What it’s like to quit alcohol without labeling yourself an alcoholic or going to AA

It seems like everywhere we turn these days, there’s a “sober challenge” on social media or a new “quit lit” book that hits bookstores.

Sobriety is trending.

This is not why I quit alcohol for good in 2018. I quit because I was drinking almost two bottles of wine a night (yes, two bottles of wine). I quit because alcohol was hurting my career, my relationship and my health.

I quit to save myself and my soul, and to prove that you don’t need to label yourself a diseased alcoholic if you don’t want to. By AA standards (a program that was invented by two white men in the 1940s for other white men struggling to “put the plug in the jug”), I am 100% an alcoholic.

By my own standards, I am 0% alcoholic, and here’s why.

Calling myself an alcoholic made me feel like shit about myself. And when I felt like shit about myself, I went to happy hour with friends and then went home to drink some more with my partner, rather than working on why I drank in the first place.

When I read Annie Grace’s The Alcohol Experiment and learned there are alternatives to the AA way — alternatives that don’t put labels on behaviors, habits and compulsions — I was finally able to let go of my dependence on…