Quitting Alcohol Opened My Eyes…

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by Thomas Detert.

Alcohol Didn’t Ruin My Life. It Just Paused It.

Alcohol didn’t ruin my life.
It just made me tolerate one I should have outgrown.

Nothing was “wrong” with my drinking.
That was the problem.

For a long time, alcohol felt like a companion.

Not a problem.
Not a crisis.
Just… there.

It helped take the edge off the day. It softened stress. It blurred dissatisfaction just enough that I could keep going without asking hard questions.

And that’s exactly why it stayed.

Alcohol has a way of numbing things quietly. Not just pain, but the signals — the internal nudges that say, Something here needs to change.

Discomfort.
Restlessness.
That low hum of dissatisfaction you feel when a life no longer fits quite right.

Those signals aren’t flaws. They’re messages.

Alcohol doesn’t erase them. It just turns the volume down.

I’ve quit drinking before. More than once.

And I’ve restarted too — telling myself I was fine, that I had perspective now, that this time would be different.

I wasn’t reckless. I wasn’t falling apart. I was functioning. Productive. Responsible. From the outside, nothing looked “wrong.”

But inside, something was stalled.

What I eventually realized is that alcohol wasn’t wrecking my life.

It was pausing it.

When I’m honest with myself, alcohol allowed me to tolerate things I shouldn’t have.

Drift.
Avoidance.
Decisions I knew I needed to make — but didn’t.

It made it easier to sit with misalignment instead of confronting it. Easier to stay comfortable instead of decisive. Easier to postpone change and call it patience.

Nothing dramatic happened.
No crash. No collapse.

Just a slow accumulation of later.

And later can quietly turn into years.

This time, I stopped for good.

Not because of guilt.
Not because of fear.
Not because I hit some mythical bottom.

I stopped because I finally noticed the contrast.

Without alcohol, I’m clearer.

My thinking is sharper. My energy is steadier. My motivation feels intrinsic again — not forced or borrowed from caffeine and momentum.

But more than that, I’m present.

Present enough to sit with discomfort instead of escaping it. Present enough to listen to myself. Present enough to act.

I’m no longer circling the things I know need attention — in my work, my habits, my direction. I’m addressing them.

Quietly. Honestly. One decision at a time.

What alcohol really took from me wasn’t health or reputation.

It took authorship.

It took my willingness to stay with discomfort long enough for it to show me something true.

Now the signals are back.

And I welcome them.

Because discomfort, when you stop numbing it, turns into clarity.

And clarity, sooner or later, demands action.

I didn’t quit drinking to become better.

I quit to become myself again.

More awake.
More deliberate.
More honest about what isn’t working — and more willing to change it.

This isn’t an argument against alcohol.

It’s a reflection on what happens when you stop muting the voice inside you that knows it’s time to live differently.

There’s no pitch here.

No lesson.
No prescription.

If this resonated, my hope isn’t that you agree with me — or even that you stop drinking.

My hope is that you pause long enough to notice where you might be numbing something that deserves your attention.

And that you choose your own next step.

For me, one book that helped reframe this journey was CLEAR: The Only Neuroscience-Based Method for High Achievers to Quit Drinking Without Willpower, Rehab or AA. Not because it told me what to do — but because it helped me see what was already true.