Forget a New Year's Resolution, Do the Thing Now
New Year’s Resolutions Are Dumb
I love a self-experiment. During (Catholic) high school, I always looked forward to Lent, the 40-day penance period during which many of my classmates gave up meat or committed to doing a good deed every day or some other endeavor of willpower testing.
For me, it was an opportunity to try something extreme. One year I gave up texting for 40 days, much to the displeasure of the boy I was “talking to” (talk-ing adj. 1. engaged in an informal romantic relationship defined primarily by long conversations over text message and standing in close proximity at high school football games). That was a good one, one I’d gladly try again. One year, inspired by my favorite author A.J. Jacobs, I attempted to practice 40 days of Radical Honesty. I bailed on that one pretty quickly once faced with the prospect of having to tell a classmate I thought of her more as a frienemy than a friend.
As much as I love an inspired lifestyle alteration, I’ve never been into New Year’s resolutions. They always felt a little, I don’t know, mainstream? Now, beyond simply not caring to declare one, I kind of hate the whole concept of the New Year’s Resolution. It can be positive for some, surely, but for the most part, it’s the cornerstone of a media-fed frenzy around this alleged new potential that doesn’t really exist. It’s a new year, yes, but a new you? I mean… The likelihood of all 7.7 billion of us transforming into alternate and freshly disciplined versions of ourselves just because the calendar flipped is not particularly high.
Nor should it be! Why do so many of us wait until the start of a new year (or week, or month, or any other basically irrelevant measure of time for that matter) to make the changes we want to make? If we don’t care enough to make the change and stick with it on December 27th, what makes us think we’ll care enough to make and stick with the change from January 1st forward? The cycles we as humans use to mark the passing of time can be very useful for reflection and goal setting, but to place so much importance on the beginning of a new cycle feels like a great way to set oneself up for disappointment and failure.
Questioning Alcohol
I’ve been thinking for a while now about cutting back on the amount of alcohol I drink, if not quitting entirely. I do not consider myself an alcoholic, and I’ve never engaged in a level of drinking that puts me outside the realm of what’s deemed normal or acceptable for my age. I’m not saying I’ve never embarrassed myself on alcohol or been the drunkest person in the room - I have - but those times have been the exception.
The rule, for me, is a couple of glasses of wine while cooking dinner and another while watching a movie. A patio beer on a nice summer afternoon, or a shower beer while getting ready for a concert. What’s been dawning on me steadily over the past year or so, however, is an uncomfortable new bit of knowledge I haven’t been ready to confront until recently: Alcohol does nothing good for me.
This thought has been lingering in the very back corner of my mind for years (I quit drinking for a month in 2016 and loved the experience), but over the past several months it’s poked its head around the armchair of conventional wisdom it was hiding behind, crawled down the hallway of my beliefs systems and stood up tall and proud in the spotlight of my daily thoughts. I tried to push it back, reluctant to face what I knew deep down, but it was too late; it had opened my eyes, and I started seeing signs all around me pointing in the direction of abstinence.
The first sign was tucked away in the story of my friend Weezer who I met on the PCT. I edited the story she wrote for our mutual friend Twerk’s photo book, Hiker Trash Vogue, then I heard her speak at length about thru-hiking and sobriety on the podcast Backpacker Radio. Her tale of triumph over alcoholism and staying sober in the wake of tragedy was inspiring, and knowing her was proof to me that a person can love life and be social and have so much fucking fun without touching alcohol. She spoke of becoming happy and healthy after quitting, of not missing drunken nights and hungover mornings. I wanted those things, sure, but she was an addict, I wasn’t. Quitting, then, must not be for me.
I heard Weezer talk about her sobriety again on Twerk’s own podcast, The Outdoor Social. Twerk himself had recently quit drinking, but he didn’t identify as an addict, just a guy who was sick of the effects alcohol had on his life. Hearing this message stripped of the labels of addiction and alcoholism, I was able to see how much I could actually relate to what both of these people were saying. Their lives were better without alcohol in it. I started to seriously consider how mine might be, too.
One day, I got an email newsletter from Whole Foods listing the top 10 food trends forecasted for 2020, among them, zero-proof drinks. I was intrigued. People I knew and respected were being open about their decisions not to drink, and popular culture was appearing to follow suit in a way I’d never seen before. Kombucha on tap at bars, #soberOctober and #dryJanuary in my social media feeds, and alcohol-free hopped teas in the fridge at my local grocery store were all sending the same message: Abstaining from alcohol is not just for those with a “problem,” and it doesn’t have to be isolating or difficult. It’s always been a choice to be proud of, but for the first time, it’s also a choice that’s accommodated. It’s freakin’ trendy.
The next flashing billboard on the road to Sobertown I didn’t know I was on was an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience with the comedian and ex-alcohol drinker, Nikki Glaser. She quit drinking after reading the book The Easy Way to Stop Drinking by Allen Carr, which, Nikki said, convinced her, point by point, actually easily, that she didn’t want to drink anymore.
That was what I wanted. I had tried to take breaks from alcohol or moderate my drinking time and time again. “I’ll only drink on weekends,” I would say, then immediately find a reason to make an exception for a Tuesday-night glass of wine. “I’ll only drink on special occasions, and then only one drink,” at which point “date night” began to constitute a special occasion, and one drink turned into half a bottle of wine. None of these stints ever lasted long. I’m an all or nothing kind of person, and I knew I needed convincing that “nothing” would be the way to go on this.
Why Wait?
I went to Half-Price Books looking for the book Nikki mentioned. What I found instead looked like a similar but modernized alternative called This Naked Mind by Annie Grace. Its layout is based on reconditioning the mind, taking our societally conditioned ideas about alcohol and turning them on their heads, one at a time.
When I started the book, I thought maybe I’d continue my normal drinking habits while I read it and then quit once I finished, assuming I’d be thoroughly convinced by the end, but probably not before then. But I was obviously convinced enough I wanted to quit before even buying the book - why else would I have bought it? And even if that weren’t the case, even if I was “just curious,” I’ve read enough in the first 75 pages to make me want to quit, and the signs haven’t stopped coming either.
I arrived at my parents’ house one evening to find my dad, not one to shy away from a drink, enjoying a Heineken 0.0, citing a factoid he’d heard about alcohol negatively impacting metabolism. I opened an issue of Marie Claire to find an article called “Happier Hour” by Maggie Bullock about the faction of young people choosing to forego alcohol, not because of intervention-induced sobriety, but out of a general consciousness of mental and physical health and happiness. The article mentioned no-alcohol bars in major cities that serve crafted “mocktails,” conventional bars regularly featuring alcohol-free nights, and companies distilling zero-proof spirits. From the lead: “Liquor no longer holds the allure it once did for ‘sober curious women — far from alcoholics and not quite abstainers — who have discovered a healthier high in drying out.”
I continued to drink, knowing I wanted to stop but making excuses to continue. I had probably eight glasses of wine over the course of Thanksgiving Day, making myself so drunk I snuck to the refrigerator when no one was looking and ate a piece of turkey. I haven’t intentionally consumed meat since 2015, and, with my wits about me, have no desire to. I sucked down three margaritas and two tequila shots at a friend’s going away dinner and made myself throw up later that night because I knew it would reduce my imminent misery.
Thankfully, I woke up the next morning feeling decent enough. I had my usual hangover cures of heavy food and coffee and went about my day, just a little sleepy. But I kept thinking to myself, if feeling like shit isn’t enough to make me stop doing this thing I don’t want to do, what will be? I have a perfect opportunity to stop this cycle - why should I wait until I finish a book to make the change?
I’m 25 days away from the start of a new decade. I could make it all symbolic and delay my abstinence until then. Continue ingesting the poison I know full well disrupts my heart, liver, and brain function just because that’s what I’ve done for the past decade (yeah… sorry, Mom). I could float through the holidays, business as usual, and have a couple of glasses of wine with my Christmas dinner. A bottle of Shiner Holiday Cheer before our traditional family movie night. An Old Fashioned or two at the local distillery catching up with friends.
I could buy a six-pack of my favorite cider tonight and drink it over the course of the month, dubbing it my last; the alcoholic beverage I’ll savor before I drink it no more. I could celebrate New Year’s Eve with a bottle of champagne, letting the bubbles tickle my nose as I gaze wistfully into that final glass, tossing back the last sip right before the clock strikes midnight.
I could wait to do what I know to my core I must do. But, as I’ve learned repeatedly over the past decade, waiting rarely makes the hard things easier. Forget a New Year’s resolution. If I’m choosing to transform my life, I’m going to do the things that will lead to that transformation now, in this decade. And I’ll wake up on the first day of 2020 hangover-free, ready for whatever I’ll find on the other side of the ball drop.