I Think I’m Done

I first started drinking at 16. I was at a party, had one Old Milwaukee's Best, while some dude was singing Motley Crue's "You're All I Need" in the kitchen, and was convinced I was drunk.

Shortly thereafter, I started drinking every day, and that continued throughout most of my life up until about a year or so ago when my body started telling me that hangovers suck, and I stopped drinking daily and saved it for the weekends.

In my 20's & 30's I could easily drink a 12-pack of Coronas every night until 3:30-4:00AM with no issue and be at work by 8:00AM and at the top of my game. Drinking was my normalcy, while at the same time I didn't let it interfere with my professional life.

In 2013, I dated a girl long distance, and we'd video chat pretty much every day and something that she said kicked me. She said, "we have the same conversations every day, and you don't remember it, and we keep repeating it." The relationship ended as a result, but it stuck with me, and I decided to seek therapy, with the intention that I would quit drinking on January 1st of the following year.

I ended up going to some hospital, and it was a wash, so I got online and started researching therapists on my own and found one that did the work and the conversations were meaningful and yeah, I quit drinking on January 1st of the next year--prepped, knowing what I was getting in to, and I remember crying on my way home from work that day thinking--"this is hard!"

But I did it. I quit. I felt like a new man. I started focusing on health, working out, eating right--getting my life in order. The mindset of having a clear mind was overwhelming. I still did the ritual of hanging out in bars, drinking non-alcoholic beers, and it was refreshing to be able to drive the drunks that I hung out with home, for once. Just because I quit drinking didn't mean that I had to change my social life.

I would say that it's coincidence that my life went into a downward spiral shortly thereafter, got engaged, moved to a state that I would have never even considered moving to, but I did it, found a job, bought a house, and played the part of that "sober guy". But at a particular point of realizing that my sobriety lead me down a doomed path, I walked home from her house, stopped by the gas station and bought a 12-pack of Coronas and began contemplating my escape.

And that I did. Fortunately, I sold my house before it was even barely on the market, with the intention of moving to Florida (again). I literally packed up my stuff in a uHaul, signed the papers, and did the drive.

With all intentions to remain sober, it lasted all of but two days before I fell back into the grind.

That was literally 10 years ago, of which half of those years required mixing whiskey with my beer drinking habits (Fireball).

My wife says, "why can't you just have a few drinks and relax?". My brain doesn't work that way. I don't drink for a "happy" tease. I drink to get F***ed up! That's the entire point! And it has always been.

So here I am, in 2026, after a lifetime, minus a few years of relatively good years of sobriety, in the same spot.

Maybe I'm just getting old, but for the last year and a half or so, I stopped drinking during the week. I can't work with a hangover. It's miserable! I take a sleeping pill every night during the week and sleep refreshingly deeply. But still, when I party on weekends? There is no such thing as not going full out!

But the thing is, now one night of going full out has its consequences. Me, lying in bed all day, recovering. Something in my brain is telling me that it's not as fun as I thought it was and consequences are beginning to override the desire to do it again. My brain goes back to the "clean" feeling of 2014. I miss that. But the problem is, I have no passions left. No server racks under my desk, the multitude of guitars still sleeping in my closet, recording equipment collecting dust in our garage... what do I do with my time?