New stories

# Chapter 70

There are so many wonderful people here in Vermont where I am working this week. They ask the most difficult questions. They need answers. They need clarity. They need to see the big picture. They need to understand how they can join in, and help change the world. They need to hear this from me.

Because this is a cold and ferocious place weather-wise, being this far north, they take their alcoholic beverages very serious up here near the Canadian border. I find myself dodging their invitations to join in regularly. But since questions, clarity, big picture understanding, and recruitment do not play nicely with the fatigue, flirtations and fog of imbibing alcohol, I am ignoring their invitations. I am continuing with my 113 days of not drinking, though you never know, it could end tomorrow and then start up again the following day.

This clarity comes at a price, but its not as high as I thought, and its benefits are better than I imagined. Nor am I constrained by my AFD (alcohol free days) run that I am currently on . . . I just restarted the run after any day I find that drinking with someone is more important than not drinking with someone. That day will eventually come and it is ok. It feels like the fact that no one is forcing me to do this, makes it easier to do. There is nothing to resist, except the stories that I have always told myself about . . . well myself. Its time I can see, to start telling myself some new stories, and that is what you have been reading these past weeks.

Clarity and poison

# Chapter 69

Sleep and clarity. I spoke to various groups of business people and church people yesterday with the hope that they would engage with us, as we seek to change the world. They asked lots of sharp penetrating questions. Questions that required me to be as sharp as I can be. And I am not sure that is even enough. Without proper sleep, my clarity tank is always in doubt. And even if I get enough sleep, or the right quality of sleep, my clarity quality suffers if I have been drinking my favorite beverages. And of course I can’t even get those kinds of sleep qualities if I have been imbibing either.

Let’s be honest here, just because I am not drinking at the moment, does not guarantee that I will get the amount and type of sleep that I need to be the best version of me, nor does it guarantee that I will have the requisite clarity to answer people’s inquiries in a manner that communicates the fullest possible answer within me. But drinking beer or Irish whiskey does pretty much guarantee that my sleep and my clarity will take a negative hit and be less than ideal for all that I am facing professionally and personally these days. The very thing I want to consume so that I can relax and celebrate my success, is what interferes most with my relaxing and celebrating and actual success. Face it, drinking a beer or six never helped anyone succeed at anything except impairment of functioning at your best possible capacity. To violently disagree with the commercial here, you can’t have it all, or both ways. I can either choose the best possible path to great sleep and the best clarity of thought, or I can choose to poison them both, but I can’t do both.

This could change everything

# Chapter 68

Well I made it to Vermont alcohol free, and I headed off a number of alcohol related pieces to my stay here in the NorthEast over the next week. And did I ever sleep well last night!! Closer and closer to that Ruby Warrington “orgasmic sleep” status. It was a particularly long and exhausting day, and so the sleep was even sweeter.

I woke up at 6:30 am as it was getting light in my room since last night I was so tired that I did not close the blinds at all, and I thought to myself when I woke, “David you got in bed well after midnight, just rest for a moment more” . . . and boom, the next thing I knew it was almost 8:00 am!! Woohoo. But not just the amount of sleep, but the depth of the sleep was so amazing! I could even willingly talk to another human being within an hour of waking today I felt so good! On purpose!!

This does not happen to me very often. I usually wake between 6-7 and I don’t want to see or talk to another human being before 10-11. This is just my average grumpy introvert slow-to-wake-up routine that I have honestly had since childhood. Its the real me. So when I wake up chirpy or remotely social, then I have had a stellar rest. Its like I have been fast-forwarded 4 hours into the future. My brain is on super high-test fuel. It is running on steroids! I can climb bigger mountains fast than ever before, and feel great while doing it! I feel clarity oozing out my pores as I share myself with other people - very unusual for me. Sleep at this quality level, could possibly change everything about my life.

Full effect sleep

# Chapter 66

Another great eight solid hours of sleep. Can’t say that I have ever enjoyed sleeping so much, and the way I feel when I wake up is pretty spectacular. Even after my second getting up to pee, I only had to count down to 240 (backwards from 300 by 3s) in order to fall back to sleep. This is super groovy, because getting up to pee is usually the harbinger of my brain kicking up into gears that won’t let me return to never never land. So I am always looking for ways, means, and processes to overcome this problem and keep my brain in neutral, so I can go right back to sleep.

I know there is a ton of information on the internet about sleep, how much, what quality, how to fall to sleep, stay asleep, etc etc, and mostly proclaiming how American’s aren’t getting enough sleep. I don’t want to review any of that here, just instead proclaim that if and when you get the right amount and quality of sleep, it is revolutionary. It is a game-changer. Try it. You will love it. But alcohol will prevent you from ever achieving this, both in my experience and in all that I read - they are in agreement.

In fact the “sober curious” movement argues that you have to go at the very minimum three full weeks without drinking any alcohol, before the effects are completely out of your body. (Read Ruby Warrington’s “Sober Curious” if you want more details). Just taking a two day break from drinking is not gonna give you the full effect. Having said that, I could usually experience a big boost in quality of sleep even with a one day break. In my life, if I did not have a drink on a given day, I slept better period. That has been truth for decades for me.

Sleeping hack?

# Chapter 65

Not drinking at all for the moment is one of the hacks that I am applying to my life. And one of the side hacks that has improved greatly from not drinking, is the quality of my sleep. This was not an issue in my younger decades. Just lay horizontal and boom, I was asleep. Waking up was the problem in those younger decades! Not going to sleep nor the quality of sleep, ever was the problem.

Fast forward 40 years and there are some revelations and different experiences to be had. Now it can take a long time to fall asleep, and then a long time to go back to sleep every time you have to get up and pee throughout the night, and you start to develop strategies to mitigate these lay-there-awake-for-hours experiences.

But with 40 years of alcohol consumption stirring the sleeping condition and experience, there was little to grade except poor sleep to bad sleep to I-always-feel-like-I-need-more sleep. Now with unhindered-by-alcohol-sleep possible, the possible grades have improved dramatically. Good sleep is possible, great sleep is possible, and according to Ruby Warrington, “orgasmic sleep” is possible (not sure I have ever experienced that one), which ones do you want to have and experience? I consistently stay near the great sleep category these 107 days without drinking alcohol. Of all the things I have tried over the decades to improve my sleep, nothing comes close to the impact of simply not consuming any alcohol - that one decision changes the sleeping hack completely. In fact over the years, the impact of alcohol on my sleep was the most consistently worst part of drinking at all. Worse than any other effects.

This morning, when my dad got up (my current human alarm clock) I woke up full of energy, optimistic about the day and the future, happy to be me, filled with all the possibilities of this moment. So much better than dragging my ass out of bed, stumbling through the morning, bumping into stuff physically and mentally, wondering why I have to go through this difficulty I brought on myself . . . a post-imbibing morning when waking from some poor or bad sleep. You choose. Everyday.

The person I want to be today

# Chapter 64

Another headline yesterday, “As drinking declines, nonalcoholic beer gets a slick rebrand.” Included with links to “sober curious” like the previous day. The beer universe is going through a major shift. Clearly I am not the only person experiencing this persistent hit on my sleep, productivity and weight. Let’s be honest, I have enough challenges with my sleep, productivity and weight without outside sabotage. Don’t you?

It is plenty difficult to keep moving forward toward success. Read my first 50 plus chapters in this book. Distractions and challenges abound. Why do I so want to complexify everything by drinking beer? Is it marketing? Is it escapism? Is it an addiction? Yes it tastes good and I like it, but I like hummus and I like peanut butter too, and they don’t mess with me. I like nuts and trail mix, but they don’t make me feel like a slug the following morning after eating them.

Perhaps it is simple as a generational thing? When I was growing up, drinking was considered the ultimate adulting activity. Every warning we received as we grew up, reinforced our desire to do it? To the point where I can’t turn that message off? My previous employer of 23 years, had a stated policy that drinking was not allowed. Of course that just made it all the more attractive. But I don’t work for them anymore, and no one is making it forbidden. There is no tantalizing rule to break. Just a choice of what kind of person I want to be today.

746% increase!

# Chapter 63

Lest you think I am the only person in the world thinking about actually removing alcohol from my life, here are some stats. There is a world wide moment or trend called Sober Curious these days, and the SODA moment I am following is a subgroup of Sober Curious. (Ruby Warrington’s book by the same title is a good primer). First of all 33% of the public don’t drink at all. According to a recent Nielsen study 47% of USA adults are trying to reduce their alcohol consumption this year. Pinterest witnessed a 746% increase in “sober living” searches in the past 12 months. And according to Nielsen client solutions director Matt Compton, alcohol consumption has been in decline for a number of years. (These stats come from an article by Rina Raphael at fastcompany.com) 1 in 6 drinking bars are closing!

So you can see, Dr. D isn’t the only fish in the pond that is realizing that beer, while I really enjoy it, brings me little benefit, and takes a great deal of health, production and clarity from my life. I can’t afford its price! Like most things in the West, it is polarizing and a big drama, but the reality is, that more and more people are deciding that they don’t have to lubricate with alcohol in order to produce, socialize or date, or chill or relax or to unwind.

People want to feel strong and powerful and filled with potential and promise. As sad as it makes me feel to say this, beer often robs me of these things, not in a hurricane fashion, but in a trickle of corrosion that makes it difficult to track the scale of the damage because it happens over such a long period of time. But as a good sign, people are way more health-aware today, and have better tools to see how they are doing, I have great hope that people find their strong, powerful, potential and promise.

Plague Bringer

Chapter 61

Plague Bringer is the name of the hamburger I had last night in Indianapolis. And yes, perhaps you know that this is also the name of a heavy metal band. Because Jake and I were in the Metal band burger joint known as Kuma’s Corner here in Indy. It was outstanding! Best burger I have eaten in a long while. And even though I don’t eat a lot of burgers anymore, this one was really good. But it was in a bar. A drinking, alcohol focused bar. I am not drinking these days. Let the battle (of the bands?) begin.

So once again, I made a mental decision, along with a mental conversation as soon as I discovered where Jake was taking me, to not drink. I don’t know if this helps or not, but it seems super logical to me to decide ahead of time that you are going to hold the line and continue the long process you have been having success with all along. And I ordered the one and only non-alcoholic beer on their extensive menu. Jake ordered two luscious smelling beers - and yes I choose to smell everyone’s beer order and enjoy those near tastes, because in my life and where I live and travel around the world, I will never get out of bars and so I have to find a way to navigate those places, and at the moment, smelling substitutes drinking.

Long story short, I enjoyed the evening, the burger, and successful did-not-drink again for the 103rd consecutive day. It might end today, which is true everyday, but it has been a great run.

Habits and the road

# Chapter 59

The life on the road is wonderful terrible. Wonderful because I get a chance to have some quiet and catch up on some tasks and projects that need to be done. Terrible because I am sharing this space with 100’s of other people, one of which pulled the fire alarm this morning which created quite a stir. They crowd the breakfast space, they crowd the elevators and the fitness center. You get the picture.

But my systems save me from the traveling chaos, and these habits keep me on track. That is why I am sitting here writing this chapter out, because of habits. I am wanting to make not drinking one of my most stable habits if for no other reason than alcohol will never make me a better version of myself, or improve on what I am right now. The people in my life deserve and need the best version of me, and that can never be the alcohol-fueled version of me.

Instead, drinking alcohol is the tacit approval to NOT be responsible and caring and thoughtful and adult. It is the decision to “let our hair down” and not do what we know should be done. It is the decision to not make any more decisions, at least the one’s that the non-drinking version of me would likely make. This is why I can never think of alcohol as the reward, ever again. Thursday night out with boys, is a horrible manner in which to express “I am finished” with whatever. There has to be a healthier and more positive manner in which to say “enough” and “full stop.” If drinking is the reward, then it is a thorny painful regret-filled reward.

238 miles in the wrong direction

# Chapter 58


238 miles in the wrong direction on purpose. I know, few would do this in America I am discovering. Pretty much everyone thinks I am nuts. But I am also discovering that I value my kids and grandkids far higher than the average American . . . that is if you measure this value by how far I am willing to travel in order to see them. Even if for less than a single day. That’s right, the 500 mile round trip was to see my daughters and grandkids for less than a 24 hour period.


This is the sharp clarity that comes from the deepest clearest understandings of the fragility of life, and the brevity of life! No one will ask me how many hours I worked everyday for the span of my life, nor will anyone care how much I accomplished. Nor will they even care how much money I made or wasted. Now and at the end, the quality of life can only be measured by the relationships that I have and nurture. And I deeply value my relationships with my children and my grandchildren. I am always looking for ways to spend more time with them! I want them to have the deepest and richest memories of me, more than anyone else ever in their whole lives. That can only happen as I sacrifice and make the effort to see them, even though we live continents apart from one another.


I find that Americans spend measurably less time with their relatives, the closer in proximity that they live to them. No wonder I think that American’s minds have been lobotomized by alcohol. Their understanding is clouded by the consumption of these toxic beverages. I love them too, what can I say? But at the moment I am taking a break from alcohol, and I am loving my clarity. On the other hand, there may be no connection whatsoever between alcohol consumption and broken relationships, or devalued relationships. Heck, perhaps alcohol consumption is the only way some people can stand to be with their relatives at all. You decide.

The three F’s

# Chapter 56

 There are three things that distract most people according to Bobb Bhiel fog, fatigue and flirtations and according to me (and a great deal of data) alcohol affects all three. You flirt with temptations more easily when drinking. You are definitely more fatigued when drinking. But the one that strikes at me most when drinking is fog. 

 It is like the fog on the lake this morning, being created seemingly out of thin air and obscuring your clarity and vision. Lake fog makes for awesome and epic photographs, and it was amazing and I took a ton of pics.  But life fog is frustrating, making you uncertain and doubtful about your next course of action, it makes thinking erratic, cryptic and perplexing. Most of all it makes practically all movement dangerous. You can’t see what is coming, you can’t see where the edge of the pavement is located, you can’t see the deer crossing the road out in front of you. All of these are great metaphors for what fog in your life does to you.

 Yes you can can have fog in your life without drinking, but drinking always makes it worse. This was and is one of the primary reasons I have decided to take a break from drinking. I need all the clarity I can muster and then some. There are problems to be solve, challenges to be overcome and solutions to find. Beer will never help me find those things nor accomplish those things. No matter how much I enjoy it, alcohol only takes in the end. It never gives.

At the cemetery

At the cemetery 

 It’s quiet. And that is not to be funny. In a world with very little quiet, it’s a beautiful and silent place. I guess that equals peaceful in the modern world. It also feels lonely, missing my mom always makes me feel that way. 

 Remembering her from the days of my childhood and youth makes me hurt to have that wonderful warm presence in my life again. She was so much fun and brightness and vivaciousness. Everything can appear to be fairly gray in the post-mom era. I wish I could remember more of the stories that she told, the history that she shared, more of what she taught us. But mainly I remember what I felt. 

 Now things feel very different. The noise of the house is non-stop and not nearly as dynamic and conversational. There are no thoughtful moments, no thinking and little consideration about the deeper things of life. Whatever appears in the frontal lobe gets spoken into words that circle endlessly around in the same boring loop. Well I guess it is time to head back to the present. Quiet time is over for today.

Who is driving your life?

In the thousands of miles I have driven across America 

. . . these last 10 days, I have noticed a very interesting leadership phenomena

 . . . other drivers will tailgate you while in the fast lane, driving so close to your car, encouraging you to go ever faster, you can’t even see the front of their car they are so close! And then very often, when you pull over into the slow lane to allow them to pass, they then slow down? 

Let’s extrapolate here. It seems apparent to me that people are willing to go above the speed limit and break the rules as long as someone else is out in front of them and is the primary target. But when left alone in the fast lane, with no one to be the primary target but themselves, they immediately decide the risk is too high and they slow down.

I think many people live their whole lives like this. Especially Westerners. They want someone else to take the lead, shoulder the responsibility, take the initiative, do the hard work, while they benefit safely in the backdraft of someone else’s efforts.

Don’t know about you, but I prefer to choose my risks, choose my path, make my own efforts, take responsibility. You gotta own your life, or someone else will.

Is it a habit yet?

Chapter 60

Is this a habit yet? When is anything a habit? Isn’t a habit simply a dependable decision to choose a consistent action? Well yes and  . . . no I think. I have been working out for over 20 years pretty much every single day. If I am not in an airplane or car or train traveling to some destination, I simply always have some form of a workout, its almost like breathing after so many years. I pack for trips based on workouts. My shoes selection is often based on my hoped for workout plans. My daily schedule revolves in truth around my workouts, not my productivity.


Some might call this obsessive behavior instead of a habit, but I would not. Time has proven over and over and over again, how much better I feel and how much more productive I am throughout the day, when I have a workout. Those are the facts of my life. Your mileage may differ. But this is a habit in my estimation, and writing these 275 words a day are not. Even though this is my 60th consecutive day, I won’t miss this, like I would a workout. Of course writing 275 words does not affect my physical body like exercise, but I have other habits that are mental in nature and they DO give me a kick, albeit a mental one not a physical one. So I am still waiting for this daily writing practice to give me a mental kick that I will miss out on, if I fail to do it, and then I think it will be a habit in the Dr Aderholdt world.

Uncripple your mental clarity

# Chapter 55

 Great sleep is only one of the benefits of my 100 plus days without imbibing. Mental clarity is another. Thought I will admit this one is more difficult to track and measure. It does however show itself in a dozen ways. And it comes with an additional bonus - more control.

 More control over what you say or don’t. More control over being generous with your thoughts and words and attitude. But the more control over the words you say is the real gain here in my opinion. A night after drinking with the guys, and I find myself saying things better left unsaid, especially to my wife. You can’t undo these things, and they carry a high price tag and it doesn’t get better in the future. So while we aren’t talking about massive amounts more control, every little bit helps when you are me. I will take it. Its enough to be noticed!

 The additional mental clarity can be seen in the alternative narratives that you can construct about why something happened. This is probably the most valuable to the general world, that the added control, but these alternative narratives make many things possible. When my dad says, “that SOB Chris the electrician, he had no right to say that to me!” . . . alternative narratives clicking mentally here . . . and I can say, “well maybe Chris had a really bad night staying up all night with his new baby”, or “maybe Chris just received a really bad medical diagnosis this morning” or “did we do something to spark that response in Chris?” And so on and so forth. Easily three alternative narratives that my dad would have never considered otherwise.

 Can you see the power in this?? It is awesome. For some reason, and I wish it did not, but alcohol cripples this ability in me.

Quiet or food?

There are many love languages, a concept and a phrase I think made popular by Gary Smalley back in the 70s, but my dad‘s love language is food. 

Food is the very last conversation I ever wanna have. I am committed to destroying food’s power in my life. That is complicated much by the fact that this is my dad‘s love language. While you’re eating and devouring any given meal, he is already planning the next three meals or even the next week worth of meals. So not only can you not just simply be present and enjoy this meal, you also have to be future oriented and planning out the coming days and weeks. Infuriating. Incredibly difficult. Destruction of all my current goals.

But this knife cuts both directions. My love language is quiet, solitude, and silence. These are a complete anathema to my dad. He cannot stand one single second of silence. He will do anything, and say anything, and make any amount of noise necessary, to fill every single moment of silence. So my love language, and his love language, don’t work together so well. It’s not that I can’t plan out what we’re going to eat tomorrow, it’s just that I am past focusing on food 24/7. It’s not that he can’t have a moment of silence here and there, it’s just that if he has a choice he will never allow a moment of silence to occur.

So the thing he wants most and a thing I want most, neither of us ever receive. Hmmmmmm.

Yet we still get on so good. I guess real love can overcome even our primary love languages?

What I think about it

So yeah, I am not drinking any alcohol at all. For months now. Its been easier than I expected actually, and most people have been very supportive and not made a big deal (or any deal at all) about me not drinking with them. This has been huge, because honestly I expected much more push back than I have received. So maybe I don’t have to upgrade my friends and family after all? Many people do when they make a change of course in their lives. On the other hand I am not sure I am making a change of course in life or still experimenting. Will let you know in 10 years.

 But it has been really difficult in my own head. And this of course is where most things are truly difficult. The stories we tell ourselves make a great many things more difficult that perhaps they really are in the real world. And likewise, the stories that we tell ourselves could make our lives a great deal more accurate to reflect the possibilities and potentials that are always around, but rarely utilized. These internal narratives are the foundations of our daily experiences in life.

 But I digress about the difficulties of not drinking. My internal narrative about myself does not include a version where I never drink alcohol. I have lived in the Slavic world for the last 25 years. In the Slavic world, everything in life revolves around alcohol. I mean everything! But even the social pressure of the country I live in is not the worst. Its what I think about it, that is most difficult. How I perceive it, the values I place on it, what kind of person I think it makes me, how it defines me in my mind, these are the battles of being a non-drinking person - or anything else in life.

The longest run . . .

Chapter 50

Yesterday’s chapter on nonversation may have confused you since book two is about changes and experiments and life hacking toward greater productivity. Nonversation is like the mental version of being physically drunk - that’s how badly nonversation will deconstruct your productivity.

Speaking of being drunk, I am not. But I have noticed over the years that alcohol was having a more and more significant impact on my physical body. Said another was, I love beer - sincerely enjoy it, but it doesn’t like me. It slows me down, physically, mentally and makes me feel like crap often on the following day. It wrecks my sleep about half the time. As Ruby Warrenton says, “You never regret not drinking the following morning” has my bullseye painted squarely in the middle of that statement. I have simply never regretted not drinking . . . the following morning. 


So I am currently on the longest stretched of days weeks and months without drinking that I have ever done in my adult life. 102 days since I last had a beer, and while I really miss beer (especially when there is Mexican food involved or pizza) the outputs have been really great. That doesn’t mean that I won’t drink again. Not at all, but I have been moving in this direction for years. Since no amount of wishing will make the negatives of alcohol consumption go away (if that were possible I would be the poster child) and no amount of rationalization will make the positives of not drinking be explained in any other way,  . . . for now, I will see how far the stretch of no alcohol will run.