I Quit Drinking Four Years Ago. I’m Still Confronting Drinking Culture.

Maybe you made a New Year’s resolution to cut down on the amount of alcohol you drink or to stop drinking altogether. Maybe you’ve committed to Dry January. Maybe you were alarmed when the surgeon general last week said that consuming alcohol is a leading preventable cause of cancer, and that alcoholic beverages should carry warning labels more like those for cigarettes.

Whatever the reason, a reconsideration of alcohol in our lives is in the air.

As someone who stopped drinking four years ago, shortly after my brother died — for me, a moment of reflection — I am always encouraged when people tell me that they are considering quitting. This is in part because I know that quitting involves more than conquering your thirst; it’s also about confronting the aspects of our culture that normalize and romanticize drinking and can be suspicious and dismissive of those who quit.

I quit drinking because I was tired of being tired, of feeling foggy and sick, of not being able to recognize myself. I felt like I was dying, and I wanted to live.

But quitting didn’t come without fears.

I didn’t know who I would be without alcohol. I didn’t know if I would still be fun and funny. More important to me, I didn’t know if I would be able to access my creativity without some way of achieving transcendence.

In her autobiography, the late singer Natalie Cole describes how, at one point in her career, “I had really believed that I needed drugs to perform at my best.” At one point, I worried that the poetry of language would elude me without drinking.