To put this into context, I started drinking in the mid-1990s. I first quit in 2004 and managed to stay sober for six years, until 2010. Then I went back to the bottle. What followed was nine years of relentless drinking.
My journey through alcohol had its own strange progression. I started with Sangria wine, moved on to Bud Light, flirted with Corona, and eventually graduated to hard liquor. By the end, my preferences had settled on vodka—Cîroc and Tito’s—and whisky, mainly Crown Royal and Jameson. Looking back, I sometimes joke that I drank enough to keep a bar in Isiolo fully stocked for a year.
But there was nothing amusing about what followed.
My quality of life steadily declined. My relationships became shallow and short-lived. Financially, I was bleeding. I surrounded myself with the wrong company and found excuses to drink at every opportunity. Every occasion became a reason to indulge. All the while, I lived in denial. I blamed everything and everyone—genetics, friends, neighbors, even my partner—anything but myself.
After years of abuse, my body began to give in. My hands trembled so badly I could barely sign a check or write my name. My appetite disappeared. I could not function without alcohol in my system. My temper worsened, and my life grew darker by the day. I knew, deep down, that I was in free fall. It was becoming a matter of quitting or dying.
I neglected responsibilities. I broke promises. I avoided people. Trouble with government agencies followed. Financial obligations piled up. At one point, I was dangerously close to losing everything, including a place to live.
Then one Monday morning, after drinking a 1.75-liter bottle of Crown Royal through the night and into the next day, something shifted. I decided to stop.
There was no ceremony. No Alcoholics Anonymous. No gradual tapering. No expert consultation. Just a decision.
I told my partner and close friends I was taking a break. No one believed me. To be honest, I did not fully believe myself either. When I told my daughter, she simply asked, “For how long?” I could not blame her. After nearly a decade of daily drinking, doubt was reasonable.
Quitting, as it turns out, was the easy part.
Staying sober is the real battle.
The moment I stopped, it felt like the world conspired against me. Every advertisement seemed to promote alcohol. My fridge was stocked with it. My social circles revolved around it. Alcohol had quietly embedded itself into every corner of my life.
And then came the void.
Days grew longer. My calendar emptied. The time once consumed by drinking and related social activities stretched endlessly before me. I began to understand why so many people relapse. It is not just about quitting—it is about what comes after.
At this stage of my life, I was not ready to pick up a new career or dive into demanding hobbies. I was not fully engaged in work either. The idle time became a breeding ground for temptation. Staying sober began to feel like a full-time struggle.
Over time, I realized something important. The real challenge is not how to quit—it is what to replace alcohol with.
We can all find reasons why people drink, and we can list countless strategies on how to stop. But the real question is: what fills the space that alcohol once occupied?
Each person must find their own answer.
Nature abhors a vacuum. If you do not consciously fill that space, something else—often the same destructive habit—will return to occupy it.
My approach has been simple, though not easy. I focus on one day at a time. Each day, I make a deliberate choice not to take the next drink. That single decision, repeated daily, has become more manageable over time.
I have also begun to fill the void. I read more. I take long drives. And now, I write.
These small but meaningful activities have brought a sense of fulfillment I had long forgotten. Today, I can say with confidence that I no longer miss alcohol.
This is a long journey—perhaps a thousand miles. But I have taken the first steps, and for the first time in a long while, I am moving in the right direction.
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