“Savor this moment, guys. This is the last drink you’ll have with me for a full year,” I said to my friends right before I downed a shot of Don Julio. It was 11:55 p.m. on December 31, 2023, and I had decided to commit to the ultimate challenge: Go a complete calendar year without taking a single sip of alcohol.
If you had told me two or three years before this that I’d ditch the booze—for any amount of time—I’d laugh in your face and proceed to take another shot. Going sober in my mid-20s? While living in New York City? Where almost every activity revolves around drinking? Get real. Not only did that sound impossible but also boring as hell.
I wouldn’t categorize myself as an alcoholic, per se. I’ve maintained long-lasting, healthy relationships with friends and family, my career has always been stable, and I’ve consistently kept an active lifestyle. I reserved my drinking for the weekends and could easily decline a beverage when I wasn’t in the mood. That said, I certainly abused alcohol. Once the warm, fuzzy feeling after a glass of wine or a crisp dirty martini began to spread through my body, I craved more. Even if I only planned to have one drink on a night out, it wasn’t rare for me to have three or four (or even more) instead.
Predictably, I’d wake up in the morning, barely remembering the night prior, and swear off drinking…until the following weekend when it came time to do it all over again. The physical effects of drinking (a pounding headache, exhaustion, nausea) lasted one or two days, but as time went on, the mental effects began to take their toll. Crippling anxiety became a part of my hangovers, and the uneasy thoughts would linger for weeks. After drinking, I’d find myself in a constant negative spiral, where my mind would race and I’d overanalyze every inch of my body.
I’ve learned this sort of reaction to alcohol is pretty normal, actually. As alcohol enters the bloodstream, it lowers your inhibitions while triggering the brain to release dopamine, a chemical that boosts pleasure and confidence, explains psychiatrist Sue Varma, MD, author of Practical Optimism. Much like any substance, this creates a quick euphoria and an intense comedown. “As the alcohol starts to wear off, we end up feeling anxious, and our autonomic nervous system activates,” says Dr. Varma. “This is when negative emotions start to creep in, and we may even do things that are uncharacteristic of us.” As time went on and my binge drinking continued, these comedown effects started long before my tipsiness wore off.
Instead of feeling carefree and on top of the world when I drank, I’d shrink into myself. I would question why guys would approach my friends at the bars and not me. This fueled my inner critic, so while others were gaining confidence after a beer or two, mine vanished. When I drank, so much of my self-worth was dependent on external validation. This led me to pick apart every aspect of my appearance. I would spend hours drunkenly tearing myself apart in the mirror. “Look at your double chin, how unflattering. You should really try to lose a few pounds—who will love you with a gut like that? Your eyes are so droopy, it looks like you never get any sleep.”
After a few intense benders, I’d stop drinking for a few weeks and instead focus on researching alcohol and its effects on the body. I watched dozens of YouTube videos telling me that alcohol is poison, but hearing that had no lasting impact on how I viewed drinking. Nowadays, everything is bad for us. What difference does it really make? After a dry month or two, I’d start the cycle again.
I really began to question my habits when my best friend sent me an episode of The Huberman Lab podcast. During one part of the show, the host Andrew Huberman, a professor of neurobiology at Stanford, explains that alcohol is a depressant, which means you’re supposed to feel sleepy after a few drinks. If you feel energized after a cocktail or two, you’re actually more predisposed to develop alcoholism. The latter sounded just like me.
All in all, it took me nearly two years—and a lot of soul-searching—to attempt a year without booze. When I finally decided to do it, I started telling people about my challenge leading up to the holidays. Not only did this give me some time to prepare myself, but spreading the word held me accountable and really encouraged me to stick with it. So when the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2024, I quit cold turkey and swapped the celebratory champagne for sparkling cider. Little did I know I had just made the greatest decision of my life.
The physical effects of ditching alcohol were immediately gratifying. My hair was shinier, my skin clearer and more radiant, and my eyes sparkled as if I had come back to life. But the most meaningful effects, while slow to surface at first, were the mental ones. Because of this, I can wholeheartedly say that being sober has made me feel truly beautiful for the first time in my whole life.
This probably comes as a shock to the people closest to me. My whole career revolves around beauty. Heck, I’m even a former teen pageant queen! The thing is, I’ve always had shaky self-esteem, and drinking made it so much worse. But once I quit, the self-doubt and pessimistic thoughts began to fade. It was slow at first—I’d occasionally catch self-criticism bubbling to the surface—but as the months continued to pass, the belittling voice in my head grew quiet, and in its place, mental clarity, optimism, and self-love blossomed.
Sobriety made me so much less anxious too. This benefit was somewhat surprising to me, considering so many of us are conditioned to think that our social anxiety will increase if we don’t drink. This was me for years. But by not drinking, I can walk into every situation authentically. There’s such beauty in being 100 percent me—no substances to create fake confidence, no second-guessing (or totally forgetting) my actions. I’m simply me, and nothing feels more gratifying than that.
I’m now well past the one-year sobriety mark. And while my initial goal was just 365 days without alcohol, I can’t ever imagine welcoming it back into my life. Why would I, when without it, I’ve finally fallen in love with myself?
