I have this saying framed and hanging on my office wall, near where my desk sits. I’m pretty sure any poem I wrote while drunk was total crap and likely not even worthy of editing. But it’s all a moot point now as I stopped drinking alcohol completely earlier in the year.

Most people who know me would say I’m a wine lover. In fact, I had this included in my signature block on my email and in my author’s bio.

But for the last year or so wine hasn’t agreed with me. Specifically, it will cause severe, intense, and immediate headaches. I’m not talking about a hangover, though of course I’ve suffered through those as well. What I’m talking about is halfway through a glass of wine, I suddenly have an intense headache that spans my forehead, temple to temple.

My struggle with migraines and headaches stretches back two decades, to my early twenties, when I suffered through eight months of migraines but being a poor college student with minimal healthcare, couldn’t afford to see a neurologist so I just gutted it out and waited for them to stop. They eventually did and life moved forward. When the migraines resurfaced when I was thirty I went to a neurologist, and through trial and error he found a drug that made the non-stop migraine stop. A few years later, the migraine came raging back only this time, it meant serious business. The MRIs showed a lesion on my brain but this ultimately was a coincidental finding and wasn’t causing my migraines. After six long, excruciating months where I suffered through a nonstop migraine that averaged a 7-8 on a 1-10 pain scale, we found a drug that worked. This lengthy migraine was so memorable I wrote a poem about it: Love is a Lesion on Your Brain. I still take this drug every night before I go to bed and it mostly keeps the migraines away though I still suffer from a 1-2 week migraine a few times a year.

But for the past couple of years, alcohol can trigger them. It wasn’t just red wine, which is a culprit for many migraine-sufferers, all alcohol had this effect on me. Sometime last year I started easing off drinking, no longer opening a bottle of wine for dinner during the week. I still had wine on the weekends, usually if we had dinner plans with friends, but soon I was easing away from that. By mid-fall, I was barely touching alcohol.

When I went to Paris I drank wine and champagne and thankfully, had no headaches while there. But I returned home and the headaches returned whenever I sipped a glass of wine. We celebrated New Year’s with a group of friends and I drank bit too much champagne that night which lead to a headache, but that one I earned. The rest of the weekend together I didn’t drink.

I didn’t make a conscious effort to quit drinking in 2020, it just sort of happened. I had a few glasses of champagne with a friend in early January, to celebrate her completion of an MFA program, but otherwise, I haven’t drank.

For the most part, I don’t miss alcohol. I drink bubbly water and if I feel the need to be fancy, I pour it into a wine glass. The wine rack I filled shortly early in the year remains full. During virtual happy hours, which are now a regular part of life, I sip my water.

When you stop drinking you realize how ingrained alcohol is in our culture. Gatherings with friends always include booze, we get together for happy hours and after-work drinks. We sip mimosas at brunch.

The pandemic made it easy to quit drinking – I’m not seeing friends, all happy hours are virtual, and all restaurants are closed. I’ll see friends post pictures of their fridges, full of booze they got at Costco, or their recent delivery from the wine shop and I’ll like the picture – I don’t care if other people drink, I just can’t do it myself anymore.

Many people tie writing to drinking and it’s easy to do – I’ve labored over many a poem or manuscript with a glass of wine by my side. I’ve had late night conversations with writer friends as we each sipped from our glasses. I’ve popped champagne to celebrate a friend’s book publication. Those are the events where I miss wine, but the headaches that now accompany even a half a glass of booze just aren’t worth it. So for me, the saying is now: Write sober. Edit sober. And that’s okay.