Sobriety and other goals #

In 2025, I set a goal for myself of not drinking any alcohol throughout the entire year. With only five days remaining in the year, I’m declaring victory!

Actually, there were two accidents:

• once when I mixed up a stranger’s Mai Tai for my own virgin Mai Tai at a luau. Whoops.
• a second time when I mistook a sampler at the grocery store for apple cider, when it was in fact a hard cider. I assumed that since it was unattended, it must not be alcoholic, but I was mistaken.

Otherwise, I’ve been sober!

So I wanted to write about my year of sobriety, and why I will be drinking alcohol again in 2026.

But first, why the hell was it so easy? #

I do new years resolutions pretty much every year. This is the only one I can think of that I’ve adhered to for more than even a few months.

I think there are three major reasons why this one was so successful.

1. It was easy to evaluate #

The pass/fail condition was extremely easy to evaluate. I knew immediately and with certainty if I’d failed.

If I hadn’t yet reached for some alcohol and poured it down my gullet, then I was still passing.

Year long goals require maintenance in the form of evaluating the goal for success. Analysis/reflection are points of failure and I think I removed those points of failure by choosing a goal whose evaluation was instantaneous and obvious.

2. Successful by default #

I could not, by inaction, fail. Failure was opt-in only.

I think this too can be viewed as a removal of points of failure, because at no point did I have to go “do something” to ensure I didn’t fail.

3. Something I wanted to do #

I actually was quite tired of drinking. I wanted to take a break. It’s easy to stop doing something you don’t want to do.

Surprises #

Some things I did not expect that I experienced as a result of sobriety:

• Sobriety is a little bit contagious. Other people in my life drank noticeably less.
• Vacations are actually more fun without alcohol. Vacations can be stressful insofar as they usually require coordination with others and adapting to different environments and changes in plans. It’s easier to make the best of vacations when you’re sober and therefore more competent and therefore able to manage that stress better.
• For the first several months of the year, the main emotion I experienced about being sober was relief. It turns out I had been dreading upcoming social engagements that came with an expectation of imbibement. A New Years resolution was an easy excuse to give for why I wasn’t drinking.
• The times I craved alcohol most were when I was bored or in a good mood. Others frequently report using alcohol when stressed or depressed.

Pros and cons of sobriety itself #

Pros were pretty obvious and a lot of people report these when they go sober:

• Some nuisance-grade ailments disappeared by March 2025. Chronic headaches, which I’d seen several doctors about over years, disappeared, and I stopped having heartburn.
• I felt alert and clear headed more often.
• I think sobriety played a role in me losing 40 lbs.

Cons were a little bit more subtle:

• There’s something uncomfortable in general about adding constraints to the way you live your life. Identifying with what you don’t do feels like some sort of antipattern for developing who you are. I don’t take this discomfort too seriously, because intellectually I think it’s easy to defend the idea that what one resists actually says volumes about what kind of person they are. But in any case, this was an uncomfortable feeling I experienced throughout the year.
• Similarly, as dynomight once wrote, “what’s really cool is to be a cultural omnivore who appreciates everything,” and it’s hard to be a cultural omnivore when you deny yourself one of the most celebrated molecules of all time. There were a few cultural omnivore opportunities that I had to pass up and which I won’t get back, e.g. wineries and breweries I skipped and to which I’m not likely to ever return.
• (the most obvious con) Alcohol is a convenient and reliable source of fun/joy/pleasure, and there were times throughout the year I wanted that and had to deny myself that pleasure.

An end to sobriety in 2026 #

I enjoy drinking alcohol, and I’ll be doing it again starting in 2026 because it’s fun. It’s as simple as that.

It gets hot as hell here in the summer, and I like lying in my hammock under the canopy of two huge hackberry trees, drinking a glass of sangria served over ice. I look forward to that.

I want to say something like, “the increased joy in such moments pays for the increased risks of cancers and all manner of other diseases, nuisances, and disablement,” but I’m not sure that’s true, and more honestly I think I just don’t have the sticktoitiveness to commit to a lifetime of sobriety even if it may be a better life.

Excelsior 2026 #

CGP Grey made this video a while ago making some compelling arguments for setting “themes” instead of traditional SMART (specific, measureable, attainable, realistic, timely) goals around new years. I actually tried that this year too, alongside my sobriety goal, trying to make a theme of 2025 be “The Year of Cardio”.

For me, the concept of a Theme didn’t really land. At no point in the year did I feel accountable to the theme, and so I didn’t really do what I had hoped to do with that (namely: more cardio).

I will not be doing a Theme again in 2026. I’m back to SMART goals I think. But it also is very difficult to come up with SMART goals that meet the criteria I mentioned at the beginning of this post – easy to evaluate, failing requires opting-in, and something I want to do. The closest objectives I can think of that meet those criteria are, like the 2025 goal, various forms of abstinence. I’m not sure any form of clever framing will help, either, like giving up “not-doing-cardio-for-sixty-minutes-a-day” in 2026.

I’ll continue to think about it, potentially come up with a goal for 2026, and maybe I’ll update this post then if I do. I don’t know what it is about this year but I get the sense that nobody I know is doing resolutions in 2026. Oh well! I like the tradition and I will probably still do it.