https://www.ccsa.ca/en/guidance-tools-resources/substance-use-and-addiction/alcohol/canadas-guidance-alcohol-and-health

6/18/2025 10:54:58 PM

there is no safe amount of alcohol

https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-alcohol-consumption-is-safe-for-our-health

https://www.cancer.columbia.edu/news/u-s-surgeon-general-issues-warning-alcohol-and-cancer-what-it-means

6/19/2025 1:01:40 AM

Life isn’t about always staying safe though

6/19/2025 11:57:04 AM

^ that's for everyone to decide on their own.

i just stated a fact. then it's up to each individual how much risk they want to take with the stuff they put in (and on) their bodies.

6/20/2025 12:13:13 AM

Today is day 33 of complete sobriety(no nicotine, thc, wine)

The first 2 are no issue at all as far as withdrawal etc but man I wouldn't mind a glass or 2 of wine...almost went to the 7-11 last night with the thought process "I made it through the month of September so a) I deserve it and b) i have proven I can quit whenever I want"

10/2/2025 12:41:02 PM

Man I can have two octoberfest Sam Adams and I have a headache the next day. No buzzing or anything, just pure headache. I don't know why. Other beers don't seem to do that to me.

10/2/2025 1:31:23 PM

I had a couple of beers 3 weeks ago.

My basement fridge is just stocked with beer, leftover from the last get together I had at my house. Also, sometimes I will buy a 6 pack of special beer, and drink 1, putting the rest in the basement fridge where it sits.

I have decided to spend the next several months sober, because of...reasons.

10/2/2025 1:58:57 PM

Quote :

"at the risk of jinxing myself I think I'm mostly done with drinking. At least on a regular basis at home."

jinx. lasted about a month? i drink coffee all morning and beer all night what else am i supposed to do with my mouth in between activities if there's an answer i can't figure it out

10/2/2025 2:02:52 PM

I haven't had a drink in years now. No idea of the date of the last one.

10/2/2025 7:56:06 PM

^^^ same except I don't keep it around at all with the exception of one Big Beautiful Bottle for... reasons

10/5/2025 8:48:21 AM

Its the smoking app i used when i quit smoking, changed things to track drinking

10/5/2025 9:13:40 AM

congrats on being 1 minute 5 days 3 hours without a drink

10/5/2025 9:23:57 AM

525, 600 minutes
525, 000 moments so dear
525, 600 minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?

10/5/2025 10:23:47 AM

Dry January anyone?

1/1/2026 6:39:15 AM

it was a pretty dry December, might as well keep it going

1/1/2026 9:05:29 AM

A long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember the last thing that you said as you were leaving
Now the days go by so fast
And it's one more day up in the canyons
And it's one more night in Hollywood
If you think that I could be forgiven
I wish you would
The smell of hospitals in winter
And the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters
But no pearls
All at once you look across a crowded room
To see the way that light attaches to a girl
And it's one more day up in the canyons
And it's one more night in Hollywood
If you think you might come to California
I think you should
Drove up to Hillside Manor sometime after two a.m.
And talked a little while about the year
I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower
Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her
And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass
And it's one more day up in the canyon
And it's one more night in Hollywood
It's been so long since I've seen the ocean
I guess I should
Yeah, yeah

1/1/2026 10:18:25 AM

It was mostly dry december except those 3 boxes of franzia i drank A box normally lasts 3 days

One of the last things I googled before I fell asleep was to see if total wine was open today. For whatever reason, texas and connecticut stores are closed today but other states stores are open

1/1/2026 11:10:32 AM

don't beat yourself up
just quit again

1/1/2026 3:36:04 PM

Thats the plan. Back to looking at the clock every 10 minutes starting around 11pm, calculating how much time I have left to get wine until its midnight.

1/1/2026 4:31:43 PM

^^^^^^you going dry still?

1/5/2026 4:21:22 PM

My wife is pregnant, and I am abstaining from alcohol in solidarity. I will have a celebratory drink around May.

I don't really miss alcohol. In fact, I sleep better, have more energy, am more focused, am more consistent with my workouts. The most annoying this is when I go out, people keep trying to get me to order a mocktail. Bitch, I'm not paying you $8 for a ginger beer and cranberry juice. Give me a goddamn water.

[Edited on January 5, 2026 at 7:28 PM. Reason : h]

1/5/2026 7:27:21 PM

Quote :

"Bitch, I'm not paying you $8 for a ginger beer and cranberry juice. Give me a goddamn water."

Somebody had to say it! Good job!

1/5/2026 7:40:27 PM

It's going on around 5 years or so since I've had alcohol... I feel great, yearly physical blood test numbers have been great, and I've lost some weight (around 190 right now... first time I've been sub 200 since middle school.)

1/6/2026 12:22:14 PM

So, my wife gave birth in May. I think I did have that celebratory drink, though I honestly don't remember. Since May, I can think of 3 drinks I've had at various occasions.

I haven't really had a desire to drink, and haven't. It feels like I've had a moment of clarity, where I ask myself "why drink? It's like living life on hard mode.". I'm definitely not counting days of sobriety or anything. I really do have an appreciation for being sober, though.
Now that I have a kid, I can't imagine what hell it would be to be hungover and have a screaming kid wake you up in the morning. And I can't imagine how awful I would feel if some emergency came up and I needed to drive my kid someplace but was not able to do so.

Anyway, I saw this article in the paper this morning. https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2026/10/05/how-quitting-drinking-can-upend-marriages-friendships/
It made me think of my wife's parents. I think they drink every single day. Whenever I am hanging around them, they will offer me a drink and if I refuse they will keep offering to me every 30 minutes. Super annoying. Going out to eat with them is just so interesting, as their frame of reference for how much eating out should cost is completely skewed... Because they factor in an extra $60 in drinks alone, for several people.

[Edited on October 5, 2026 at 10:35 AM. Reason : jj]

10/5/2026 10:33:38 AM

that article is interesting. surprising mostly. not dismissing anybody's individual experience, but the premise really doesn't resonate with my sense of the culture at this moment at all. if anything, it's been trending in the opposite direction

25 years ago pop culture essentially promoted the message "if you don't drink, you're a loser who doesn't know how to have fun." drinking culture was so prevelant that the institutional messaging was always PSAs about the dangers of binge drinking and drunk driving. today, drinking in the US is at probably an all time low and yet the cultural message is still directionally "if you DO drink, you're a loser who doesn't care about your health or can't get through life without substance abuse" it's a pretty wild swing in public attitude in just a few years.

so it seems odd to me that an institution like wapo finds it newsworthy to tell stories about 57 year old men who are suddenly nervous (?!) to tell their friends they stopped drinking and now see that as a core part of their identity, and about all the social pressure and stigma they now face from the remaining alcoholics that are still allowed to roam free in society, when the prevailing social dynamic I see seems much more likely to run in the opposite direction these days. the institutional messaging is predominantly "there is no safe amount of alcohol" and "drinking is rapidly declining so why are you still doing it"

i'm responding here from my perspective of the culture overall, but it's actually even been an issue somewhat for me personally (tww is a blog) since my wife stopped drinking a few years ago. when we first met we used to often have drinks in the evening and while I'm not saying it was a necessary part of our bonding process, it did become a sort of happy ritual that accompanied the formation of our life together. when she decided a few years ago to stop drinking for mostly health reasons I supported her choice and it was of course a non-issue that I barely even had an opinion on. you do you. but since then more and more I get told she doesn't like me drinking and I should stop. if I were getting sloppy drunk or had anger issues or were constantly hung over I'd understand where she was coming from, but I have zero of those issues. so it's been a bit annoying to get the marge simpson nag response from her when nobody gave her a hard time when she made her own life choices.

i know i'm being a bit dramatic in my reply here, but i'm just surprised to see suggestions that there's a widespread scourge of "how dare you not drink" behavior out there given the trends over the last few years especially. but i could be wrong. it's happened before!

as for my own consumption habits since I haven't updated this year, I mostly wasn't drinking in the first quarter of the year but started getting a case of beer every other week or so during the spring and summer. last month I decided I would plan on going the rest of the year without drinking. not for any particular reason or any strong commitment, sometimes I just get the impulse to challenge myself to some sort of habit streak. essentially a "if you see beer is on sale at harris teeter this week, resist the urge to take advantage" type of thing

see y'all in 2027.

[Edited on October 5, 2026 at 1:06 PM. Reason : ]

Quote :

"i drink coffee all morning and beer all night what else am i supposed to do with my mouth in between activities if there's an answer i can't figure it out"

that reminds me of this aspect of my trajectory - one of the offices I worked at ~2010 used to have free coffee and soda in the kitchen. I used to drink a few coffees in the morning and a few sodas (usually mountain dew) in the afternoon. during health insurance open enrollment one year they did one of those wellness incentive things and I ended up deciding to stop drinking mountain dew and started drinking ginger ale instead, which turned into drinking ginger ale at home as my evening "what else am I supposed to do with my mouth" default option too.

but once my kids started getting old enough to where they would ask can they have a ginger ale and how much more quickly my ginger ale stocks needed to be replenished, I think I subconsciously started switching to beer as my evening beverage so I didn't have to worry about the kids drinking all my stuff. so it's their fault.

10/5/2026 12:58:17 PM

I thought about buying a bottle of wine fri night...didn't want to risk feeling shitty not to mention like 750 calories

10/5/2026 1:51:36 PM

Quote :

"I'm getting down to those numbers. [3-5 drinks per month] I think all of the diuretic effects, combined with IBS-like symptoms have made me really indifferent towards alcohol."

Still pretty accurate for me. I'm only drinking if the company is buying me a beer(s) with dinner or I go out to eat dinner with my family. American/Japanese restaurant = 2 draft beers. Mexican restaurant or Chili's = 1 margarita

10/5/2026 2:07:50 PM

^^^ I feel like that article was a bit sensational and opinionated, and should be viewed through the lens of being posted in the Style section. It has also been a critique of the WaPo over the past several years that they focus on non-news filler, and have lost their edge when some of its best writers left for greener pastures. Having said that, there's something in my to be said for anything provoking thought. Lettuce think...

I personally feel like the pressure to drink is generational. I rarely meet anyone my age that would bat an eye if I passed on alcohol. Now, I have heard that younger generations have been drinking less that older generations. And I believe it. I have met several people in my age that have given up alcohol for mental health reasons, others that have given it up for health reasons, and yet others that have given it up because they realized their peers don't drink as much as one might assume. Shit, maybe younger generations are more accepting of the fact that one might prefer other drugs to alcohol.
In fact 8 out of 10 times if there is someone pressuring me, or even asking me to drink past the initial "no thanks", it is someone that is 60 + years old.

[Edited on October 5, 2026 at 2:08 PM. Reason : carat]

10/5/2026 2:08:19 PM

One of the reasons I talked myself into drinking again after my 6 year layoff was the awkwardness of alcohol at work functions. Turns out it is awkward whether you drink or not, just for different reasons. If you are drinking it's this dance to modulate the correct amount, and if not you worry they are going to think you're an alcoholic. I used to only drink when I was going out and loved having wine with dinner. It's funny how inexpensive it feels to eat out when you are not drinking. Sometimes my bill is half what I expect, "Oh yeah we didn't spend $150 extra on alcohol." I joked not drinking in my 30s paid for our airplanes. It wasn't far off from true when you factor in 6 years of drinking and inflated dinner costs.

My wife and I did dry January this year and kept at it when January ended. We have not drank since. Definitely makes you more present with the kids, and kids tend to spill a lot of drinks, even if by accident. So good on your for slowing down out of the gate.

Not to mention the health effects. Lower blood pressure and overall better labs everything else equal.

[Edited on October 5, 2026 at 4:12 PM. Reason : a]

10/5/2026 4:11:34 PM