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Quitting Drinking Wasn’t Enough

I had to dig deeper

2 min readMay 13, 2025
Photo by Jackson Simmer on Unsplash

Sure.

I quit drinking.

For the first six weeks of 2020.

For 39 days — which included 30 days in a treatment center.

For 85 days.

I did it all by myself.

I did it to avoid getting in trouble — or to prove that I was “different” now.

I could stay stopped for a while. I even liked how I felt when I stopped.

At least at first.

But, inevitably, I’d drink again.

Here’s the thing: I drank alone.

A lot.

Days “working” from home — or from an empty office.

Nights in a bonus room away from everyone.

And finally — living in a hotel room because I’d been asked to leave everywhere else.

But because I could figure out lots of things in life — I knew I could “figure out” how to quit drinking, too.

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Andy Spears
Andy Spears

Written by Andy Spears

Writer and policy advocate living in Nashville, TN —Public Policy Ph.D. — writes on education policy, consumer affairs, and more . . .

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