Dry January: in memorium memorandum

So I had this conversation recently with a friend of mine who is struggling with booze. This conversation came at a very interesting time in my life. For the first time in a few years, I decided to give up booze entirely for the month of January; jumping on the dry January bandwagon. Before that I had been pretty consumed with the idea that I might be an alcoholic. I felt shameful about my drinking behavior, knowing that it was robbing me of gifts of life inside times that are going to be frustrated by inflammation of my body, brain, or attitude. I knew the health risks of alcohol. I know the cancer-causing machine that it is, as well as the toxic foe it is to organs, specifically the liver and heart. Yet I was a daily drinker. I had no qualms about spending most of my workday afternoons in bars, doing my favorite activity of all time, writing, while having a beer or two. I rarely got to the level of feeling much intoxication, but nonetheless, it was still a daily activity.

The friend, about a year and a half ago, pretty quickly confided in me that he was an alcoholic. He told me this during a networking event while holding a bottle of beer. He explained that he could control it as long as he stayed away from brown liquor. And if he only had one, or two, no more than three beers in an hour. We’ve gotten to know each other pretty well. He has three small children, the youngest under one. When his wife went through postpartum he began to feel the reverberations to his own identity and freedom to choose how his time was spent. For the last year, he has fallen off the wagon a few times, but usually he gets right back on without much hurt in the way of personal or professional life. The last time he was completely sober was after a DUI required it, but I’m not sure he’s gone more than 30 days in the last year without a drink. His triggering event seems to be when his wife or children unexpectedly request his time in a way that he didn’t plan for. I’m not sure he would agree with that, but that’s my perspective because that’s how I feel too. In doing dry January for the last month, I have very easily confirmed I do not have a drinking problem. I have a purpose problem and so does my friend. Of course I’m not gonna stand here and say that addiction is overcome by pursuing a purpose. Alcoholics are alcoholics and always will be. But if you’ve been using booze as a crutch, it’s easily overcome by finding a more powerful cause to pursue. At least, that’s been my experience.

Right now, wherever he is sitting or standing, my friend is addicted to booze. And he will be for the rest of his life. As I sit here writing this, I am addicted to something I’ve never admitted. I’m addicted to fear. I’ve overcome a few addictions in my life, cigarettes, chewing tobacco, overeating, vanity, and an insatiable yearning for Kroger’s private selection double vanilla ice cream. Just kidding, that last one is alive and well. What I have learned through my life is that if you are truly addicted to something the only way to overcome it is to replace the activity with something else. The easiest way to do that is to remove all possibilities of the activity happening. The easiest way to ensure this happens is inside a purpose bigger than yourself. I’m doing that by facing fear daily. It sucks. But it’s needed.

And that’s the conversation I had recently with my friend. From the outside his life is brilliant. He has a successful business. His family is healthy, except for the Michigan phlegm everybody seems to get around here from November through April, and they’re moving into a brand new home in one of the most sought after neighborhoods in metro Detroit. So why did this man offer to buy me food and discuss his struggles recently? Because he suffers from the same thing so many of us do: a misunderstanding of our place in civilization.

As a human being, you have a primary purpose that is the same as everybody else. You want to stay alive as long as possible. Your secondary purpose is to ensure the survival of your species as a whole. That means you either have kids and support them, or find a way to support those that do. Those two priorities are met for most of us inside civilization and having jobs. It is pretty easy to stay alive if you take care of yourself nowadays and pay your bills, but for a lot of people having a secondary purpose in a family just doesn’t seem enough. I can’t tell you the number of men I’ve come across in my life that tell me they feel like they were meant for more. These men have everything every other man on this planet would want. Large homes, vehicles, health insurance, retirement accounts, and no want for resources for the rest of their lives. Yet there they are, asking the same question of their existence as every human at some point in life. What is my purpose?

Man, you’re fulfilling your purposes. The problem is that you’re not recognizing that your first two are met. You need to create a third purpose to serve.

For a lot of people that third purpose comes from their faith. I live in Milford, Michigan, and I am inundated by Christians. I literally cannot walk to the grocery store to buy a gallon of milk without one of my friends making sure that I have a blessed day. They wake up every day with a singular purpose to serve their Lord, no matter who they come across. Understandably, that’s not a fee many men my age are willing to pay to fill their bucket.

So how are we supposed to find purpose outside of our existence and our families? By being creative inside groups and communities we will allow ourselves to be a part of. For many many years, my favorite place to write was in bars, specifically dive bars around Detroit proper. I would slink off after my main adult duties were complete and find a dingy bar somewhere. I would order a Miller lite and I would go to town on my Chromebook. Sitting there for hours upon hours, day after day, week after a week, for the last five years or so I’ve come to a number of realizations I wouldn’t mind sharing with all of you. The first one is being social in 2026 is expensive for your time and your wallet. If you pay for the lowest form of social interaction, you get the lowest form of social interaction.

The point is I know I should not be going to bars because I know there are better places to write. When I was 25 years old writing fiction or 30 years old in law school, a bar was a wonderful place for me to focus because everybody would leave me alone. Nobody that frequents a bar has anything they want to talk to a 25 or 30-year-old about. But now I’m 44. Now my demographic frequents the bar. Now I’m one of their peers. And now they want to talk to me, which steals my time. Ergo, I need to find a new community for my writing time. If I don’t, I’ve recognized I’m gonna end up as a foundational and legacy member of the local bar crowd. The type of people who celebrate having brass plates, tacked to chairs at bars in celebration and in remembrance of the people that spent massive amounts of time and money there. Not exactly Abe Lincoln type stuff.

This month I’ve fallen in love with coffee all over again, spending the majority of my time writing at coffee shops, or family-oriented restaurants. The kind of people you find at bars in the afternoon tend to be wrapped in personal issues, disorder, and many layers of undisciplined habits. The people I see in coffee shops, and family-oriented restaurants are the symptom of order and good habits. They choose their free time to be spent in communities that expect and uphold those types of standards and that’s the key for us all: to find communities that will uphold and hold us accountable to the types of standards we know serve us best. I know my best writing isn’t served with alcohol. At times, it’s not even best served with more caffeine. It’s best served when my mind is quiet, my eyes are open, and my ears aren’t bothered by disturbances of ill character.

For my friend, he must find his own communities to serve this third purpose. They can be a collection of communities inside sports and recreation, or they can be devoted to one big purpose, but you have to realize that this version of civilization requires that community involvement be the key to thriving. Otherwise you’re always going to feel like you’re in a survivalist mode.

Life is activity and stillness. You must enjoy both. But right now you are not enjoying your stillness. Your mind is not at peace because you’re still searching. You’re not exhausting from serving your communities. Your mind is not solving problems for somebody else without any expectation of an outcome or validation. To solve this, you must exhaust yourself with activities that support a community. So when you have free time to yourself, you don’t end up in places of commiseration. You end up in places of peace with people who expect and respect the same.