What if you don’t have a drinking problem?You just know it’s holding you back.
My numbers, before and after
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- Weight, 230 to 207 lbs
- Blood pressure, 168/104 to 120/77
- Off two prescriptions.
My LDL, 212 to 142
LDL, December 2024 to August 2025.
For 30 years I drank the way everyone around me did, and from the outside looking in, I was fine. My blood pressure was 168/104, and that was on medication. I retired from alcohol on April 16, 2025. Here’s how I got there.
Drinking came with the job
I’ve spent about 20 years in enterprise sales, and for most of them I bought into the culture completely. Happy hours after work. Vendor dinners. Client dinners. Work hard, play hard. I was all in.
I watched colleagues pass out in elevators and embarrass themselves in front of their managers and coworkers. In January 2011, I spent the whole day drinking through the Bears and Packers playoff game. That night in downtown Denver, I turned to cross a busy street without paying attention. A bus came within a foot or two of me before my closest friend at the time grabbed me and pulled me back.
I was at work the next morning at 8:00 AM. None of this ever felt like a crisis while it was happening.
What it cost and what I tried
Most people would have said I had it together. My lab work didn’t agree. My blood pressure ran 168/104, and that was on medication.
Around 2019, I started asking myself a question. Is this the life I actually want? Alcohol included?
I kept drinking. For six years I tried moderation. Just weekends. Just one night during the week. Then I’d be traveling and out with customers four nights running, and did the weekend still count? Mimosas at brunch, except if I started at eleven I was drinking all day. Every rule I set turned into something I had to work out again the next week.
Moderation works for my wife. It didn’t work for me.
Meanwhile I tried to fix everything except the drinking. The weight kept piling on even though I ate the same and kept working out, so I spent over $7,000 on CoolSculpting. My cholesterol and inflammation were up, and drinking pushes both, so I took 25 supplements a day for four to five months.
My wife made fun of the supplements. I told her they were for things like inflammation. I knew the real cause was alcohol, and I never told her I was thinking about stopping.
Why I prepared first
I spent about six years preparing before I retired from alcohol. I didn’t understand what that preparation was doing until afterward, when I looked back on those six years, started telling my story and built Prepared Sobriety into what it is today.
Wanting to stop and stopping are two different things. Researchers have measured that gap. In a review of 422 studies, what people intended explained only about 28% of what they actually did.
They’ve also studied what closes it. Three findings stand out.
- Decide the moment before it comes. Plans made ahead of time, in an “if this happens, I’ll do that” form, are one of the strongest findings in behavior science. A 2006 review of 94 tests found a medium to large effect on reaching goals.
- Name what’s in the way. In studies at NYU, picturing only the good outcome lowered effort. People who pictured the outcome, then the obstacle, then made a plan did better.
- Give it months. In the first study to track new daily habits in real life, the average time for a habit to feel automatic was 66 days. The range ran from 18 to 254. Missing a day didn’t undo the progress.
These studies cover goals and habits in general, not alcohol specifically. Sources: Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006); Sheeran (2002); Oettingen and Mayer (2002); Wang, Wang and Gai (2021); Lally et al. (2010).
The turning point
Sun Valley gets only a few real powder days a season, and I was there for one of them. The snow was knee deep, and skiing in that is hard work.
Out on the mountain, my heart was beating so hard I thought I was having a heart attack. I remember thinking I was going to keel over dead, right there in the snow. It scared me.
We’d had drinks the night before and probably a mimosa that morning. I was already on blood pressure medication. Drinking drives up your heart rate and your blood pressure.
I never got it checked. Looking back, I absolutely should have. If you’ve felt this, or you feel it now, see a doctor.
One Sunday I got home from a weekend away with friends. I’d been drinking Friday night and Saturday night. I wasn’t really hungover, but I was definitely short on patience. My daughter had lent our gas can to a friend whose car ran out of gas, and it was sitting on the front stoop when I got home. I lost it over the gas can. I knew exactly what caused it, and it wasn’t the first time.
In April 2025 I had surgery coming up, and I was told to stop drinking two weeks before it. By then I was about 80 percent decided. The surgery made it 100 percent.
On April 16, 2025, I retired from alcohol. After the surgery, I told my wife I was likely done drinking.
What came back
Within two weeks, my mood was better. I sleep better. Mondays used to come with fog. Now they don’t.
Within a month or two, my thinking was sharper. I built Prepared Sobriety on nights and weekends, in the hours I used to spend at happy hour or getting over one.
Four months in, my LDL was down 33%. By February 2026, I was off both medications. I’m 23 pounds lighter without changing how I ate.
See the full record
| Measure | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| LDL, mg/dLDecember 2024 to August 2025. | 212 | 142 |
| Total cholesterol, mg/dLDecember 2024 to August 2025. | 285 | 202 |
| hs-CRP, mg/LDecember 2024 to August 2025. | 2.9 | 1.6 |
| Blood pressure, mmHgOn medication before. None by February 2026. | 168/104 | 120/77 |
| Weight, lbsBefore I retired to October 2026. | 230 | 207 |
| A1c, percentTo August 2026. | 5.8 | 5.6 |
| Fasting glucose, mg/dLTo August 2026. | 100 | 87 |
| AmlodipineBy February 2026. | Taking | Stopped |
| OmeprazoleBy February 2026. | Taking | Stopped |
My numbers. Not a promise or medical advice.
These are my results. Yours may look different. Get baseline bloodwork before you stop so you can see your own.
See who I work with. Executives, business owners, professionals, first responders, healthcare workers, people in the trades and people who’ve stepped away from work. Whatever you do for a living, alcohol doesn’t care.
Why I do this
I’m not a counselor or a therapist. I drank regularly for 30 years, prepared for about six and retired from alcohol on April 16, 2025.
Now I help other people make the same decision, one-on-one with me through Signature or on their own time through Reserve.
The first call is 30 minutes by Zoom or phone. It’s private and there’s no pitch. You don’t need to be sure you want to stop.
If you’ve been thinking about this for a while, tell me where you are.
Open to a conversation?
A complimentary 30 minutes, one-on-one with me. No pitch.