How I Stopped Drowning in Drink

What's the secret to getting sober and repairing the other broken parts of an alcoholic's life? It starts with setting your own terms, writes Paul Carr.

By PAUL CARR

When Paul Carr decided to quit drinking he eschewed AA in favor of his own 12-step program. WSJ's Kelsey Hubbard talks to the British author and journalist about his new book, "Sober Is My New Drunk," which describes how he gave up booze and what he learned along the way.

For years I'd told myself I wasn't an alcoholic. I never drank alone. I didn't wake up with fierce cravings, and sometimes I went for one or two days without drinking. A need to drink all day, every day, was never my problem.

My problem was that once I had a drink—whether it was at 7 p.m. or 9 a.m.—I couldn't stop until my body shut down and I passed out in a pile on the floor. I still had plenty of friends and still managed to hold down a job, but my relationship with alcohol was very obviously different from most people's. I was an alcoholic.

As of Saturday, the counter on my website says "878 days." Eight hundred seventy-eight days since I had my last alcoholic drink. Eight hundred seventy-eight days since I declared—very publicly—that my drinking had passed the point where it was funny, crazy or even merely dangerous. In fact, my addiction to alcohol had reached a stage where it was highly likely to kill me.

Enough was enough. So I decided to quit. But I didn't do it in the typical way.

 

John Kuczala

By devising my own steps to sobriety, I've repaired relationships, gotten healthy, started a new career and set aside more character flaws than most people will ever have in a lifetime.

For one thing, I didn't go to Alcoholics Anonymous. Not a single meeting. I have several friends who attend AA and have found it to be a highly effective way to quit. I have plenty of other friends who attend AA meetings every morning and are blind drunk every night. I almost attended a meeting at the suggestion of a friend, but first I decided to read the organization's Twelve Steps, the program that members must follow. The first step was enough to confirm that this form of sobriety wasn't for me:

"We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable."

Please. You may be weak against alcohol, or seriously addicted to it, but powerless? No. If a drinker were truly powerless, then AA would be useless to him; nothing short of death could stop him from drinking.

I haven't attended a single meeting—and yet I also haven't had a drop of alcohol in almost 2½ years. By devising my own steps to sobriety, I've repaired relationships, gotten healthy, started a new career and set aside more character flaws than most people will ever have in a lifetime.

I know that I must sound like that obnoxious self-help guy who promises to share the secrets of his perfect life for just a hundred dollars and the soul of your firstborn child. The difference is, I don't have any magical secrets, and I don't want your hundred dollars. In fact, I actively discourage you from taking this as gospel. If you decide to quit drinking, you should do it on your own terms and for your own reasons. Still, if you're curious how I did it, here are my steps.

Step One: Ask Yourself, "Do I Really Have a Problem?"
Recovery culture has set the bar for being an alcoholic very, very low. I happen to think that alcoholism is in the liver of the beholder. If you can have one or two drinks and then go back to your day, you're almost certainly not an alcoholic. If you have a couple of beers and then switch to soft drinks, you're almost certainly not an alcoholic. If none of your friends has ever taken you aside and suggested that your life would be hugely improved by quitting drinking, you're probably not an alcoholic (unless all your friends are alcoholics, too).

Enjoying alcohol doesn't make you an alcoholic any more than enjoying sex makes you a nymphomaniac. Getting drunk can be fun. If you can drink without ruining your life, don't let me—or anyone else—stop you.

John Kuczala

The real secret to getting sober is to take the time to figure out the causes of your addiction and the aspects of your character that can be pressed into service in curing them.

Step Two: Quit Publicly
It's perfectly possible to get sober without attending meetings and pouring out your darkest secrets to a group of strangers. Now the bad news: It is impossible for an alcoholic to quit drinking in secret. Absolutely 100% impossible.

We alcoholics and former alcoholics have proven ourselves to be very bad at turning down the opportunity to drink. Unfortunately, the world around us is very good at offering us those opportunities—cocktail parties, dinner parties, birthdays, weddings, happy hours, wakes. As an alcoholic, you will actively—if subconsciously—seek out those opportunities, and you will cave in to them. Unless, that is, everyone around you knows that to offer you a drink would be not just a bad idea but a hugely selfish and dangerous one.

When I decided to stop, I wrote an open letter on my blog, explaining that I had a serious problem with alcohol and asking for the support of those around me. Posting on Facebook or Twitter for just your friends would work just as well. If you're worried about your professional reputation if you "come out" as an addict, you might want to consider sending a group email to a dozen or so people you trust. Believe me, word will get around. The key is for people you encounter on a day-to-day basis to be aware that you have a problem and are trying to fix it. Those people are the ones who will be your greatest allies in quitting.

Step Three: Don't Fear Failure
I know two people who had one drink after years of sobriety and, unable to face their AA buddies, never went to another meeting. Both are now back on the booze.

If you do screw up once, forget it. You're human. Give yourself one chance, and don't even feel the need to share your failure with anyone. Try to figure out why you fell off the wagon and vow never to do it again.

But if you screw up twice, then you need to admit it: You've failed (this time). Go public with that failure; you'll almost certainly be inundated with offers of support and praise for your honesty. Take all that you're offered. Use that praise to redouble your efforts. Restart your internal clock.

Step Four: Pull Yourself Together
I'm five feet nine inches tall, so at 182 pounds I was technically overweight, if not quite obese. I couldn't jog up even a short flight of stairs without losing my breath. I'd love to say that after quitting I made an immediate decision to get healthy. I didn't. The fact that I'd managed to conquer my addiction to alcohol was achievement enough without punishing my body by denying it pizza or forcing it—heaven forbid—to go for a run.

Still, a funny thing happened. Even though I wasn't exercising, I still found myself losing weight. Lots of it. Six months after quitting, the scale was hovering at around 160 pounds. Within a year I was down to 140.

What makes me feel great about not drinking (apart from being able to hold down a relationship, a job and friendships) is how I feel inside: the fact that I'm at my ideal weight and feel fitter and healthier with every passing week.

Step Five: Stop Lying
I'd always had a problem with truth—not gigantic lies or criminal frauds, just simple fibs that made life easier: excuses for running late, fudged numbers on business plans, vague answers when asked where I'd been the previous night. Shortly after I quit drinking, I also decided to quit lying, cold turkey.

Did I entirely succeed? I'd be lying if I said yes. I've certainly made progress, starting with my confession that I had a serious problem with alcohol. It took me nearly 30 years to realize that, even in the short term, the truth almost always gets a better reaction than lying.

Step Six: Stop Apologizing
In AA, they're very clear on what to do about friends you have wronged. Except where it would be harmful (for them), you should contact everyone you've upset, apologize, and do some unspecified thing to make it up to them. But this struck me as self-indulgent.

In the weeks and months that follow your decision to quit, your friends will likely be hugely supportive, but the blunt truth is they'll expect you to fall off the wagon sooner or later. Any apology you make during that time will lack impact. "Fine," they'll think, "but if you're really sorry, you'll stay sober." And so that's what you must do. If you're really sorry for how you've behaved, and genuinely grateful that your friends are still around, then the best amends you can make is to stay on the wagon. Anything else is just words.

Step Seven: Rediscover Dating
During my drinking days, my seduction technique was the same as that of most British men: have an accent and be bold. Sober, the idea of hitting on tipsy women just didn't seem right. I could barely even ask a girl out for dinner, paralyzed by the thought of having to make conversation without a beer in my hand.

And then I met Molly. Our first date was excruciating, from the moment the sommelier took our order—"Uh, I'll just have a Diet Coke"—right through to the awkward hug good night. Having scored a second date by the skin of my teeth, I was determined to tell her the truth about my drinking. But she made the first move.

"So you're an alcoholic?" she said, innocently stirring her pad thai.

"How did you…?" But I knew the answer. "You read my blog."

Molly reached across the table and squeezed my hand. "Honesty is sexy." I suppose she was telling the truth: We've been together for almost two years. Alcohol used to allow me to be bold with women; sobriety has done that one better.

Step Eight: Replace Your Ridiculous Drunken Stories With Ridiculous Sober Ones
One thing about being an alcoholic is that you get to tell some epic drinking stories. Being a drunk gives you an excuse to meet people you wouldn't otherwise meet, crash parties you wouldn't otherwise crash.

It eventually occurred to me, however, that those opportunities were still there, and there was nothing stopping me from chasing them. The only difference between sober adventures and drunken ones is that you're more likely to survive—and remember—the former.

And so it was that, in April 2011, feeling tired of my (then) home base of San Francisco, I had an idea for a sober adventure: I'd relocate to Las Vegas for a month, staying a single night in each hotel on the Strip. Over the four weeks that followed, I met Oscar Goodman, the mayor of Las Vegas (who once defended Mafia bosses in court), got in a fight with the magician Criss Angel and got thrown out of a strip club while interviewing a clown.

The best part: I remember all of it.

Step Nine: Spend Money on Stuff You Won't Lose
"Just think how much money you'd save if you gave up drinking!" teetotalers say, as if alcoholics are simply lacking sound fiscal sense. But while saving money is a terrible motivation for quitting, it does make a pleasant reward. To mark six months dry, I bought myself a Montblanc Meisterstück fountain pen for a shade under $1,000. I'd never have spent that much on a pen while drinking, because of my habit of leaving expensive items in bars and cabs. As such, it's the perfect pocket-size reminder of how much I've changed.

Step Ten: Take a Difficult Test
It was October 2010, and I couldn't put off the call any longer. A week earlier, I'd unpacked a mail-order home testing kit, pricked my finger, and smeared what felt like a gallon of blood onto a strip of absorbent paper. After I FedExed the sample to the testing company, the results of my HIV test would be available by phone in five days.

Doctors suggest getting a test soon after engaging in certain "risky" activities: unsafe sex with a stranger, needle sharing, that kind of thing. Given my decade-or-so of drunken misadventures, I was somewhat overdue. If you've never taken one of these tests, here's a fun fact: Finding out whether you have HIV is exactly like booking movie tickets.

"Hi, and thank you for calling the results line. To receive your test results, press 1. For assistance, press 2."

Beep.

Beep.

BEEP.

Finally: "The result of your test was…negative."

I hung up the phone and cried for half an hour.

Step Eleven: Work Nicer, Not Just Harder and Smarter
For most of my career, I was neither a functioning nor a nonfunctioning alcoholic. If anything, I was an entrepreneurial alcoholic. I created a series of jobs custom-designed to support my love of alcohol.

It took me two full years of sobriety until I was finally ready to re-enter the world of entrepreneurship. The first thing I did after announcing my new enterprise was write a long post on my blog, detailing every one of my past business failures. It began: "F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, 'There are no second acts in American lives.' On the subject of British lives having second acts in America he was, however, mercifully silent."

Step Twelve: Forget Everything You've Just Read
If it worked for me, it can work for anyone, right? Wrong. The chances that any of the advice here will work for you are vanishingly slim. So, too, are the chances that reading "How to Win Friends and Influence People" will result in your doing either of those things. In truth, all self-help guides are guaranteed to work only for one person: the person who wrote them.

The real secret to getting sober, and to repairing all the broken aspects of your life, is to take the time (probably through trial and error) to figure out the causes of your addiction and the aspects of your character that can be pressed into service in curing them. To do that, you'll have to figure out your own list of things you enjoy about drinking (for me: adventures, reckless spending, dating, etc.) and how you can keep those things alive through sobriety. Then you need to figure out what part of your personality will drive you to stay sober (for me: ego).

And then, as every recovering addict will tell you, it's simply a question of taking one step at a time.

—Adapted from Paul Carr's "Sober Is My New Drunk," a Byliner Original available as a Kindle Single at Amazon, a Quick Read at Apple's iBookstore and a NOOK Snap at BN.com.