What Surprised Me Most About Quitting Drinking

The weekend my husband and I stopped drinking was a surprise to us both. I was taking my first solo mom weekend away from my 2-year-old son, staying at a beautiful seaside hotel. I went there with no intention of changing my behavior whatsoever. In fact, I packed a couple bottles of red wine for the occasion. My vision was to spend three days wrapped in a Pendleton blanket by the fire pit, responsible for nothing but my Kindle and a big glass of red wine.

The night before my trip, I went for a few drinks with my sister-in-law. Why not? I only had more vacation in the morning, after all. But the next day, I felt like hell, a feeling that had been coming on more acutely (and more easily) as I’d aged. I was hungover and exhausted. Physically I felt like hot garbage, but the psychological side effects were no picnic either. I wasn’t even responsible for my kid that day — all I had to do was get on a boat! — but the shame and guilt I felt for having a hangover felt almost as rough as my pounding head.

On the trip, somebody recommended a book to me that completely changed my perspective. And after finishing This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol, Find Freedom, Discover Happiness & Change Your Life, I called my husband and told him I wanted to quit drinking. To my surprise, he said he was ready to quit too. But we had one big fear: we were scared how our sobriety would impact our relationships with our friends.

In our close circle, half our friends are DINKS, happily traveling the world, sleeping in, and genuinely living life to the fullest without a small one to keep alive. In short, deciding whether to have that third cocktail is just a different kind of math for them. We were genuinely fearful we’d be the ultimate buzzkill to our friend group. Not only had we changed the dynamic by bringing a kid into the picture, we’d quit drinking, too. Who would want to hang out with us anymore?!

It turns out, our friends did.

Since I had gone through nine months of forced sobriety during pregnancy, I already had an inkling of what a sober friend-hang experience looked like. But my husband, new to sober socializing, was legitimately concerned about how cutting out alcohol would impact his ability to connect with his friends. Given everyone’s busy schedules, chances to hang out were often short, and — this being Seattle — usually took place at some craft brewery or another. Going straight from work to see a friend, he was often tired, his head still stuck in whatever meeting he’d just come from. With limited opportunities and time to connect, he felt alcohol helped speed the transition.

Honestly, I had the same reservation prior to quitting: would every social interaction begin with painful, uninspired small talk? Always the class clown, I also worried my jokes wouldn’t come as easily, that I wouldn’t make my friends laugh as much as I had before.

Turns out my friends still laugh at my jokes, and I still laugh at theirs. Meanwhile, my husband still has his buddies and they’re as close as they ever were (they do golf a lot more, I’ll concede that). It was obvious once we’d quit, but somehow not before then, our friends didn’t just want to drink with us — they wanted to be with us.

What my husband and I have realized is that some settings are just going to be awkward, whether you’re a bit buzzed or not. Weddings, reunions, work happy hours — a lot of times, it’s just going to take a few uncomfortable minutes to ease in. For me, I’ll take the trade of not hating myself the following day, when, hungover, I’d snap at my toddler just for doing toddler things (think grapes up the nose). It’s also pretty nice not having cringe memories of realllly going for it to “Gettin Low.” Some people can pull it off — I am not one of those people.

Bryn Lansdowne is a writer based in Seattle, WA, where she lives with her husband, son, and grouchy 14-year-old Yorkipoo.