It was July and I showed up to my Sunday soccer game with a huge scrape on my knee.

“Jesus, Penty, what happened to your knee?”

“I fell off my CitiBike on the way home last night,” I said.

A bunch of us had been on a bar crawl in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn called The Red Hook Rampage. I had left the festivities around midnight having been well served in several different bars.

“So, what happened? Did a car cut you off?”

“Nah, I just fell,” I said.

“Did you crash into a curb or something? Were the brakes messed up?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “I just, like, fell.”

Minor injuries are an occupational hazard of the seasoned drinker, along with hangovers and the after effects of too much takeout ordered under the influence. But this wasn’t like a bruise from tripping on a stair up to my apartment. This wouldn’t end up healing for over a month.

I always liked drinking since I started doing it in earnest my freshman year of college. After four years of strict studying and rule following in high school, intended to set me up for admission to a prestigious university, I promptly set about squandering the fruits of my achievement. I was going to frat parties, playing drinking games, and just generally behaving like an eighteen-year-old. I liked the buzz and when you went out and got drunk with someone, it was like a bonding experience. The day after a night of drinking, you would catch up with your new friends about the adventure you had been on, how drunk you got, how sick you got afterwards, whether you hooked up (I didn’t).

There’s a typical story structure when a memoirist recounts their relationship with their drug of choice. It’s the addiction memoir. The author will recount how their first experience was revelatory. Were I writing an addiction memoir, I would tell you my first drink was a blissful feeling unlike anything I had ever felt before. I no longer felt socially awkward, and it made me feel like my problems had all melted away. I had finally found the answer.

Yeah, not really.

When I say it was fun and I liked the buzz, I mean it was fun and I liked the buzz. Given the context clues thus far, you know where this is going but I have to set some expectations here: my story wouldn’t turn any heads at an AA meeting. It doesn’t end up with me getting the shakes when I can’t find my flask at 8:00AM. No intervention. No DUI. No job loss. No ruined relationships.

I just really like drinking.

I like bars. I like meeting people for drinks. I like drinking beers while I watch sports. I like drinking games. I like darts and pool. I like sitting outside on nice days with my dog and having a beer.

And so much of the things that I read about problem drinking didn’t apply to me.

You drink because you think it gives you confidence!

Nope. Don’t feel confident when I drink. I just like drinking.

It helps you with your anxiety!

Nah. Nothing really helps with that. I can only hope to minimize it with meditation and meds.

You don’t think you can live without it!

I’ve given it up for extended periods numerous times.

It’s a disgusting poison and you only drink it because you’re addicted!

I’m not blind to the fact that it’s an alcohol delivery mechanism but I genuinely like the taste of beer. Red wine too.

The social aspect of alcohol is a myth!

Hate to call you on this one but I’ve had some great times drinking with friends.

And some of the stuff seriously didn’t resonate. I read Alan Carr’s book about drinking, and he has this pitcher plant theory. The pitcher plant catches insects with its nectar and then they slide down to their death. Alcohol is like that, one sip and you’re trapped, addicted. If you drink at all, your destruction from alcohol is assured, it is only a matter of time. I drank pretty steadily for about twenty-nine years, just how long is this timeline?

In This Naked Mind, the author points to a homeless alcoholic drinking liquor from a paper bag in Vegas saying, what’s the difference between that person and you who are about to go out and get drunk?

Is that a serious question? I don’t know. I guess I’d say, conservatively, hundreds of different decisions made on a daily basis over a number of years?

You’re an astute reader, though. You’ve already clocked that I was reading those books in the first place. Just why exactly would I be doing that?

Things started to change during lockdown. Drinking was a way to pass the time and, hell, I could get away with it. I didn’t have to commute the next morning nor look presentable. The unmistakable sign, though, was when I would take out my recycling. As I dumped a bin full of cans knowing I was the only one drinking them I thought, “that’s a hell of a lot of cans.”

I had always tracked my drinks just to make sure I wasn’t going down the same path as my mother (we can discuss that another time). I had a calendar on my kitchen wall. I wrote down the number of drinks I had in a day and mark when I had a dry day. I would add the numbers up at the end of the week. As the pandemic went on, I noticed those weekly numbers rising and rising.

Meanwhile, there’s another weather system in this perfect storm: beer evolved.

I remember the first time I had a Heady Topper. It’s a double IPA from Vermont that my friend had brought me. Its quality and rarity were somewhat legendary at the time. It came in a 16 ounce can and had a high ABV (alcohol by volume) of 8% (most beers are 12 ounces and around 5%). Unlike most high ABV beers, it was drinkable. It wasn’t bitter as hell or syrupy sweet like the stuff that Belgians serve in fancy bulbous glasses. It was really good. It was rare, though. Not only was it not available in New York, it was rare in Vermont where people would line up for hours to get a case from the latest batch. Hell, my friend only managed to bring me two.

That was over a decade ago. Now, not only are 16 ounce silver cans of drinkable double IPAs available, they’re everywhere. Heady Topper isn’t even the best one anymore. Within walking distance of my apartment is Other Half Brewery and Finback, both of whom make banging IPAs. And Heady Topper, that holy grail of IPAs, has been seen in my corner bodega recently.

I suppose this is kind of like the point in the addiction memoir where the protagonist kicks it up a notch? Like they were a regular pot smoker but they decided to do a line of coke and everything changes. Or when Leonardo DiCaprio has a dream sequence running through a beautiful field of flowers after shooting heroin for the first time in The Basketball Diaries?

Not really.

It’s just really good beer and my favorite was called Sip of Sunshine and it’s all I wanted to drink.

Post pandemic, my world had become far more local. In the before times, it was odd if I was ever back from Manhattan before 10:00PM. Now it was rare if I left a three block radius of my apartment. I had a dog to walk, new neighbors that I was getting to know, and a local that I could head to at any time. The bartenders would reach for a Sip of Sunshine as I came in the door.

I’ve mentioned the things that I liked about drinking but pretty soon my reasons for going to have a drink were getting pretty loose. Yeah, sitting out on a beautiful day with a beer was great. But save it for a special occasion, don’t have some Pavlovian response to sunshine where you suddenly run out of your apartment for a beer. It also wasn’t lost on me that I had also started using the exact opposite reason to drink. “Oh man, what a crappy day outside, welp, nothing left to do except go have a few.”

And I loved beer and sports, especially soccer. But save it for a game that you’ll enjoy out with friends: the World Cup or the Euros, Tottenham versus Arsenal. Towards the end, it was “no way! Eintracht Frankfurt is playing Galatasaray? What, am I not gonna get some beers for that at 3:00 on a Wednesday?!”

My weekly tally started rising. I don’t want to talk actual numbers but, to put it in Gen X terms, Fugazi would have been horrified and The Replacements would have considered me a lightweight. During one particularly heavy week, it rose to a number that I thought was pretty extreme, I said to myself, “Jesus… okay, let’s consider that the upper limit.” And then, having set that upper limit in my mind, without meaning to, I found myself pushing beyond it.

Because I was tracking on a calendar, I could see the number of dry days dwindling and the stretches of days in a row that I drank increasing. And it worried me. I would look ahead to days that had yet to come and say to myself, “I just won’t drink on these days for the rest of the month.” I’d make it a day or two and then decide I was fine and there was nothing to worry about and I’d go get a four pack and watch TV.

I said that a lot of the common excuses people made for drinking didn’t apply to me. I still think that’s true. I didn’t use it to manage emotions or to reduce anxiety (though that was a benefit) but I did have triggers: loneliness and boredom, both of which were never in short supply. And I’ve since learned that when you drink enough, you highjack your own dopamine so that normal things don’t even seem like they’d be fun. Sitting at home and reading a book? Meditating? Going for a walk? That sounds boring as hell. I’d rather just go down the block for two.

I had also started to realize that it’s never just two.

You wake up at 3:00am and cringe and think, “Christ, I did it again.” There are a couple of empty IPA cans on your floor in addition to the empty container of a chicken mole quesadilla or a greasy box from Joe’s pizza: not the good Joe’s from Manhattan, the 5th Ave. Park Slope Joe’s with the spicy chicken slice that becomes irresistibly delicious after IPA number four. And you said you wouldn’t order that stuff but you fucking did and you feel gross because you haven’t been running because you’ve discovered lately that not running is actually an option and you’ve been taking it over and over again. You might be on the couch or you might be in bed but, either way, you’ll be switching between the two to try to get comfortable and sleep through the rest of the night and then you try to piece together the night before. You didn’t do anything crazy. You didn’t get arrested or get into a fight. You never do that. You never have. But what time did you leave the bar? And how many drinks did you have? Was it seven or eight? Did you get another four pack from the bodega on the way home? You check your bank app to see how much you spent and do some quick division from the total to see how many drinks that was. Then you pick up the cans and and find one that’s half full. So, you pour that out for the most meager gesture of responsibility that you can muster. And then you go to the fridge and find two of the four beers you bought and you pour those out too and it reminds you of when you were still smoking and you would throw a half pack of cigarettes out in the morning but then buy a new pack at lunchtime but this won’t be like that. No. Tomorrow you won’t drink. And you look through your phone to see if you sent any texts or emails that you might regret and there’s a text there that you don’t remember sending but, huh… holy shit, it’s coherent so no harm no foul. And you lie down on the couch to sleep instead of your bed because it just feels better somehow until an hour later you decide it would be better to sleep in your bed but that’s uncomfortable so you go back to the couch and when you take the dog for a walk when the sun rises, you take the empties with you to the recycling just to have them the hell out of the house so it’s like a clean slate. Later you’ll check the recycling bins to see that the lady with the headphones who collects cans from your street has taken them away so they’re truly gone. And you get a coffee with a shot of espresso and you feel like crap. Maybe it’s a workday, maybe it’s a weekend day, how different are they really? You try to distract yourself from the guilt. Maybe you send a panicked email to your therapist, maybe not. But the anxiety starts to lift around lunchtime and you tell yourself that things really aren’t that bad. And when you take the dog for her noon walk you realize that it’s the kind of day that would be nice to sit out on a porch with a book and a beer or maybe Ajax just happens to be playing Olympiakos at 3:00…

Here’s the thing, I still really like drinking. That’s why I don’t do it anymore. With the help of a really useful podcast I came to two pretty important conclusions. I drink the way I drink, and I can’t moderate.

I never thought that I would stop drinking until I HAD to stop drinking and I never wanted to be the kind of person who HAD to stop drinking. But having to stop drinking is a low fuckin’ bar for problematic drinking. “Welp, no doctor has told me I’ll die if I don’t stop. No liver transplants. No jail time. I’m fine, right?”

Not really.

Also, no post about quitting drinking would be complete without a shameful admission, so here goes. Remember how everyone asked me how I crashed my bike after The Red Hook Rampage? Did you notice anything about my answers? Kinda vague, right?

That’s because I don’t remember it. At all.

I remember getting the CitiBike out of the dock. The next thing I remember I was putting the CitiBike back in a dock closer to my apartment with blood running down my shin.

I was riding a bicycle in Brooklyn at night, in traffic, without a helmet, black out drunk.

My last drink was August 18th, 2024 and, like I said, that bike crash was in July… of 2023.

I got the place where the wake up call wasn’t waking me up.

So, if we’re continuing along in the blog post as addiction memoir conceit, there’s only one thing left: the tragic relapse. I’m hoping to avoid that part. Look, no one quits drinking and says, “you know what? I think I’ll give that whole relapse thing a whirl.” My wish for it to never happen isn’t a guarantee. All I can do is hold myself accountable.

Luckily, I learned a pretty valuable lesson from smoking. I quit for over a year and then went through a tough time and used that as an excuse to have one cigarette. I was back to my old habit in a few weeks. And then, even though I didn’t want to smoke or be a smoker anymore, it took me nine months to kick it again.

So, you can’t have just one?

The answer to that question is twofold. One, probably not. See the cigarette comparison above. But two, why the hell would I do that? One beer? Do you even know what beer is for? Beer is for sustained, continuous consumption. That’s why beer comes in packs and cases. I don’t want one. I want eight. And I’ve given up the possibility that that will change.

Am I an alcoholic? An addict? Describing myself that way doesn’t help me. I prefer alcohol free, sober, or just saying, “I don’t drink anymore.” Could I have become an alcoholic or an addict? Not gonna lie, I had potential. I really could have made a go of it if I stuck with it. But my passions lie elsewhere.

I went to a few AA meetings and it didn’t seem like it was the place for me. I say the following knowing full well that comparing yourself to others can often be a mental trick you use to say, “I’m not that bad,” so you can keep drinking. That being said, sitting in a church with self-identified alcoholics kind of made me feel like a promising college basketball player in a room with grizzled NBA veterans. I would have been telling the story of how I walked on my Division 3 team to a room full of people who know what it’s like to be punched in the face by Ron Artest.

I made a list of things I did while drinking that I’m not proud of. I look at it sometimes when I need a reminder. Again, to put this in perspective, it would make a boring ass memoir but I’m sure as hell not sharing it here. But here are a couple of quick apologies. If I told I was just taking a break, sorry that I lied. It was just easier to say that at the beginning. And I’d be lying if I didn’t feel a pang of regret for the lady who collects cans on my street. I know my sobriety has really put a dent in her haul.

And if I told you that I loved you over the past few years, there’s a better than average chance I’d been drinking. The good news is, I meant it.