[Clipdat]

Today's date, June 24th 2018, marks exactly one year since I last drank any alcohol.

If you had asked me in the past if I ever thought I could go an entire year without drinking, I probably would've said WTF? and laughed in your face. Alcohol had been a pretty big part of my life from when I turned 21 (and lets be honest, a few years before 21 as well) in 2005 through the middle of 2017. I know a great deal about every style of beer and each type of spirit, in terms of their production methods and flavor profiles.

However, I've never been someone who could moderate my alcohol consumption. I would drink a lot of craft beer every single weekend (Friday through Sunday), and in 2016 and 2017 it was even more frequent than just weekends. I can't just have "one or two" drinks. If I start drinking, I don't stop until I'm in a stupor. "One drink is too many, and a thousand is never enough", if you will.

I was not in a good place in regards to alcohol. Whenever I wasn't drinking, I was usually thinking about when I could drink next. When I was drinking, I was thinking about that next drink I was going to get, and how many I could have. I can look back now and see that it was controlling my life. I was starting to have health issues. I was literally killing myself. On June 24th 2017, I hit rock bottom. And it wasn't the first time that I had. After a difficult conversation with my wife, I told her that I was going to make a change.

I decided to quit drinking, for an undecided amount of time. I think at first it was supposed to be for 6 months to a year. A few weeks after I quit, my wife decided to join me and stop drinking as well! Although she never had a problem like I did, this was great, we could do it together!

As the months passed, I quickly decided that I didn't just want to quit for a year. I came to the realization that I wanted to go the rest of my life without having another drop of alcohol. This is my goal that I'm now committed to, and I think it's absolutely possible.