The High Cost of Alcohol

What vow is your soul waiting for you to make? When I asked myself that question, the first thing that came to mind was to quit drinking alcohol. I’ve honestly considered it for years. And while I have yet to make a decision on whether or not to quit completely, I did recently complete 120 days sober, and it was such a wonderful experience that I decided to write about it. Please know that this is not intended to demonize alcohol or to judge anyone who enjoys drinking. I have no agenda. We all, clearly, respond to different things in different ways and there are upsides and downsides to everything in life—alcohol is no different. These are simply my reflections and observations after not drinking for 4 months. Personally, I’ve experienced almost entirely upsides.

Culturally, it seems that not drinking is becoming more common, thanks in part to the “sober curious” movement, in which more and more people are exploring a life without, or with less, alcohol. But even though sobriety is on the rise, it’s undeniable that alcohol is still a gigantic part of Western society. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that when we hear someone is no longer drinking, we assume they are either pregnant, were forced to quit due to medical reasons or have a drinking problem. In my case, you’ll be relieved to know that I am not pregnant (although I’ve never tested), I am not experiencing medical issues and I am not addicted to alcohol. I did 120 days for other reasons, although I admit that those reasons were not clear at the beginning.

Oddly enough, 120 days wasn’t even the initial plan—30 days was. It all started when a few coworkers invited me to join their “Sober September” challenge, in which we agreed to abstain from alcohol for the month of September. We’ve done these types of challenges before, and, as often happens, I was the only one to finish the entire month (humble brag). After completing September, I was technically “allowed” to drink again, but was feeling so good that I decided to continue with my own “Sober October.” I had never gone two months back-to-back before, so I figured I’d give it a try. Well, October went even better, so I decided to add November. But even after November I didn’t feel ready to drink again, so I added December after that. Ironically, I experienced the exact opposite of how many people struggle with alcohol—once I started I couldn’t stop not drinking! 

I’m one of those (possibly annoying) people that enjoys testing themselves in various aspects of life. I like pushing my limits, strategically leaving my comfort zone and seeing what I’m capable of, while simultaneously observing what benefits, if any, I notice along the way. I’ve done this with exercise, nutrition, caffeine, social media and yes, alcohol. I estimate that I’ve done 5 alcohol fasts in my life, the longest being 35 days. In fact, looking back, this is the longest I've gone without drinking since my junior year of high school (please don’t show this to my mom). 

Even though I found 120 days to be fairly easy, there were some challenges. One of the greatest challenges had more to do with my social environment than with alcohol itself. I live adjacent to the famous wine region, Napa Valley, where alcohol is thoroughly built into the culture and is basically acceptable anytime, anywhere. On top of that, I work at a winery, meaning that I’m surrounded by wine both at and off work. I work with wine people, my neighbors are wine people, my friends are wine people and I am a wine person. It’s part of the local culture and it’s been a part of my own culture for over 15 years. And, naturally, I found it really challenging to disconnect from that, even for a short period of time.

Where I live is an extreme example, but in society as a whole, drinking is so ingrained and accepted that it often feels like unless you have a big problem with alcohol, there’s no problem at all. As if the only reason someone would ever stop drinking is if they were out of control with it. But life is rarely black and white—there are always shades of gray. And while I would never be considered a “problem drinker," it’s fair to say that alcohol created problems for me. No, it did not ruin my career, relationships or finances, but it became a hurdle between where I am and where I want to be. I discovered that when drinking plays a large role in my life, I am not my best. It’s that simple.

Once I removed alcohol for a significant period of time, it allowed me to be more objective as I compared the upsides of not drinking with the downsides of drinking. What I realized is that, similar to a snowball gaining size and speed as it tumbles down a snowy hill, my drinking followed a pattern in which small, innocent behaviors began to attract other behaviors along the way. Some of the problems that alcohol caused in my life were so subtle that, from the outside, most people wouldn’t even recognize them as problems. Shoot, I often didn’t even recognize them as problems from the inside. But the snowball kept tumbling, and by the time it reached the bottom of the hill, it had undeniably grown in size. 

As humans, we are highly motivated by both pleasure and pain. That is why we rarely change when we are perfectly comfortable. Something typically has to pull us, or push us, towards altering our behavior. For me, my drinking was never “painful” enough to yank me towards immediate behavior change—it was more like a subtle friction that slowly began to intensify over time. Even though it took a while, I eventually began to realize that, for me, alcohol had far more downsides than I initially realized.

One obvious downside is the hangover. The older I got, the worse the hangovers became. Meanwhile, the amount of alcohol necessary to trigger those hangovers became less. To make matters worse, the hangovers would routinely alter my plans the following day, either causing me to be completely unproductive, or significantly less productive than I wanted to be. A day spent hungover often felt like an entirely wasted day. And I’ve begun to recognize that days are precious and should not be wasted. 

Second, I’ve never been a great sleeper, but alcohol made it noticeably worse. While drinking I would typically stay up much later than usual, which would cause me to lose out on hours of sleep due to the fact that my body wakes up at basically the same time each morning. Meaning that even if I stayed up really late, I’d still wake up bright and early the following day. But even if I managed to go to bed at my normal time, my sleep quality would be very low—tossing and turning and far from restful. In both cases I would wake up exhausted, literally dreading the day ahead, particularly if I had to go to work, which is not a recommended way to begin a precious new day. From there, my hangovers and sleep problems often snowballed into issues of their own—specifically regarding my fitness and nutrition. 

My physical health is something I value very highly. I consider it a major blessing that I do not suffer from chronic pain or disease, that I have all of my limbs and that they function as designed. Not everyone is so fortunate and I do not take that fact lightly. One way that I like to express gratitude for these blessings is by doing challenging activities—going on long, grueling hikes or pushing myself through intense resistance or cardiovascular workouts, just to name a few. However, after a night of drinking, I would typically be so tired or hungover, that I would skip my workouts completely. I love exercising because it makes me feel healthy, strong and energetic, but, ironically, I was skipping workouts because I felt sick, weak and tired. I was sacrificing something that made me feel great for something that made me feel ill. 

I also noticed my nutritional priorities taking a backseat, in which my hangover-induced laziness would regularly cause me to swap my healthy food options for worse ones—often manifesting in me trying to lessen my hangover with a greasy, high-calorie breakfast from a restaurant instead of cooking the healthier food I already had at home. The combination of me consuming extra calories by eating worse, while burning less calories by skipping workouts, caused me to not look and feel as good as I like.

 Then, after sleeping poorly I would often need caffeine to “survive” the day. This would not have been an issue except that caffeine gives me anxiety, meaning that I was often having to choose between a day of anxiety or exhaustion. Sometimes both occurred simultaneously—yay. Then, if I consumed caffeine too late in the day I would have difficulty sleeping that night, which disrupted my sleep even more, causing me to, yet again, wake up exhausted the next day. The fix? Caffeine with a dash of anxiety! The cycle continues. 

But nothing I’ve shared so far bothered me the most. What bothered me the most was the loss of mental sharpness that I experienced while drinking: slower cognition, poor memory recall, clumsy speech and less ability to concentrate in general. I don’t share this often, but one of my greatest fears in life is to lose brain function, whether due to dementia or a brain injury. The thought terrifies me. And it completely opened my eyes when I recognized that, even after a relatively small amount of alcohol, my brain literally wasn’t working as well. I was willingly, and repeatedly, damaging my own cognition each time I drank. Not at the same level as dementia, obviously, but still. I’d prefer my brain to be healthy at all times. 

Here’s the thing, I get actual joy from moments when I’m witty or wise, I get massive fulfillment by being creative, introspective, and solving problems, and I feel proud when I’m able to contribute fresh energy, insight or perspective to interactions or situations. These things matter to me. And I didn’t fully realize it until I stopped drinking, but I had been allowing alcohol to dull my sharpness in each one of those examples. Now, after months of sobriety, my brain feels as clear as it’s ever been—I’m not exaggerating. Sometimes we don’t realize the impact something has on us until it’s gone. 

Let’s do a quick recap. So far I’ve mentioned that my use of alcohol often causes me to feel sick, not sleep well, to exercise less, to eat worse and to lose mental sharpness. Now let’s play a game. In this game we will replace the word “alcohol” with “ice cream.” Now, I love ice cream, but imagine if my ice cream consumption was causing awful hangovers, severely disrupting my sleep, causing me to skip workouts that I love, to eat worse than I wanted, to be less productive than intended—even affecting my brain function! People would say “ummm, Jake, I’m just going to come out and say it… you seriously need to stop eating so much ice cream—this is obviously not benefiting you!” And they’d be right. However, with alcohol everything I just listed is basically… normal. It just sounds absurd when you shift the subject from alcohol to ice cream. That is because society sees ice cream as a treat and alcohol as a way of life—it’s just what we do.

It wasn’t until I stopped drinking that I started to notice how truly prevalent alcohol is in our daily lives. It’s everywhere! Social media, podcasts, dating, conversations, jokes, sporting events, stories, traditions, rituals, movies, TV shows, books, magazines, advertisements, gas stations, stores, restaurants, t-shirts, bumper stickers, celebrations, commiserations, etc. It reminded me of the phenomenon when you get that new car and suddenly, everywhere you look, you notice way more of that same type of car. They’ve obviously been there the whole time, but now you’re paying closer attention. Alcohol is everywhere if you really pay attention.

I imagine some of you are wondering how my friends and family responded to me not drinking for this long. And although there were some jokes and jabs (as expected), most people were really supportive. At first it was uncomfortable breaking the news that I wouldn’t be drinking with them, but as the confidence with my decision grew, and as I got better at communicating my reasons, those conversations became easier, and I actually began to feel empowered. It felt good to stand up for something I believed in. It felt good to stand up for myself. I was reminded that the people who really love me, don’t do so because I drink, they love me either way. Ironically, they might love me more when they see me doing the harder thing for the right reason. 

But I’d be lying if I said sobriety was all sunshine and rainbows. Socially, there was definitely a shift. A couple of times I noticed myself not being invited to get-togethers that I 100% would have been invited to had I still been drinking. I didn’t sense any malice in it, it was completely innocent, but I did notice. In fairness, there are various possible reasons why I wasn’t invited, the most likely being that they figured, since I wasn’t drinking I wouldn’t have come anyway, so why bother inviting me? And they would have been right—I probably would have declined the invite. Somehow, though, I still wanted to be invited. It sounds so silly, and I literally just laughed out loud typing this because it’s so absurd: even though I didn't want to go, I still wanted to be invited. We all want to feel loved and included and wanted. And I believe that, right there, is why some people continue drinking, even when they’ve repeatedly promised themselves they’d quit. Because turning your back on yourself hurts, but not feeling like part of the group can hurt worse.

The times in which I was invited, and I accepted, I quickly found out that not drinking at a party, while requiring a little adjusting, wasn’t that hard. If I just had something to drink—a sparkling water, juice or kombucha—it felt more natural. And the benefits of being sober at a party are underrated. I loved being fully present and clear-headed during conversations, I was happy to be the sober driver, if needed, and waking up the next day without a hangover might be the best thing in the world. Plus, there’s something truly peaceful about driving home late at night knowing that, if I were pulled over by the police for any reason, I’d have zero alcohol in my system. That’s living.

Now, seeing as this is a finance blog, I’d also like to share the financial impact of my sobriety. Here’s what I noticed: Drinking. Is. Expensive. Or at least mine was. It wasn’t until I stopped drinking for 120 days that I realized the amount of money that I was no longer spending. And similar to the snowball example from before, a lot of the expense wasn’t even the alcohol itself, it was all of the extra things that piled up along the way. 

After a big night in a neighboring city, if I couldn’t catch a ride with a friend I’d have to Uber home. Then the next morning I’d have to Uber back, to pick up my car. This could easily amount to $50 or more. If, instead, I opted to stay in a hotel, that could easily double or triple the amount I would have paid for Uber. Now, in comparison to drinking and driving this is obviously money well spent, but the dollar amount is not insignificant. 

An additional expense I noticed is the cost of the hangover meals I mentioned earlier, in which I’d order breakfast out instead of eating the healthier, cheaper options that I had at home. Where I live, these breakfasts could easily amount to $30 or more, which is obviously not leading me to financial ruin, but is worth accounting for. 

Similarly, the caffeine necessary to get me through the day would begin to add up. An average coffee these days is probably around $3—a premium coffee is at least twice that. This was not a big expense for me, likely only about $30 a month, but I’m accounting for everything. Plus, paying for something that gives me anxiety seems… dumb. 

I also got in the habit of purchasing an anti-hangover supplement for $9. And while it did significantly decrease the venom of my hangovers, it still didn’t fix my sleep struggles. Plus, something else began to gnaw at me: I knew that the hangover was my body’s way of warning me that it didn’t like what I was doing to it. By using the supplement to lessen the hangover, I was silencing my body’s “I seriously don’t like this” signal. And, ironically, caffeine did the same to counteract my exhaustion. My body was clearly telling me to drink less alcohol and get more sleep, yet I kept silencing the signals. In both cases I was treating the symptom, while neglecting the source. 

Now, apart from all the associated costs I’ve mentioned (Uber or hotel, hangover meals, caffeine and the hangover supplement), the alcohol itself was expensive. Even buying wine at the store, while the cheapest route, is not exactly cheap. And paying the marked-up prices at bars and restaurants hurts my frugal soul a little bit. 

I did some quick research, and according to the San Francisco Chronicle, as of 2022 the average price for a bottle of wine in Napa Valley was $108 (it’s likely even higher now). While I am nowhere near as spendy as many of my fellow wine lovers, sharing multiple $100+ bottles of wine while out with friends is not uncommon. Combine that with the fact that going out for drinks almost always involves ordering either appetizers, entrées, desert, or all three (plus gratuity), it was very easy to personally spend $100-$200 on a relatively casual night out—sometimes more. Yes, it was super fun enjoying high-end wines at amazing restaurants, but when I stopped drinking I honestly didn’t miss them like I thought I would. 

So, how much was I actually spending on this lifestyle? Considering all the costs I just mentioned I figure I was spending an average of $500 per month on alcohol and alcohol-related expenses. Some months were more, other months were less, but I think $500 is at least in the ballpark. For some of you this figure may be jaw-dropping, for others it may be nothing in comparison. Regardless, even though I can afford $500 per month, I believe in spending money intentionally and I teach my clients to do the same. But in this regard I was being hypocritical—I was not spending $500 per month intentionally. It was just… happening.

But $500 per month is not the expensive part. Once I settled on that monthly estimate, my nerdy finance brain started wondering what would happen if I were investing that money instead of pissing it away (literally) on alcohol. So I plugged the numbers into an investment calculator. 

For this calculation I made the assumption that $500 per month would go into an investment that increases in value 10% each year. I also assumed, in order to see the long term implications, that this would continue for 30 years. 

Here are the results:

$500 per month, earning 10% annually, done for 30 years would turn into…. Drumroll please…. 

• $1,039,646.36 — over one million dollars! Which, divided by 30 years, is equivalent to $34,655 per year in opportunity cost (or $2,888 per month). That’s a lot of money.

Now, am I suggesting that you, or I, or anyone should cut something from our lives purely because of financial implications? No. I believe money should be saved and enjoyed. And sometimes enjoying money means using it in ways that don’t necessarily make sense mathematically, but make perfect sense from an emotional, relational, or quality of life perspective. However, I also believe in doing our best to understand all of the implications of our decisions. In this case, those are some pretty big implications. 

As I begin to wrap this up, I want to point out that I’ve used the snowball example to describe situations in which bad habits compound, and they absolutely can. But don’t forget that the exact same compounding can take place with good habits. I found that when I stopped drinking, good habits began to pile up quickly. First off, I slept significantly better, which gave me the energy to become more consistent with my exercise, to almost exclusively prepare meals at home, to make noticeable improvements to my finance and photography projects, to read more books, to practice more yoga and meditation, to increase my new love for writing and to feel more happy and healthy and productive in general. And all the while my wealth continued to grow as I saved and invested more than usual.

In addition, during these months of sobriety I gained much more clarity on the next chapters in my life, and even started the long-overdue task of getting rid of all of the unwanted, unused or unnecessary possessions I’ve accumulated over the years—I’m testing the “less is more” concept, and so far it’s proving to be extremely cleansing, literally and figuratively. And throughout all of this extra productivity I’ve only had caffeine three times since September (and two of those times were accidental… long story). It turns out that I don’t need caffeine when I’m eating clean, exercising regularly and sleeping well, in fact my natural energy is as high as I can remember. All-in-all, not drinking feels expansive—like I have unlocked new levels of potential in my life. I feel like I’ve literally become a better version of myself, and that feels incredible.

Lastly, it’s very easy to blame alcohol for all the downsides I just wrote about, without taking any of the blame myself. But I want to take ownership: I am also to blame. I’m certain that I drank more often and in larger quantities than many of you reading this. And it’s entirely possible that if I were simply more restrained with my consumption, and more protective of my sleep, that I would have seen the same, or similar, benefits to those that I experienced while not drinking. Which begs the question: what would happen if I allowed alcohol back into my life, except in moderation? What would happen if I were to protect my priorities above all else, and to only consume alcohol as long as it wasn’t sacrificing my sleep, health, happiness, and financial goals? Would I still feel expansive, or would I eventually revert backwards? Is zero alcohol required, or is less alcohol good enough? Can the snowball roll a little, or must I prevent it from rolling at all? 

Those have all been recurring questions in my mind, and have inspired my new plan—to test out a balanced approach to drinking, in which I will prioritize my goals, values and health first and foremost. To treat alcohol more like ice cream. This would mean reserving it for celebrations, holidays, special occasions, or random (intentional) occasions.

Knowing myself, I believe I will do best with clear rules to follow. And while I may decide to adjust these over time, my preliminary set of rules are: 

• In order to protect my sleep, exercise and nutrition, apart from rare, pre-planned exceptions I will always end my drinking by 7:00pm (6:00pm if I have a client meeting the next day).

AND

• In order to mitigate the quantity I drink, even if I am not driving, I will not allow myself to drink to a point in which I could not safely drive. Meaning, every time I drink I will pretend that I’m going to have to drive responsibly within the hour, even if I don’t have to drive at all.

If I discover I’m unable to stick to my rules, if I’m not enjoying alcohol as much as I used to, or if I notice the benefits slipping away even while following these rules, I may have to do some much deeper reflection on whether alcohol has any place in my life. Worst case scenario, I know I can always go back to not drinking and I’ll be happy and healthy and save a bunch of money. Which may actually end up being the best case scenario.

Thank you so much for reading this. This is the first blog, of many, and I am so grateful that you’ve joined me on this journey. I’d be honored if you passed this along to a loved one who might benefit from the perspective I’ve shared here. If this has inspired you, even a little, I suggest you put together an alcohol fast of your own—a week, two weeks, a month, a year—whatever. Push yourself, prioritize yourself, and see what you learn along the way. If you do, please share your observations with me—I’d love to hear about your experience!