How Keeping a Journal Helped Me Stop Drinking

I passed my third anniversary of giving up alcohol today. I thought I would share some background on this milestone and why I decided to stop drinking.

I have a long history with alcohol. Maybe it’s the genetics mapped deep in my Irish blood or an inheritance from longstanding tradition, but alcoholism runs deep in my family, near and far. I can’t think of a time in my life that wasn’t steeped in the rituals of drinking.

I met the love of my life in a dive bar. Most of my proudest accomplishments and favorite moments were punctuated with a celebration beer or glass of wine. An early love of Hemingway surely contributed to an interweaving of my very identity with alcohol. If I closed my eyes and pictured my true self in my natural element, it was cozied up to a dimly lit bar with a whiskey on the rocks in a brown, brown study.

I was never what you’d call a problem drinker. I never hit that proverbial rock bottom. But I saw in myself the potential to become one. Retiring early brings many joys, but it also provides the means and opportunity to easily tip over into alcoholism. I left my profession for a pirate’s life of boats and docks and drinking buddies, which, in hindsight, feels like a trifecta of trouble for the would-be alcoholic. I think many people enjoy time on the water as an excuse to drink with friends. I know I surely did.

Over a stretch of twenty-five years, I gave up drinking an astonishing twenty-two times. I know this because of an obsessive…