Sober in Paradise – an update from the Bahamas

“Put a strawberry daiquiri in my hand right now!”

“I need, like, four Bahama Mamas.”

“Oh look, there’s Margaritaville!”

“I’m so ready to hit the bar.”

Welcome to the Bahamas, where – starting in the line to go through immigration – all the conversations are about alcohol.

Yes, the Bahamas. A small island country just east of the Florida keys, where I’ll be staying in a large resort full of corporate salespeople for the next four nights.

The immigration line uncoils slowly, moving towards the front of the terminal. I look at my wife Morena, unsure about this plan. “What do you think F. Scott Fitzgerald did on vacation?”

Morena shrugs. She’s from India, and may not have studied the literature of the Lost Generation in high school. I think for a moment, then answer my own question. “Actually, I know this one. F. Scott Fitzgerald got shitfaced.”

Sober in the Bahamas

I first mentioned my sobriety last year at this time, when Morena’s job took us to Dublin.

This year, the deal is the same, but we’re in the Bahamas.

Here goes: Morena sells payroll software for a US company, and if you sell a lot of payroll software in any given year they’ll send you to President’s Club: an awards ceremony and networking event for all the best salespeople worldwide. Spouses and significant others get a free ride as well.

So last year in Dublin (and newly sober) I had a hell of a time surrounded by hundreds of enthusiastic extroverts in an environment of organized corporate fun.

A hell of a time… in other words: it was hellish. With plenty of boozy revelry.

But I held the line. I’ve now been sober for almost a year and a half. And it’s been quite a journey.

So today I’d like to give you a little update. I got a lot of good feedback last time: turns out I’m not the only guy who’s hit a point in his life where he decided it’s better just to quit drinking.

Back in the line at Bahamas immigration, I’m standing in front of the shrillest American girl ever. Then on the bus to the hotel, I’m last to get on. I end up on the jump seat next to the driver, and realize I’m right in front of her again.

The driver is clearly annoyed as well – he keeps looking over at me and rolling his eyes.

I already hate this.

But maybe if I don’t interact with anyone it’ll be okay.

It’s just five days of relaxation, right?

The shrillest American girl ever is calling her phone company to check on her roaming plan. Then she’s telling someone about her Pandora charm bracelet, and how she collects charms wherever she goes. Quite the little citizen of the universe, this one. But it’s not even clear who she’s talking to. Perhaps no-one.

After a half-hour drive across the island we make it to the resort. It’s one of those huge hotels that’s also a luxury shopping mall and a casino, with a pool full of dolphins, several Starbucks, and various expensive restaurants dotted about. The Shake Shack has a shark tank, so you can eat overpriced burgers while you contemplate the marine life. Everything is cashless – just pay with your room key – and wildly overpriced.

Around the resort there are big banners celebrating President’s Club – the company is bringing in hundreds of people from all over the US and Europe. They give us free hats and water bottles to refill around the resort, then send us up to our room. It’s big and bright, with views of the palm trees and the Caribbean beyond – and the A/C seems to work well, which is a plus.

Tonight there’s a party at the beach, which Morena tactfully invites me to skip – all the better, because I wasn’t able to sleep at all on the plane, and my internal clock is telling me it’s 2 AM.

I lie down on the big hotel bed, under a stream of cold air, and I’m out.

Pink cloud, grey mist.

A lot of people talk about the pink cloud: the feeling of euphoria after you quit drinking, while you get used to what it feels like to wake up without a hangover. For some people, the good vibes last several months. In my case, it was about four days.

Less well known is the grey mist that comes after the pink cloud, in which your brain chemistry is still readjusting after withdrawal. Officially, it’s called PAWS, which stands for Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome.

That’s where I was at in Dublin, and it was miserable.

For the record, I didn’t have any acute withdrawal symptoms when I stopped drinking. I felt better immediately – then worse a few days later.

It took my brain several months to get back to baseline after swimming in booze for 10 years… months in which I was sometimes really sad, but mostly just sitting with a seemingly never-ending feeling of malaise. I drank a lot of coffee in that time, ate an extra thousand calories a day, and generally felt bad, then a little better, then a little better.

I guess it helps that I’ve spent some time meditating in my life. I’m used to just sitting and watching my monkey mind work. If you’re in the grey mist, my recommendation is this: Don’t take your internal monologue too seriously. It’ll improve with time.

Also, work out – as hard as your body will allow. Gotta get those endorphins somehow.

Notice: no extroverts were entertained in the writing of this article

At breakfast the next day we’re with some salespeople and they’re talking in buzzwords.

“My new role involves curated database buildout.”

I have yet to figure out what “curated” actually means, but it sure sounds important. I dig into my 17-dollar omelette and try (and fail) to maintain a neutral facial expression.

When I started on this journey, I read that newly sober people often end up dealing with whatever issues they were using booze to avoid all along.

“That won’t be a problem for me,” I thought. “I don’t have any issues!”

I genuinely thought this.

And in a way I was right – what popped back up mostly weren’t “issues” in the classic sense… it was just my natural weirdness, which prevents me from interacting with people.

I’d completely forgotten about this, but once I stopped drinking it came roaring back. Not shyness, exactly. Just a complete disinterest in boring conversations. Ordinary introvert stuff, I suppose. Turns out I just needed a few drinks to dumb myself down for “small talk”.

Y’know… Mondays, am I right? Anyway, nice weather we’re having. Check out that local sports team?

This lack of interest doesn’t end all my conversations, but it happens often enough to be a problem.

These days, actually, I suspect a lot of people who try to talk to the new, super-introverted “me” just assume I’m boring, or dumb, or both. Which is fine: I’m past 40, and my days of worrying about the opinions of random acquaintances are long behind me.

But it does pose some interesting questions: how would I have gotten through my 20s without alcohol? What would dating have been like? I suspect that without a certain amount of tipsiness, I might have had a much different experience of making friends and dating abroad – but I guess we’ll never really know.

Getting spiritual at brunch

Another thing that popped back up once I got sober was my repressed spiritual side.

Let me preface this by saying that I don’t officially “believe” in anything spiritual or religious. It just seems to be a place where my mind wants to go.

Back in Barcelona, Morena will take me to brunch with a couple of her friends from corporate, they’ll be sitting there talking about office gossip and I’ll be off in my own world having a spiritual experience.

Are we all one consciousness? Where does life come from? Where does it go?

All this while Morena and company eat fancy egg dishes and slorp down beetroot smoothies.

And I’ve always been this way. If we were living in a previous century, my parents could have sent me off to join the priesthood, and just been done with it – one less mouth to feed.

As it is, I developed some life skills and I’m doing just fine with my 21st century existence. But of course, being insufferably deep with a brain that wants to spend time on transcendental questions doesn’t make for good “water cooler conversations”.

When I was younger, people tended to be huge dicks about this aspect of my personality. I guess we all cope with the human condition however we can. And I don’t know where my brain wants to take me here, but I’m trying not to end up as one of those “ultra spiritual” types – I may grow out my beard and become an Orthodox Christian or something. Only time will tell.

Desire, human nature, and Ludwig von Mises

Not interacting with people was a good call.

I spend the next few days wandering around the resort in the heat, and trying to relax at the beach or by the pool. The only thing that seems to be reasonably priced around here is the iced coffee from Starbucks.

One afternoon, there’s an awards ceremony, which I’m (once again) tactfully nudged into skipping.

Instead, I stay back in the hotel room reading the collected essays of Ludwig von Mises, of the Austrian School of Economics.

(“So, who’s your favorite economist?” is the kind of question I think would make for great small talk, in my perfect introvert utopia. Just try it at a party though. Disappointing.)

From von Mises I learn that…

“Under capitalism the common man enjoys amenities which in ages gone by were unknown and therefore inaccessible even to the richest people. But, of course, these motorcars, television sets and refrigerators do not make a man happy. In the instant in which he acquires them, he may feel happier than he did before. But as soon as some of his wishes are satisfied, new wishes spring up. Such is human nature.”

Ludwig von Mises, “The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality” (1956).

That sounds about right. In fact, it’s only been two days, and I’m already over the fact I’m staying in a tropical “paradise”, and that there’s a shark tank down at the burger joint.

Being annoyed at a high end resort on a vacation paid for by your wife’s company is a pretty niche problem to have. And I try to always keep in mind that a few generations ago, the only way a guy like me would get to travel abroad is if he were going to war.

Still, it’s easy to forget all your good luck. Such is human nature.

Society’s messaging around alcohol is dumb

After the awards ceremony, we go to one of the expensive restaurants that are scattered around the resort.

Even on the company’s dime, I’m a bit offended by 65-dollar steak. Also, there’s a group of boisterous salespeople at the next table, and they are loud.

Please pardon the blistering irony of this statement for me, but now that I’m sober, I find drunk people to be pretty obnoxious. Drinking is this supposedly fun thing to do, but if you’re on the outside, it doesn’t really look “fun”.

(I should mention at this point that I am not and have never been fun, so I’m no great authority on the subject. Also, apologies to almost everybody who’s ever known me, and has therefore seen me drunk on more than one occasion.)

But the “fun” aspect aside, society’s messaging around alcohol is pretty dumb, if you think about it.

Here’s this addictive substance. We absolutely know it’s addictive, but we encourage everybody to use it. Use it to relax, unwind, and have fun. Use it to destress. Use it to socialize. Use it to enjoy your food and (more generally) your life. Use it when you’re happy, and when you’re sad: adult life will present you with literally thousands of occasions – from weddings to funerals – where you’ll be expected to drink alcohol.

In fact, you’re probably a pretty boring person if you don’t use it at every opportunity. So drink up!

Oh, and by the way, if you actually get addicted to this known-to-be addictive substance, well, then you have a big problem and you need to get some self control and “learn moderation”. You monster. How could you be so irresponsible?

Like I said, it’s dumb.

There’s also some bad messaging around quitting, though.

In fact, one of the things that kept me from quitting for a while was the image of the boring guys going to AA meetings I had seen on TV. The impression I had – your mileage may vary – is that if you want to quit, you have to make “recovering alcoholic” a huge part of your personality, and spend all your time talking about it.

“If that’s what sobriety looks like”, I thought, “I’d rather just stay drunk!”

What finally happened is I read the book The Easy Way to Control Alcohol by Allen Carr, and then I stopped. I haven’t been to any meetings, I haven’t been wracked by alcohol cravings, and I haven’t really had to talk about it. Most of my friends just said, “oh, okay” when I told them I’m not drinking anymore. And so I just moved forward.

That isn’t to say it’s been easy – I’ve had to practice plenty of mindfulness, and re-learn ways of dealing with my emotions (and my boredom) that don’t involve having four glasses of wine.

One thing that helped, ironically, is YouTube: there are a lot of people out there telling stories of how they stopped drinking and went on to do cool things with their lives. Look around and you’ll find some: there are plenty of options besides becoming one of those stereotypical “recovering alcoholics” from TV dramas.

Not your great granddad’s White Party

Our final night in the Bahamas, we go to a company-organized White Party.

A White Party just means that everyone wears white – why, I’m not certain. Morena and I walk all the way to the other end of the resort, through hallways filled with souvenir shops, the arctic chill of the air in the casino, the luxury shopping area, another huge lobby, past some expensive restaurants, and on into the convention center.

The party was originally scheduled to be at the beach, but has been moved inside due to a tropical storm named Debby that was (allegedly) supposed to arrive in the islands that day.

All day long, there’s been no sign of the storm. But in the end, the party is being held in a huge conference room, with caterers, a DJ, and several hundred payroll salespeople all dressed in white, milling around the open bar.

Once again, I try and fail to maintain a neutral facial expression. I can’t handle crowds and noise anymore. The DJ plays Biggie, Mo Money Mo Problems, as I try to figure out how to eat a lobster tail while standing at a table with Morena and six strangers.

We will never know what Ludwig von Mises might have thought about Mo Money Mo Problems, but I think it’s a pretty good song. I’m still not into the world of luxury brands, though.

“Throw your Rollies in the sky, and wave ’em side to side”, instructs Biggie at one point.

I don’t know. Maybe I just like the melody. As far as statements about personal finance go, I prefer Morgan Housel, who says, “Spending money to show people how much money you have is the fastest way to have less money.”

I leave the White Party after about an hour. This sort of thing is probably fun for a certain personality type – just not the one I have. And especially while sober.

Final thoughts on sobriety

All in all, I don’t have a lot of regrets about how my relationship to alcohol has worked out.

I could have tried being a painfully awkward 24-year-old, sober at the party, hoping to chat with girls about their favorite economist or existentialist philosopher. But I don’t think it would have gone well.

Living the virtuous life in your 40s sounds like a good, healthy plan. Doing it in your 20s just sounds obnoxious.

As it is, I quit drinking before it became a massive problem for my health or my relationships. I’ve made some mistakes, faced down my demons, and emerged victorious – and ready for the next fight.

It could have gone differently, of course. As I recently wrote, luck matters. But so does what you choose to do, day in and day out. And it’s useless to wait around for luck when you could just get to work.

Getting sober hasn’t been easy, but it’s totally worth it.

That’s all I’ve got for today. Hope you’re well.

Stay strong out there.

Yours,

Daniel AKA Mr Chorizo.

P.S. I’m not planning to make this a blog about sobriety. I’ve got plenty of other things going on. Soon I’ll have my report from Japan – it’s been a busy summer – plus a return to my regular schedule of Spain content. Stay tuned for that.

P.P.S. If you’ve got any questions about the whole quitting drinking business, leave me a comment, or send me a message right here. I’ll try to help you out if I can.