Sometimes people message me asking why I quit drinking. Even more often, people I’m out to dinner with, or at a bar with, ask me why I don’t drink. Here’s the very-longwinded answer of why I quit drinking, and exactly how it all happened.

Last night, just as I finished explaining my decision to quit drinking, the man sitting across from me said, “I just realized how annoying it must be for you to have to answer that question.”

He wasn’t totally wrong. The way I feel about explaining my non-drinking to people “out in the wild” is similar to what I imagine someone who doesn’t identify as straight feels like when asked to explain their sexuality. On one hand, it’s annoying always having to explain yourself, but on the other hand, it’s a chance to educate someone about what other options are out there.

For me, not drinking never really seemed like an option.

This isn’t because my parents drink a lot (they hardly do) or because I was exposed to heavy drinkers growing up (I can’t think of any that would’ve had that effect on me). It’s because in our culture, pretty much everyone drinks. In fact, my mom actually hates alcohol, but always ends up having a drink out at dinner because that’s what people do at dinner. If she didn’t, she’d have to explain herself, or persistently say no to my great aunt’s insistence, or whatever.

Anyway, back to me and how I stopped drinking.

I had my first drink at the age of 12 with some boys who were on their senior week and celebrating the way most high school seniors do—with Jose Cuervo. It wasn’t too long before every social activity started revolving around alcohol. Going to a party? Better call your friend with a fake ID to buy some handles. Concert coming up? Time to steal 4 lokos from 7-11. Haunted mansion for Halloween? Fuck it, let’s pre-game that too!

I like to think that my experience with alcohol was pretty standard for any girl who grew up in a wealthy east-coast suburb. I possibly started drinking earlier than some of my peers, but I think kids at my high school did everything a bit earlier.

Like most people, my heaviest drinking took place in college, with my sophomore year in particular being a serious shitshow. Other than ending up in the hospital one night after a police officer saw me fall out of an Uber, there weren’t any “major” moments of concern other than the usual drunken mistakes that college kids make—although running after my ex, crying in a Playboy bunny costume was certainly a highlight.

Junior year of college, I lived in NYC for six months, and then London for three. I chilled out on the college-style binge drinking and started adopting more “adult” drinking habits. Most nights, I made dinner, my roommate brought home a bottle of wine, and we had a glass (or 2, or 3) after a long day at our internships.

By senior year of college, I had gotten sick of partying and was mostly focused on working the various jobs and freelancing gigs I had accumulated in hopes of saving money before graduation, when I knew I’d likely be moving somewhere more expensive than Philadelphia.

I can’t think of a major turning point that made me decide to try quitting drinking for the first time, that’s why this story is drawn out a bit. I think it was just a culmination of things. The tip of the iceberg was starting a full time job at a media company in NYC, which had me going to events nearly every weeknight to snag some free appetizers as my dinner, since I was broke. Drinks were free too, and when there are free drinks, you take them.

But my hangovers had started getting much worse than they had been freshman year of college. And when I went out with friends on the weekends, my whole Sunday would be a wash because I’d feel so shitty and stay in bed all day. Working a full-time job meant that I only had two days a week to myself, and I didn’t want to spend them hungover. I had also started feeling this anxiety about what I was doing with my life, and I found that being hungover just made me feel worse. Some call it “hangxiety.”

There was also the overall attitude towards drinking and work in NYC. People worked their asses off during the week, then popped a bottle of Dom and an eight ball of coke on the weekends to make themselves feel better. There were definitely ups and downs to my job, but I didn’t want to work a job—or live a life—that required me to numb myself with alcohol to feel better about it. I didn’t want to use alcohol as a crutch to make me feel okay in a shitty job, to lubricate my awkward social interactions, or to coax me into bed with some mediocre Tinder date. I wanted to do things fully, and passionately, and because I fucking wanted to. I wanted to be more present.

I didn’t want to drink just because it was free, but I felt obligated to. So, I told myself I was going to quit drinking for all of December 2016. That way, I had a “legit” excuse not to drink when someone offered me a cocktail.

As far as I remember, December flew by pretty easily. I quickly learned to order a soda so I wasn’t left awkwardly without a drink in my hand at the bars. I felt better overall, and nobody gave me too much shit about my teetotaling because they assumed it was just going to be a month.

But after new years passed (I think I had one glass of champagne on the couch with my parents and boyfriend that year), I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go back to drinking. Spending a month sober had opened my eyes to how great things could be without alcohol, but simultaneously how much I (and we as a society) rely on it for social interactions. I saw it as a challenge to overcome.

When I did drink occasionally in the following months (it was due to social pressure 99% of the time), I was even more cognizant of how shitty alcohol made me feel—whether after my first glass or the morning after a night out. Of course, it was nice to lose some inhibitions sometimes, but I wanted to learn to do that without needing alcohol to assist me.

Experimenting with sobriety made me wonder if I ever really liked drinking, or if I just did it because I felt like it was what you were supposed to do. As a control freak, I never saw the appeal in any drugs, and I can only wonder if I would’ve had the same attitude towards alcohol if it wasn’t marketed as being “cool” and mainstream.

I teetotaled for about another year or so. I stopped getting really drunk (or you know, the average level of drunk people in their early 20s get on a weekend night), but I would still have a glass of wine with dinner sometimes, or grab a cocktail if I was meeting with someone new and didn’t want to make things awkward for them.

The following September (2017), I was on a press trip in Austin and the PR manager ordered me a mimosa at brunch before I arrived. I drank it out of politeness and ended up pleasantly buzzed at 11 in the morning.

When I first stopped drinking, my goal was to remain as under the radar as possible so people couldn’t tell I wasn’t drinking. When they did notice, they would try to convince me to have a drink with them—or worse, make me feel bad about my decision not to drink. I even had a college friend uninvite me to her birthday party when she found out I wouldn’t be drinking.

But as I started drinking less and less, I became more and more confident with my decision not to drink. Part of this probably came from meeting people (and dating men) who had similar relationships to alcohol that I did. They weren’t totally sober, but preferred not to drink 99% of the time.

Gradually, instead of trying to hide behind a soda water, I would be the first to make a point to let people know I didn’t drink. Obviously, this still depends on the situation, as doing so can make me seem like a huge killjoy, but you get the point.

Now, I still don’t always refer to myself as “sober,” because I think that gives people the impression that I’m a former addict, which isn’t the case. I’ve even had people hesitate to ask me to hold their drink because they weren’t sure if I was “okay” with it. In my (short-lived) dating app profiles, I put that I wrote in my profile that I was “soberish.”

That being said, I very rarely drink. I’ll have a glass of champagne if we’re toasting to a special occasion, but that’s about it. It’s not because I restrict myself, or because I’m worried I’ll get out of control, or because I’m trying to watch my weight (it’s so awful when people assume that’s why I don’t drink), it’s because I genuinely have no desire to drink and I absolutely love being sober.

People message me sometimes saying they want to try to quit drinking, or that they’ve tried and failed but want to try again, but I think that’s the wrong way to look at being sober. My choice to not drink (and my choice to eat mostly plant-based, for that matter), is because I am choosing to do what makes me feel good. I genuinely never feel like I’m restricting myself, or I wouldn’t do it.

Of course, there are absolutely downsides to not drinking. The two that come to mind are that going out to the bars with friends isn’t very fun anymore (although tbh, was it ever fun?) and dating can be awkward (and tbh, when is it not awkward?).

I fucking love not drinking, and I am looking forward to sending this long-ass article to the next person who asks me why I don’t drink.

Thanks for reading, and I’m always happy to answer any questions!