1,000 Days Dry

That’s right–today (Saturday, Sept 28th) makes 1,000 days since my last drink. For over two and a half years, I’ve dodged the booze bullet but have still gone to concerts, sung karaoke, and even released a solo album of original songs on which I played all the instruments and recorded the whole thing at home on my lunch breaks.

Now, I’m not saying I was an alcoholic and just had to stop before bad things happened. However, during the COVID phase of 2020 and 2021, I started drinking more out of habit than any other reason, and that’s not a habit I felt good about.

I’m also not saying that list in the first paragraph wouldn’t have happened had I been drinking–but I think I can say that I’ve been more productive in this last 1,000 days than I would have been otherwise.

I once took a year off from drinking (in 2017), and it was an excellent year for my business and health. So, I was hopeful that this break would yield similar results. This time, I planned on taking a year off and then reassessing.

And man, that year went by fast. My sleep improved significantly, I was lifting heavy in the gym, and I lost weight in the process. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I just wasn’t ready to start back up. So, I decided on another year.

I’ve been enjoying being more present in my daily interactions with my patients and friends here at the office. My guitar playing has improved dramatically, and there’s always something to think about or handle with the spa business (in case you don’t know, my wife and I own Hand and Stone Oak Forest right around the corner).

So, here we are—1,000 days dry. Although there is still an occasion here and there where a drink sounds good—mostly at nice restaurants and such—but when the moment passes, and I’m driving home, I’m always glad I skipped the sauce. And I’m even more happy about that decision the next day when I get up ready to rock. At this point I have so much inertia not drinking that it would take more effort to start again than it does to stay on the train I’m on.

I can’t say I’ll never have another drink, but for now, I will keep on this path. I wrote more about this subject at the end of my first year, and you can read about that here.

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend.

Doc G

P.S. I had multiple people ask what the actual recipe is for the Poor Man’s Ozempic I wrote about recently (it was a very popular article), so I updated the post to add the exact measurements of everything. I also put the three ingredients together in one place to make it easier to see/find.