The decision to stop drinking
It’s not just about recovery, but also living true to your values
About a year and a half ago, I decided to stop drinking alcohol. I never drank much anyway, on average less than once a month. I think only two times did I ever get moderately drunk, and that I did intentionally to observe my behavior while drunk. I learned that alcohol tends to subdue me in a way that could tempt me to self-medicate with it. So eventually, I decided to not drink it at all.
My parents actually encouraged me to drink when I was in high school. They would pop open a wine for themselves and then offer me a glass. When I refused, they shamed me for being a stickler with rules and told me that when I became an adult, there would be social situations when I need to drink. I disagreed with them, holding onto the Buddhist value of a clear mind unclouded by substances. But later, my moral determination would start to slip away. I think my first drink was at home with my parents, when I finally caved in to their judgment of me.
During my first year of college, I chose to reside in a substance-sensitive dorm hall. The rules of the hall were that if anyone chose to use substances other than hard drugs, it needed to be either in private in your room or outside of the hall; hard drugs were strictly banned from the hall. Sometimes I would pass through the adjacent hall in the same dorm on the weekends and find it littered with red Solo cups. That visual reminder of the partying culture present on other parts of campus made me glad that I lived in the substance-sensitive hall. I’m pretty sure I never drank at college during my first year.
Later in college, I decided to experiment a bit with alcohol to test its effects on me. Mostly I drank socially, which was still quite infrequently as I very rarely attended parties. When I started taking psych meds halfway through my sophomore year, the avoidance of chemical interactions became another reason to limit alcohol consumption. But still, I remember at some point, when I was at home alone, drinking some sake that my parents had in the refrigerator without asking for their permission. I could feel the temptation to drink a lot of it to calm the distress I was feeling in that moment. I managed to restrain myself then and only drank one drink, but the slippery slope of gradually drinking more and more became suddenly more ominous to me.
That incident made me realize how vulnerable I was to addiction. I am the first person in my family to have bipolar disorder; I did not want to be the first alcoholic as well. So eventually, I swore off alcohol completely.
In many places in the world, alcohol is often tightly interwoven with social gatherings. From what my parents tell me, it is just as much an issue in China as in the U.S. Whatever the occasion, alcohol is a social lubricant and a conduit of celebration. The minority of people in the U.S. who do not drink at all can often feel misunderstood, our personal choices scrutinized by others.
Paul C. wrote in his Substack newsletter, Control Issues, about how people responded with confusion towards his decision to stop drinking alcohol. Some people hypothesized that he might have been an alcoholic, when that was not the case. As if that is the only reason why a person “should” stop drinking. Some people have health issues besides alcoholism that prevent them from drinking; some abstain from alcohol for religious reasons; some just simply do not like the taste or smell of alcohol or otherwise find they have no reason to drink it. But as Paul wrote, a person’s reason for not drinking only matters to themself:
Having better conversations about alcohol involves removing two roadblocks. First, we need to dismantle the idea that stopping drinking is something that requires justification. Second, we need to create a richer and less stigmatising lexicon to communicate the experience of no longer drinking.
Not everyone who stops drinking alcohol — or even using other substances — is necessarily “in recovery.” Recovery implies returning to some sort of healthier or otherwise better past after a period of unwellness. But for some people, the decision to stop using a mind-altering substance is more about affirming the values they desire in the present to bring forward into their future. These values can include your health, your religious or moral principles, and your personal sensory boundaries. Regardless of the nature of your relationship with alcohol in the past, you can transform it — and be transformed by it — in the future.
The decision not to drink doesn’t just affect one person. It impacts everyone around them. I once read something that Thich Nhat Hanh said to a woman who asked why she should stop drinking if she does not have a personal or family history of alcoholism. (I can’t find the exact source, so please comment below if you are able to locate it.) The Buddhist sage responded with something like this: “Even if you don’t become an alcoholic, what about your children? What about the other people you interact with, who feel encouraged to drink by your own permissiveness?” The woman found these questions very compelling and stopped drinking.
As more and more people leave alcohol behind, the social pressure to drink regardless of whether you personally want to may gradually decrease. At the very least, people should stop assuming that a person must be a drinker if they are over 21. (I think one reason why I haven’t yet been questioned about my abstention from alcohol is that people tend to perceive me as younger than I am and thus may assume that I don’t drink because I cannot yet legally do so.) People who don’t drink can be leaders in helping others to make decisions that honor their personal values, but the onus is on the majority who do drink to de-center alcohol in social engagements. Maybe we can all let ourselves be more awkward and true to ourselves, rather than rely on the social lubricant of alcohol for camaraderie.