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Why I Quit Drinking

In the early part of November 2019, I decided to do something that I have been thinking about for a couple of years. And never really imagined I would do.

And that is, I quit drinking.

In the past, I had given up drinking for Lent—with a whiskey and maybe some red wine on Sunday, because I’m not a Southern Baptist—and I prided myself on not really craving it through the week.

But after looking at 30 straight days of zero booze, through the Whole 30 diet, that was a different deal for someone who enjoyed the taste and the feeling of a nice buzz.

In fact, for the first time in my life, halfway through the Whole30, I felt a bit buzzed just from the feeling of having fasted from booze, and crap sugar and bloating carbs, too.

But the diet ended, and I did feel good, and I did lose weight.

But…I didn’t stop drinking.

I had heard about Ven. Matt Talbot, the Irish drunk who got sobriety and sanctity by cooperating in a heroic way with God’s grace before AA came along.

To understand why I quit drinking last fall, you have to understand that’s my father’s father was a hopeless alcoholic who died early in his 60s with health breakdowns related to decades of almost non-stop drinking.

His son, my father, ended up following in his footsteps and was an active alcoholic before I hit Middle School. Did a lot of damage to himself and his wife and his kids.

Thanks be to God he hit his own personal rock bottom and got sober on Halloween 1980.

He enjoyed 38 years of continuous sobriety in AA.

I never really felt I was in danger of becoming an alcoholic myself although having wine with dinner and maybe a cocktail in the night or with friends here and there began to become a habit.

I’m also a sinner, and although my Lord and Savior has suffered and died to forgive my sins, you and I can still play a *small* part and making up for the years that the locusts stole, and make reparation for the sins perpetrated against Christ and the Church at the hands of our enemies from without, and from within the Church.

And today there’s plenty of both around.

Maybe what I’m saying right now inspires someone — maybe you — to at least consider the idea of giving it up for your own reasons.

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