I don’t drink much these days. Maybe a cocktail or beer once or twice a year, for a special occasion. It’s not something I’m super rigid about, I just find that defaulting to no alcohol reduces the mental overhead of decision making whenever drinks are flowing around me. I’ve probably been “sober” in this regard for a few years now.
As with all behavior change, there were a number of conditions that fell into place to prompt my decision and to make it stick.
First was my health. I had been suffering from debilitating gout flares in my big toes almost annually since my mid 20s. If you’ve experienced these flares or know anyone who has, you’d know how rough these attacks are. Alcohol is a trigger— and in the earlier years of living with gout, I’d joke that these flares were my “check engine light” indicating I was having too much fun. And so I’d just live this cycle of getting a flare, cleaning up my diet, resolving my flare, slipping back into consuming indiscriminately and so on. I was resistant to going on “forever” medication to lower my uric acid levels, which while I regret not starting sooner, was probably necessary for me to pursue this lifestyle change.
Another condition that led me to cutting out alcohol is that I started consuming mushrooms and weed, specifically in gummy form, more regularly. Call it harm reduction in a superficial sense. This is something I’m a bit more conflicted about, having slipped between mindful, intentional consumption versus reaching for it as a crutch or pacifier to escape difficult feelings. For me, the latter came initially justified under the premise of micro-dosing, which is to say I felt it permissible because I wasn’t getting fully intoxicated, I was just “taking the edge off”. Well that was a slippery slope I recognized once I went deeper with my mindfulness practice. I knew my routine mushroom consumption was becoming problematic when I found myself reaching for it at the end of day out of frustration, either due to relationship conflict or some other difficulty.
The irony of this realization is that my approximately annual practice of macrodosing mushrooms was one of the preconditions for opening myself up to mindfulness and spirituality. In any case, I’ve cut the crutch consumption, though no plans yet to discontinue with the intentional planned macrodosing. I find “resetting” occasionally valuable— in fact I’m writing this ahead of my annual guys’ trip. I’m also still reconciling my stance with the Buddhist precepts which state that these intoxicants, instead of bringing clarity, just replace our old delusions with new ones. I know intoxicant-free is ultimately the north star to aspire towards. But I’m not too self critical about it yet as I work on deepening my overall mindfulness practice. As a footnote, I also stopped with the crutch weed usage but continue occasionally as a sleep-aid at bed time.
The final thing worth mentioning is my late father’s relationship with alcohol. For most of my childhood, I remember him as a crack a cold one after dinner kind of guy. It was his daily treat - just a single bottle, at the end of the day. Mostly Heineken and Tsingtao, with Killian’s Irish Red, Asahi or Taiwan Beer if available when we dined out. He seemed very much moderate, never noticeably drunk to me. In all those years I saw him have too many once, during a reunion with old friends at my aunt’s house in Taiwan. It seemed like a truly joyous occasion. But he wasn’t weird about it, I just happened to see him vomit while hungover the next day. And so in that sense it was very normalized and never a problem, at least until his liver problems began manifesting. All I’ll say is that liver disease is nasty— a relentless march towards systemic decline till the end. And while I wouldn’t list this a top of mind reason for teetotaling, I’d likely be deluding myself if I didn’t say this was a factor, subconscious or otherwise.
Do I miss drinking alcohol? Well, in many ways, yes! Chatting with a slightly older Korean colleague of mine the other day: “Why aren’t you drinking anymore? Drinking is fun.” There’s also that scene in Succession where Logan Roy, speaking of a prospective liberal business partner - “I don’t trust him, he doesn’t drink!” Alcohol is so ingrained into our culture, the art of the long hang. On numerous occasions I’ve declined a drink, I felt like I was personally rejecting the person offering. I think the challenge is that I’m probably self-rejecting; I can still reciprocate the offer with my presence, sans alcohol, at least while we are in similar states of mind. It’s kind of like with smokers — they don’t mind you standing around outside hanging with them while they smoke, just as long as you’re not weird about it.
