I Quit Alcohol and It Changed My Life
Hey Reader
Dry January starts in a few weeks.
It’s the time of year when millions of people quit alcohol for 30 days. Most go right back February 1st.
Four years ago, that was my plan too.
But when I quit drinking, I liked the benefits so much that my 30-day challenge turned into 60, then 90, and now here we are:
I know this topic is a little different than my usual stuff. But if there’s one habit that has a ripple effect over to every area of your life, it’s this one.
Quitting drinking will improve:
- Your health
- Your emotional stability
- Your focus
- Your finances
- Your relationships
Looking back, quitting alcohol quietly solved so many problems I didn’t even realize it was causing.
Maybe you’ve noticed the drinking creeping up. Used to be weekends. Now it’s most nights. You’re wondering if that’s concerning. Maybe you’re getting older and starting to take your health more seriously.
Maybe you’re not a big drinker, but you want a challenge. I know a lot of you are into self-improvement. This is a habit that actually delivers.
So I want to walk you through what happens when you quit. Day by day. Zero to 365. What the science says. What I actually felt. The stuff I wish someone told me before I started so I knew what to expect.
Maybe you’ll see yourself in it.
Judgement-Free Zone
There’s zero judgment if you keep drinking after this. My goal is to have a real conversation about the ups and downs of giving up alcohol, something I wish I’d seen before I quit.
And show you that “giving up” alcohol isn’t about losing something. It’s about everything you’ll gain.
Day 0: Where you might be
I started drinking at 14. I was hanging with seniors in high school, and thinking I was hot stuff.
Kept it going through my 20s backpacking. Everywhere you go, no matter where you’re from, we all like to drink. It’s a universal connector. Then I went on tour as a drummer. Drinking loosened me up before shows. Then business mastermind events where alcohol let your guard down and deals got made.
Alcohol felt like a cheat code, a social superpower.
I never thought I had a problem because I was doing it socially. I saw benefits from it.
Then 2020 happens.
You can remember being locked in your house. All my traveling shut down. Touring shut down. Business events shut down.
But my drinking didn’t.
By 5 PM, I needed an off switch. Alcohol delivered this on-demand stress relief.
So what started as something social turned into something I did alone. Six, seven drinks a night. Sometimes more. I’d catch myself watching the clock, counting down to beer-o’clock. Craving it earlier and earlier.
Sound familiar?
Now here’s the moment where you’d expect a big rock bottom. Like I crashed my car. Or my fiancée said she’d leave me.
I didn’t have any of that.
I just had this moment of clarity.
Do I want to keep doing this when I’m 50? I see the slippery slope. I know exactly where this is heading.
And though this, I realized:
Not having a rock bottom doesn’t mean you don’t have a problem. It means you got lucky.
I got extremely lucky.
So I took on a challenge. No booze for 30 days. What would my life feel like?
I liked the benefits so much, that 30 turned into 60, then 90.
Now here we are.
So here are the rest of the milestones and the big benefits I noticed you might feel when you quit even moderate drinking.
Day 2: Hangovers
If you were like me on day two, you still felt it.
Most think hangovers are a mix of dehydration and sugar. It’s actually something called ‘acetaldehyde.’ A byproduct of alcohol breaking down is up to 30 times more toxic than the alcohol itself.
That’s why you feel like you have the flu. You’re literally processing poison.
I remember feeling like I got hit by a Mac truck lying out on my couch, ordering Uber Eats, not being able to work. I was thinking to myself: “This is a terrible deal. Like, here I am 48 hours later, and I still feel destroyed. Is this really worth it for eight hours of fun?”
Maybe you’ve had that thought too.
Here’s a mantra that helped rewire my brain:
Not being hungover feels better than being drunk.
When you drill that into your mind, alcohol stops looking as fun.
I’ll take the consistency of sober over the roller coaster any day.
Day 30: Where things get good
Okay, this is where your long-term benefits start kicking in.
I noticed my sleep went through the roof.
I started waking up at 5 AM without an alarm, whereas in the past I had to force myself up. Now it’s like once five o’clock hits, I’m up and energized.
And what I’ve learned since: it’s not that quitting helps you sleep more, it’s that alcohol wrecks your sleep. Even moderate drinking puts you in a pseudo-sleep state. You’re not getting deep restorative REM. You’re getting light sleep, which doesn’t do much.
If you have an Oura ring or any tracker, go look at your sleep data after drinking versus not. My data was clear as day.
With all this energy from extra sleep, I was able to build some badass stuff. Like my first coaching program, my youtube channel, and other projects that require getting into flow states and deep work. All because I wasn’t dragging myself through mornings anymore.
Day 60: The boredom hits
Here’s the thing that surprised me most throughout this whole journey.
How bored I was.
And it hit me hard around day 60.
I took a good look at my life and realized how much of my free time I’d been filling with going out to a bar or drinking at home. All my socializing was associated with it.
Drinking made average moments more exciting, which sounds like a positive until you realize you’ve stopped seeking out things that are actually exciting on their own.
So I started asking myself questions I hadn’t thought about in years. What hobbies do I actually want to do? What sounds fun to me now?
I wrote a list of 100 things that sounded fun and started checking them off. Before you know it, I’m taking Improv classes. Never done improv a day in my life, but suddenly I’m on stage bombing, thinking to myself, man, I really wish I had a drink right now to crush this. But I felt alive.
I went to jujitsu. Got back into drums. 5-mile walks. Gardening. Dog training. Reading classic literature.
Life around day 60 started to feel slower. And I was okay with that.
Day 90: The Fog Lifts
This is another huge milestone for you.
There’s something in the sober community called “the fog.” Low-grade brain fog that lifts anywhere from three weeks to 90 days. I never realized how bad mine was until it cleared.
You know how post-coffee rush you feel like you can do anything? That’s how I started feeling throughout the day. It’s you +20%.
Here’s another trap I didn’t see until I was out of it. When you drink regularly, your baseline cortisol goes up. So you feel more stressed even when you’re sober. Which makes you want to drink to relax. But drinking raises that baseline even more. It becomes this flywheel where you’re just anxious all the time and don’t realize alcohol is causing it.
You ever heard of “hangxiety”? That Sunday night dread where you’re still recovering and staring down a full week, thinking… how am I gonna get through this?
Day 90, that flywheel finally stops, and I noticed positive mood shifts.
Day 180: You Start Trusting Yourself Again
My confidence went up around here.
The Latin root word of confidence (‘confidere’) means “intense trust.” And it’s really hard to trust yourself to follow through on important things when you keep slipping back into habits you know aren’t serving you.
But after 180 days, something shifts.
You feel more worthy of what you’re building. Imposter syndrome gets quieter. You know you’re practicing what you preach even when no one’s watching.
Maybe you’ve felt that gap before. Talking about your goals, but knowing your behavior doesn’t match. This is where that gap starts closing.
Day 365: The Real Work Begins
But the biggest change wasn’t physical.
It’s spiritual.
You start realizing what you were running from.
I always thought I had to be this over-the-top, high-energy person. In conversations, in videos, everywhere. Like I had to be ‘impressive’ or get everyone to laugh. And I didn’t realize it consciously until I stopped drinking and entered those same situations.
Without alcohol as a shortcut, I felt how much energy it took to be “on” all the time. And I started asking myself… what if I don’t have to be mind-blowing? What if there’s nothing to prove?
That anxiety you feel walking into a room? Where is it coming from? Is it because you think you’re not enough? Nervous what people think?
You can solve that without alcohol. When you drink, you mask the lessons that discomfort is trying to teach you.
My advice if you’re thinking about this
Heads up: If you’re a heavy drinker, check with a doctor first. Alcohol withdrawal is one of the few that can actually be dangerous. I’m just a guy who quit and wants to share what helped. Not a doctor.
That said, here are three things that helped me.
1. Don’t force it.
The only way I’ve seen people quit long-term and never look back is when it genuinely comes from them, not willpower. You have to dig for your authentic drive and the reasons you want to do this.
Not why your wife wants you to quit. Not reasons why you ‘should’ quit out of guilt. The actual reasons you want to quit for you.
When it’s genuinely your choice and not forced upon you, you don’t need willpower.
2. Flip the story
We make change harder when we focus on what we’re losing. But if you can flip it to what you’re gaining, everything shifts.
Example:
- You’re not giving up nights with friends. You’re gaining the ability to actually remember them.
- You’re not losing a way to come out of your shell. You’re gaining the chance to figure out why you thought you needed one in the first place.
Make a list of everything you think you’re giving up. Then flip each one into what you’re gaining. You’ll get to the end and realize you don’t have many good reasons to keep drinking.
3. 30 days > forever.
If I had told myself 1,400 days ago, “You’re never drinking again,” I wouldn’t have done it. That feels like a life sentence. But 30 days? Game on. I’m up for a challenge.
Even now, I don’t say I’m never drinking again. I just say I don’t feel like it.
There’s an inner rebel in all of us that wants to break rules. It’ll fight “never” until it wins. But it won’t fight “let’s just see how I feel for 30 days.”
Start with 30. See what happens.
Who you are on the other side of 30 days might surprise you. Sometimes the 2.0 version of yourself is just waiting for the fog to lift.
Go crush it.
Life Updates
My rawest video yet
New video is live about that story I shared a few newsletters back. I talk openly about the pressure of the last couple years, how it hit my mental health, and what it’s looked like to pull myself out of it in real time. A lot of you said it mirrors your exact journey, and I’ve read every single comment. Challenging myself to make more story-driven content this year, lmk if it resonates.
Journaling
I’m working on this year’s Ultimate Guide to Keeping a Journal video. Our unofficial Christmas tradition at this point. Journaling is still the number one tool I’d use to change my life if I had to start over, and it’s the exact system inside My Best Journal. If you want a head start instead of waiting for 2026 to roll around, this will get you set up and ahead of the curve.
Family
The GSDs just graduated from a pretty intense six-week board-and-train program, and man… having them gone left a bigger hole than I expected. If you’re a dog person, you get it. I’m writing this right now with both of them lying at my feet, and all feels right again. Life’s too short not to have dogs.
See you next saturday,
CK
