deciding how to sort and organize my clothes, or as big as deciding where I want to live and who I want to spend my time with. Either way they are way easier to solve.
I am a very visual person and I thrive on activity and momentum. I typically read three books at any one time, I don’t finish a book and read the next one. I also do the same with work that I produce - I don’t finish a painting and start the next one. I will work on several paintings at the same time, and rework paintings from years ago.
This mode of operation can be at risk for distraction - something which is reduced by quitting alcohol.
So with one distraction down, I was able to solve problems both in art and life. I realized I would be happier back in my home state of Colorado, so I took steps to make the move. I probably wouldn’t have realized this if I had kept drinking. I would have been ensconced in whatever was right in front of me, instead of taking the time to realize that I could make a change. I imagined myself getting too settled and realized that it wasn’t what I wanted.
Artwise, I’ve made a lot of my ‘happiest’ art this year while being sober, mostly in the form of animated gifs and low-risk illustrations. Sobriety has taken me back to a more pure place as an artist, which has been really enjoyable.
Artists are often perceived and cast as people who drink a lot. Or, there’s the trope of the drugged-out artist, too. Even when I did drink, I rarely would drink and produce good art. If anything, I would drink when I had thrown in the towel on making anything good that day.
Many artists produce a ton of great art after a beer or two - I am not one of those artists. I do my best stuff after a cup of coffee on a weekend morning, like Saturday Morning Cartoons only as an adult making the cartoons.
I can tend to seem like a very random person to some people, even dead sober. I think this is because I live life very fully and with a lot of love - a lot of people are caught off guard. Ultimately, I don’t need alcohol to be a free-spirited, loving, kind person.
The biggest question I answered for myself after a few months of being sober was: Why not me?
I spend a lot of time fawning over other people’s accomplishments… their artwork, their fitness journeys, and I decided, why not just stop hiding and be out with who I am? What on earth am I waiting for? I am talented, smart, I’ve helped a lot of people, and I’m pretty proud of how far I have come. So I’ve started posting grids on Instagram of all of my work - paintings, comics, and bikini photos alike.
To sum up:
Fitness:
Slept better. Started running 7 - 10 miles, up from 3-4 miles.
Financial:
Saved at least $500 over three months, probably much more.
Life:
Big and small problems were easier to solve. I sorted my clothes effectively and also decided to move back to Colorado. I made art that made people happy and started asking “Why not me?”
Advice:
For anyone who wants to kick alcohol, I have advice, but I am a person who doesn’t like to tell people what to do unless they ask for advice explicitly.
I never want to make one of those Youtube videos or Medium posts that are titled “Stop drinking alcohol!” or “Women Who Drink Too Much are (insert demeaning XYZ trope here)!”
For this reason, my story will probably never be very popular and will definitely not get millions of views. I want to stick to my code of being non-judgmental towards others. I wouldn’t presume to judge people who drink or people who don’t drink.
So, if you would like any advice or have any interest in this, please message me any time by tweeting at me: @beckyjewell.
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