the data drove me (not) to drink

some cold hard facts to go with my cold (near) beer

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If you’ve been playing along at home, I’ve teased this topic multiple times starting with my very first post (second paragraph, fourth sentence - go ahead and take a peek if you haven’t read it). As I started to write this week, I questioned why it’s taken me so long to go into detail on this topic while at the same time being deliberate with the drip feed approach. Perhaps it’s because being honest about such a personal topic is akin to stretching a muscle: you can’t do it all at once as you’re liable to hurt yourself, so it’s best to ease into it. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t sure how what I’m about to share would be received in one gulp;¹ would it be too preachy, too holier-than-thou, too old-man-yelling-from-the-front-steps-to-turn-down-the-bass-in-your-car. Or, could I simply be waiting for the calendar to align in such a way (as I’m wont to do) to have this come out the day after hitting some milestone?

Regardless,² it’s time.

This is about how, after years of missing all the signs, the data finally drove me to remove alcohol from my life, and why me, my family and my community are better for it.

Growing up, I became aware that substance misuse³, and more broadly, addiction, ran in my family. It scared the absolute shit out of me. Seeing family members struggle with the disease and the impact that alcoholism in particular had, made me avoid alcohol completely in my younger years. While I loved my dad’s Grolsch bottles, I hated that first sip of beer he let me try over dinner one night. I swore I would never drink. In fact, I was straight-edge - that phrase takes one back, doesn’t it - in high school. I vividly remember drawing the X with black pen on my left knee in English class to prove it. 

It wasn’t until my sophomore year of college that I started to drink. Let’s just say I made up for lost time. You see, I was (am) a fish when I drink. I was (am) always a “just-one-more” kind of guy. To this day, just the smell of tequila makes me want to retch, just like I did after the first night I chased it with Goldschläger and some kind of jungle juice at a ‘70s party.

I have a predilection for bitter things, so as I got older, I tended to gravitate towards IPAs. I also never met a hop I didn’t like and sought out Double and Triples - the higher A.B.V. the better. Case in point: on our honeymoon, I spent a few hours at the Pasadena Yard House while my wife had an appointment with her old hairdresser, where I proceeded to consume 6 Double and Triple IPAs - nothing below 9.5% - while talking to a couple from Bakersfield; that night, I threw up in our hotel room while muttering:

I must have been roofied. 

Remember how I was straight-edge in high school? I threw up twice at my 20th year reunion because I stuck to double IPAs while I stupidly didn’t eat anything because they only had cheese pizza and I wasn’t eating dairy at the time (if you’ve read my previous posts, you realize the irony of this). 

I’ve written before about the fits and starts I’ve had with alcohol. A few years after limiting my alcohol to just Brooklyn Lager the night I met my future wife, I’d consistently done Dry January⁴ I would always lose 10 pounds, always slept better, and always felt better. I mentioned before how I lasted until March 18th once (capped off with a Pliny the Elder from BG). But it never stuck.

That is until I gave Sober October a try but with one key difference: I would do it while tracking my strain, sleep and recovery with WHOOP as part of their challenge. I started using WHOOP that June as a way to see just how hard I was pushing myself physically, while also making sure I was recovering just as hard (or is it soft (or sawft)?) by using a 24/7 Heart Rate Variability tracker. Because I had a few months of data with a mix of green, yellow and red recovery days (you can guess what you want more of), I had a great baseline by which to compare.  While I am but an “N of 1”, comparing 31 days of “experimental” data - abstaining from alcohol - with 90 days where drinking was almost an everyday occurrence, seemed scientific enough for me in which to put some credence. 

Let’s allow the recovery data to speak for itself:

• July: 12 Green, 12 Yellow, 7 Red

• August: 7 Green, 19 Yellow, 5 Red (including my 20th reunion)

• September: 14 Green, 13 Yellow, 3 Red

• October: 18 Green, 12 Yellow, 1 Red⁵

Seeing this in black and white - or, rather, in (little) Red and Yellow, and (lots of) Green - I made the decision to continue abstaining in November.  And December. And, more or less, the results continued to be the same. 

Three months leading up to Sober October, 2019

First three months without alcohol.

It was around that time that I also found a legit replacement for that bitter, piney, hoppiness that I admittedly missed. Athletic Brewing, based out of Stratford, CT - and funnily enough, co-founded by a guy I grew up with, but didn’t realize it until I was already a paying customer - had been making craft near beer⁶ since 2018. I had actually tried their beer at a local Craft Beer Fest and was impressed enough to tell my dad, who had quit drinking - cold turkey - 15 years prior, that good non-alcoholic beer existed.

Spotted in the wild.

Their beer started popping up everywhere - at Whole Foods, at the local beer distributor, at football stadia. And their brewery was only a 45-minute drive away, so I was easily able to snag Pilot Program specialties any weekend I wanted (their DT Tropical Sour is one of the tastiest beers, near or not, that I’ve had the chance to taste). To my wife’s chagrin, they also have a subscription service that delivers two six-packs to my doorstep once a month; to my dad’s delight, I signed him up for his own. And like Ivan Pavlov’s dog, the crack of the can still calms me down at the end of a day, albeit without the hangover the next day.  

With the push from WHOOP and the pull from Athletic, it’s been 600 days since I last had alcohol.  The benefits are many: I’m always willing and able to be a sober driver; I have not woken up with a hangover in almost two years and I savor my mornings; my blood tests and health stats have never been better; I have a clearer head and haven’t had a migraine for as long as I can remember. While I was never a mean drunk, my reactions have been calmer - last summer, while burning salmon on a silicon baking sheet on the grill next to our newly purchased house, I calmly grabbed the tongs, pulled the flaming sheet from the grill and safely turned off the grill without uttering a single curse word.

And I’m not the only one who has seen benefits to removing alcohol. As she states in Broken Horses,⁷ Brandi Carlile, as a way to improve her vocal performance, “stopped drinking alcohol onstage, or even on tour, completely.”

I’m often asked, are there things I miss about drinking alcohol? Absolutely. With the weather warming up, I do miss raising a crisp glass of Summer Water (you may know it as Rosé). I miss a Classic Negroni for which I’m still on the hunt for a sans-alcohol replacement (if anyone has any recommendations, feel free to drop them in the comments below).

With that said, I can’t help but feel that avoiding alcohol has become a superpower of sorts as it is by now all too clear that the COVID-19 pandemic led to significant increases in alcohol consumption globally. I do not know who I would be as a husband, father, brother, son, friend and colleague had I not stopped drinking alcohol when I did.

I’ll (not) drink to that.⁸

Cheers.

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They say the truth sets you free - and that was my truth. Did it leave a bitter taste in your mouth? If it did, good - you know how I like bitter (near) beers - plus it means it made you feel something. Authenticity will do that.

We’d love to know your truth. Write with us.

So, what’ll it be, partner? Let us know in the comments or by emailing me at jeremy@projectkathekon.com.

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1. Pardon the drinking pun.

2. Side note: It took until I was 25 to realize that irregardless is not a word. I still slip up sometimes out of habit.

3. If you, or anyone you know is truly struggling, there is help available by calling SAMHSA’s National Helpline: 1-800-662-HELP (4357). SAMHSA’s National Helpline is a free, confidential, 24/7, 365-day-a-year treatment referral and information service (in English and Spanish) for individuals and families facing mental and/or substance use disorders.

4. This conveniently aligned with annual company events where I had an excuse to not drink too much by not drinking at all.

5. If we want to split hairs, I had two reds in October, as November 1 was a Red Recovery from Halloween where I ate way too much food and sugar before bed - something I now track within the Journal feature where I can see what impacts things like REM sleep (reading before bed, good) and overall recovery (NSAIDs, good; device in bed, very bad).

6. The old joke says that non-alcoholic beer and sex on the beach are both fucking close to water. Like that’s such a bad thing?

7. As an affiliate of Bookshop.org (read: they are not Amazon), project kathekon will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. You’ll also help a local independent bookstore in your community.

8. As a fitting coda, when my parents came to visit for the first time in 16 months due to COVID-19, where my dad and I could enjoy several Athletic Brewing near beers in each other’s company, I experienced my longest streak of green recovery days in a row ever - seven - with WHOOP.