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Somebody asked me recently why I don’t drink nonalcoholic beer.
There are two main reasons, one of which is obvious, the other one not so much.
The obvious reason: It’s my understanding that most nonalcoholic beers have alcohol in them. It’s very trace amounts, but it’s some. I need to be a zero alcohol person. If there can be negative alcohol in stuff, sign me up for that. I’ve been told newer nonalcoholic beers might have 0% alcohol. I’m not sure if that is true, and I’m not even interested in finding out because of Reason No. 2.
Which is that alcohol wasn’t just a thing that I did in a vacuum. It had so many rituals attached to it. So did my drug use.
Here’s what I mean by that. In my early days of drinking, before I drank all day every day, I started drinking two beers every day with two cigarettes. I did it at the end of every day. Not some days, or many days. I did it every day. I would tell myself I had a hard day and my feet really hurt, so what was the harm in a couple of beers and cigarettes?
Oh man… so many harms, actually. First of all, my girlfriend (who is now my wife) didn’t like smoking. So I had to hide that part it. I also didn’t want her seeing me drink every single day, so I’d ditch the cans. So that got me started, slowly, on the idea that a little secret here or there was no big deal.
The second thing is, it became woven into every day. It was like putting on pants and brushing my teeth in the morning. It was something that I did, and I did it at the end of the day, and I did it every single day. It was a ritual: long day, cold beers, cigarettes out front of my apartment complex.
This was 20 years ago, back before I got into hardcore drinking and drugging. So at first, I would drink two beers over the course of an hour or so, right after dinner. I would put them in the freezer for about 20 minutes so they were absolutely as cold as possible. I’d put one in for 20 minutes, then pull it out and put the other one in the freezer as I drank the first one. Then I’d drink the second one 20 minutes later.
You can guess how this story progresses. I started drinking the beers closer together to keep the same level of buzz going. Then I started thinking, “What would be the big deal if I had three beers every night instead of two?”
And on and on and on for almost a decade. I added other rituals that always had drugs and alcohol associated with them, like watching football with friends or going to holiday parties. More, more, more. More drinking, more secrets, more rituals… then my life became unmanageable and I become powerless over what happened to me after I had a sip of alcohol.
So that brings me back to nonalcoholic beer. I just can’t do it. I think within two weeks, I’d be having my nonalcoholic beer at the end of the day, and I would be overly excited about it, then I would be drinking two nonalcoholic beers every day, and then I would drink a few extra during big football games... it just wouldn’t end well.
How do I know that? Well, I just do. I see it happen with other addictions. I have worked through a pretty nasty soda habit during the pandemic, where I was drinking an obscene amount every day. It started as one Diet Coke, then it was two, then it was two back-to-back to maximize effect. I would have them at the same time every day, sitting in the same chair with my laptop on my lap. So it became ritualized, and it was hard to break, just as alcohol and drugs were. I found that when something is woven into your life like that, whether it’s soda or TV or alcohol or drugs, it’s hard to unweave.
So let’s talk solutions. One is a no-brainer and applies to the nonalcoholic beer thing—I just can’t do it. At all. So the solution is to never start the ritual at all.
OK, well, that’s often easier said than done because I think most people, including me, don’t realize something has become tattooed into their lives until it’s already in there. For me, that has included chewing tobacco, soda and quite bit of other food issues where I found myself doing unhealthy things that were once-in-a-while and no big deal, then became something unhealthy and problematic for me.
In that case, I did not have success in just quitting. I did, however, have some success replacing the ritual with a healthier ritual. I’ll give you an example. I used to hang out with some friends and watch sports and drink and drug and smoke cigarettes all night. When I got sober, I still wanted to hang out with them, but had a hard time sitting in the same seat at my friend’s house and watching UFC fights, where the only difference was that I wouldn’t use drugs and alcohol.
So I started inviting them to my house instead, and I found it broke some of the mental associations I had been doing.
I think I am going to have to deploy something like that in my life in the near future when it comes to eating crap at night. Will bad eating every evening kill me? Nah, it’s not the same as boozing. But I do feel gross afterward and want to change. So I’m going to maybe have to overhaul my post-dinner cookie slamming myself. I’ll let you know how it goes!
In case you missed it, I put together a fun mini comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes. Check it out HERE! (It’s behind a paywall)
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
“The more I work the steps, the nicer everyone gets!”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, October 2006, by Vivian W. of Tucson, Arizona)
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