How People React When I Don't Drink
How People React When I Don't Drink
I wasted far too much energy worrying about what other people would think of my sobriety.
Ten years ago, I was still a drinker but already thinking about getting sober.
I knew I was drinking too much, and I knew I had to quit, but I was stuck in a cycle of perpetual procrastination.
Whenever I considered quitting, I’d come up with excuses for why I wasn’t quite ready. I’d tell myself that I’d stop drinking the next day rather than trying to quit immediately.
In today’s newsletter, I want to home in on one of those excuses: That if I got sober, people would give me a hard time about not drinking.
How I Imagined It Would Go
I used to imagine to myself what it would be like to attend an event with alcohol and be the only person not drinking alcohol.
If I walked around with a soda instead of a beer, what would people say?
I played out entire conversations in my head, planning how I could defend my decision. I thought that I’d have to justify not drinking, and I agonized over whether I would tell people that I had gotten sober or just make up some other excuse for abstaining.
Should I tell people I was sick? That I had a lot to do the next day? That I was taking a break?
Or, should I just come right out with the truth—that I was an alcoholic and had decided to quit drinking for good?
I worried that if I chose the latter option, I’d be subjected to a barrage of follow-up questions. I also worried that if I told people I had quit for good, I’d end up relapsing and embarrassing myself.
Again and again, I’d play out these conversations from just about every angle imaginable. However, there’s one option that I never took into account—that nobody would care whether I drank or not.
How It Went
It was this last option that actually turned out to be correct. When I finally quit drinking, I was expecting to have conversation after conversation about my decision to get sober.
Instead, almost nobody noticed, and the ones who did didn’t seem to care.
What really happens when I go to a party and drink a soda instead of a beer? Nobody bats an eye.
What about when I go to a restaurant and the rest of the table orders cocktails while I have a water? Again, nobody even notices.
It’s human nature to think that everyone else is paying more attention to us than they really are. The reality is that most people just don’t care at all what other people are drinking. It’s truly one of the least important things in the world to them.
As an alcoholic, I was obsessed with how much I was drinking and how much everyone else was. But, I was only obsessed because I was so deeply ashamed of my habit.
For those who drink in moderation, there’s no need to think twice about it. Alcohol isn’t that important to them, and they’re certainly not counting everyone else’s drinks.
I’ve been sober for seven years now, and I’ve attended plenty of social functions with alcohol. Nine times out of ten, nobody at all notices that I’m only drinking soda and water.
One Time Out of Ten
What happens during that one time out of ten that someone does notice my abstinence? Even then, it’s nothing like the long, combative conversations that I used to imagine. Normally, it goes something like this:
“Do you not drink alcohol?”
“No, I’m sober actually.”
“Oh, cool.”
End scene.
That’s really all there is to it. Nobody cares why I quit. Nobody forces me to defend my decision.
Most often, the people who ask me about it are other non-drinkers. Some of them are sober, some just don’t drink much. Generally, they appreciate having another non-drinker around.
A handful of times, I’ve also been asked about my decision by drinkers who are thinking of quitting. Those are the only cases in which I’ve really gotten into the details of my sobriety. Even then, it’s only to help them work through their questions, not because I feel any need to justify my choices.
The Lesson
When I look back on the years leading up to quitting drinking, it’s hard to believe how much energy I wasted worrying about sobriety.
Don’t get me wrong—it was incredibly hard to quit drinking. However, the challenges that I actually faced didn’t overlap much with the challenges that I had spent so much time worrying about.
Instead of obsessing over hypothetical problems that might come up, I wish I had just focused on quitting and tackling the challenges as they arose.
It was easy for me to convince myself that playing through these hypothetical conversations was a way of “preparing” for sobriety. It let me feel like I was making progress in my fight against my addiction without actually taking any concrete steps.
However, thinking about getting sober isn’t the same thing as actually getting sober. The real first step in quitting drinking is simply to quit drinking.