2019: Nineteen Insights and a Few Tips From My Dry Year #confidence

A few days before December 31, 2018, I reflected about how to disrupt the gap between how life was showing up and what I most desired. Increased health, vitality, and energy was high on the desire scale, and I knew making a change in an area of life that holds the most juice would also ripple a shift into other areas.

For more than a decade, I’d enjoyed good wine with evening meals, whiskey with lodge guests, meeting friends for an evening out, a girlfriend weekend to the city, margaritas on summer evenings, a microbrew while fishing for sockeye salmon, an early morning thermos of Bailey’s and coffee on the boat while river fishing, wine tastings, and craft cocktails with Hendricks gin. Drinking alcohol had become a part of life. An idea bubbled in me: I recognized a stretch would be to say no to spirits, and experience a dry year. Not a month, but a year. I wrote in my Day One journal:

“What can you embrace that is foundational, rising from depth, and unexpectedly a game changer?”

It’s now December 29, and wow, 2019 was a game changer. Reflecting about #MyDryYear, the 2019 word of the year is confidence.

I offer these tips and insights to you, to the friends who inquire about what I discovered, and for all of us who are curious about exploring the relationship between alcohol, and greater health, vitality, and connections in 2020.

If you or someone you know is curious about a dry year, month, week, or lifestyle change, there’s no time like the present to choose health, vitality, and a reset.

Helpful Tips

• Craft a positive power statement to imagine the future you desire, together with the actions you’ll take now to get there. Be creative. A power statement will go farther than a simple intent not to consume alcohol for a determined time. Write it down, read it, and keep it close every day.
• Find a friend or therapist who will support your choice, and who you feel safe to be truthful with in conversation.
• Journal with honesty, laughter, and even tears—no one needs to ever read what you write, and it’s important to turn off your inner editor and critic voices.
• Learn to meditate, or adopt a mindfulness practice—there are many apps and classes available. I really like the @Calm app. Regular meditation helps regulate the central nervous system, and allows greater inner spaciousness to permeate your day. You will discover you are more focused and present to life.
• Ahead of time—so it comes naturally—refine what your response to others will be when you are asked why you aren’t drinking, or if you are pressured to join in. There is no reason for you to feel defensive, though you might at times—I did. Yes is yes and no is no. Your healthy boundaries will grow! And, before you go out, decide what your go-to non-alcoholic beverage choice will be.
• Explore other beverages, for example, teas. Giving up wine club and wine tastings is disappointing, and likely necessary.
• Discover hobbies and healthy activities that will bring you happiness and creative expression.
• Some friendships and relationships may shift—focus on kindness, your power statement and promise to yourself, and your own deeper choice.
• Bring a bottle of sparkling water or other beverage to BBQs, picnics, outings, parties—it will make it easier to stay on target, and you won’t feel deprived.
• Be kind to yourself if you do end up drinking. Make it conscious why it happened, and begin again. A growth mindset and failing forward is part of life. Learn from your mistakes, forgive yourself and others, and love you.
• Believe in yourself – you can do it!

This 2019 sobering inquiry into my own habits moved me through unexamined shame, lack, and isolation into confidence, abundance, and connection.

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Insights

1. Drinking alcohol is a choice. My no became unapologetic, kind, non-judging, and simply no, thank you.
2. There were definitely times—in public and alone—that a no is hard. Pausing to gently and courageously reflect on the reason, motivation, and yearning beneath the surface is key.
3. Times when I wanted to celebrate a big win, relax, chill out, or numb stress were all reasons I leaned into an old story that alcohol was a winning choice. I learned firsthand that it’s not, and identified healthy new choices.
4. It is a total delight to awaken clear headed, every day!
5. Reflecting about my past, I realize that drinking alcohol links to emotional pleasure, fun, pain, and trauma.
6. Growing up, seeing adults drinking alcohol was a rare event—I recall Sunday daquiris on special occasions. This year, I became aware about how alcohol has become central to meet ups, connecting with friends, evening meetings, gatherings, and ending the day. Drinking became embedded in daily life, and the norm.
7. I’ll be blunt: people, even close friends, will assume all sorts of reasons why you or I choose to decline alcohol. That’s their deal, and the best we can do is speak our own truth, share our choice, and ask for support. Sticking to our personal power statement keeps us true to our integrity and best self.
8. I’m now a consistent protective factor for myself—especially driving completely sober on dark, often icy roads to and from town during six months of the year.
9. I could have avoided a lot of emotional heartache in past relationships if alcohol hadn’t been in the mix—whether on my part, someone else’s, or us together. A buzz can inhibit our gut knowing and best deep sense of self.
10. Habits do shift us. A tough one for me: learning to breathe through my own shyness in big social groups, while sipping bubbly water in a wine glass. A 2019 win: in social settings, multiple times unexpected bright conversations and significant connections happened between two lucid people.
11. It is valuable to have an ally. I appreciate two friends who were fully supportive of my choice, and who I could text, message, or call with an SOS, to say: I’m tempted…, craving…, this is hard…, or I’m super proud of myself that I honored my deeper yes to myself in that situation or moment. The first three months were toughest.
12. I realized I’m a wine and glassware snob. Everything tastes better in quality stemware without a lip, especially an oaky Chardonnay, full bodied Cabernet Sauvignon, Tempranillo, Pinot Noir, or even a French 75 or 95. I broke the glass ceiling of sticking to a specific purpose for a vessel—sparkling water in a champagne flute or wine glass is a delight, as is repurposing glassware for smoothies, kombucha, water, or beverage of choice.
13. Confidence grew every month as I created new habits, challenged myself (girlfriend weekends…), experienced better sleep, memory, and vitality. An overall growth mindset became core.
14. I don’t drink water from a plastic bottle, or soda pop, or sugary drinks, so options at restaurants, bars, parties, and social functions for non-alcoholic beverages that are enjoyable is limited. Often the only choice is club soda or seltzer water, or tea that contains caffeine. An option for Kombucha is a win, so is bubbly water with the addition of a few berries, or lemon or lime wedge.
15. I will happily meet friends at a bar now. It’s not as hard with practice, nor am I as intimidated anymore. I discovered I am spirited without spirits!
16. My yes to greater health is not a reflection on you or your choices.
17. Restaurants and bars are beginning to create craft or specialty beverages, sans alcohol. I didn’t want to not meet friends in a bar, but finding a delightful beverage can be a challenge. The best I found in Anchorage is at Williwaw, and in the Soldotna-Kenai area The Flats Bistro is accommodating. My hope is that good bartenders will have a “drink” in their repertoire for non-drinkers. I’d like to banish the word “mocktail” and find a better word for non-alcohol options–why is no alcohol to be mocked?
18. I experience far more energy and focus. I’ve not yet decided what 2020 and beyond will bring; I do know this journey in my dry year, through FOMO and JOMO*, changed my life.
19. It’s definitely not always easy, and this year disrupted and opened the door for so much more vitality and creativity. I thank my deepest me for the gift of no in service to a best yes.

*FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out (it’s real) and JOMO: Joy Of Missing Out (it’s real)