IG: vinnywarren

What’s your name: Vinny.

Drug of choice? Alcohol.

Sober: December 20th 2019.

Give us a little background information. (Where are you from or grew up? What do you do for a living? What are your passions?)  I grew up in a small bohemian town called Galway perched on the Atlantic coast of Ireland. It rains a lot there. So the pubs are nice and warm and inviting. The pubs and the music are great. See Ed Sheeran’s Galway Girl video with Saoirse Ronan. That’s our wee town.

I create advertising campaigns for a living. 

I have three grown children. My oldest is a writer who now lives in Galway. 

My life is my family and my work. I have a talent for rescuing injured/lost birds. And I have three Shetland Sheepdogs. 

Describe your experience as an addict. When did you realize your life had become unmanageable? I was a ‘good drinker’ as we say in Ireland. I could drink and remain steady. It wasn’t that I drank a lot as much as I could drink for a long time. If we were on a shoot in LA and out for a drink I could be relied upon to hang in until the bitter end.

I was drinking in pubs by age 16. I also spent my formative years working part time in a very busy Galway pub. I loved it. And I was a really good and very fast bartender. Galway is famous for its pubs. It was very loose looking back on it. You could smoke hash openly in some bars. And magic mushrooms sprouted magically every September. By age 18 (legal drinking age) I was a pro. I could down seven pints in night. Easy. 

After college I moved to London. The rave scene was kicking off. Drugs were everywhere. Acid and ecstasy were huge. I tried it all. I then randomly won a green card in a visa lottery and traded cold grey old London for hot New York City. 

I lived in an Irish enclave in New York filled with fellow immigrants. There were new levels of partying in the city that never sleeps. It was here I got my first job in advertising. 

Then I got my dream job in Chicago.  Writing TV commercials for beer. Budweiser and Bud Light. I spent nine happy years thinking of funny things for the Super Bowl. I’m sure my work launched the drinking careers of countless Americans. 

Coolers filled with ice cold Bud were wheeled up to the 42nd floor of the Chicago skyscraper where we worked at 4 pm for ‘inspiration’. And I have to say, I loved the taste of Budweiser. Bud is huge in Ireland btw. 

My job sometimes facilitated some next level partying that I was only too willing to take full advantage of.

I once spent nine days in the south of France getting obliterated every day and night allegedly attending the Cannes Advertising Festival. My partner and I had decided it was a good idea to kick this off with a weekend in Amsterdam and then go to Cannes. Smuggled hash and an unlimited expense account led to a spectacular bacchanal that nearly killed us. We were drinking rose at 11 in the morning by the end of it. At least I was. 

Similarly an assignment working on Volkswagen in Berlin turned into another booze soaked two weeks in the cafes and bars in the summertime. But it wasn’t in vain. We delivered a VW spot for the Golf that was a big hit in Germany and beyond. 

This intermingling of my job and booze didn’t help but it was part of the overall fun of the job. 

It wasn’t so much that my life had become completely unmanageable. I didn’t have a dramatic ‘bottom’ story. It was more revulsion at what I had become and what the future would look like if I continued down that path. I had been drinking for 35 years when I quit. Enough was enough. 

What did your recovery look like? I noticed alcohol was getting its hooks into me in a serious way last year or so. The relationship changed. Where once I drank to start a fire. Now it felt like I was drinking to put out a fire. 

It had become a serious drag.  And my consumption had gone up.  In May 2019 while partying in the UK at a sporting event I amazed some hard partying pals from Northern Ireland at lunch by knocking back three pints of IPA just to get steady. Their reaction kind of scared me. If they thought I was hitting it hard I guess I must be. I kind of set myself a deadline of quitting drinking by the end of 2019.  

And then something miraculous happened. I randomly took my first ever yoga class at the height of my consumption. And I was instantly hooked on it. That was September 10 2019. I have done yoga every single day since.  As in going to a studio for an hour every day. The glimpse of healthier living it gave me proved key. I kind of preferred yoga to drinking. Didn’t see that one coming!  This hardened my resolve to quit by year’s end. 

And as usual I left it to the last minute. I knew there was no way in hell I was quitting drinking cold turkey. And I was worried about seizures from withdrawal. So on December 20th 2019, I checked myself into a medically supervised detox program.  This entailed checking into a psychiatric ward until the alcohol was out of my system.  For the first time in decades. Angelic nurses constantly monitored me and gave me whatever meds I needed. 

My most noticeable withdrawal symptom was recurring, sky-rocketing blood pressure. There was some group therapy. I was relieved to feel like the lightweight in the room here. Lots of opioid addicts. Cocaine was big too. We just hung out waiting for meals and told stories. One guy had a pending charge of ‘Flying under the Influence’. We all watched the all-day TREMORS marathon on Turner Movie Channel. 

Doing detox was a very good idea for me. When I emerged back into the sunlight after three days I was already feeling different and not in any way wanting to drink.  

I then went right into an Intensive Outpatient Rehab. This was basically rehab without the being completely away from home. You are regularly tested for drugs and alcohol and again, lots of group therapy which I grew to love. And again, insane stories from my fellow addicts.  I got into trouble a couple of times for quizzing my fellow boozers on their drinking history.  I was simply curious from an advertising/marketing POV. I met one woman in detox who drank 18 cans of Bud Light a day.  Nothing else. Just Bud Light. 

I tried AA and had an allergic reaction to it. I went to a bunch of different meetings and couldn’t wait to get out each time. I know it works for a lot of people but not for me. And I was in a hurry to find things that worked for me. Not things that sounded good to other people. I got quite a bit of resistance on this from well meaning people.  And it annoyed me. I found an hour of yoga daily gave me so much that there was just no way I was giving up that time to try something that didn’t work as well for me.  Simply because other people, who weren’t addicts, thought I should. 

Another thing was that I simply didn’t want to drink at all. Much less talk about or think about it.  

That surprised me. I thought you were supposed to become a shivering wreck dying for a drink. I think we all only have Leaving Las Vegas type horror imagery in our head when it comes to alcoholism and recovery. Which I think is a huge problem. Thanks to Hollywood alcoholism and recovery has a terrible and melodramatic image. 

How are you doing these days? I am doing fine. I have lost 40 pounds thanks to not drinking and doing yoga all the time. 

I had a severe bout of depression, my first ever, during the summer. This is common among former boozers apparently. I think it’s a delayed reaction as your brain’s chemistry adapts to the lack of booze. Or something. It got so bad I checked myself into the same psychiatric facility I did detox in. They held me for a week and put me on meds. It was scary.  I didn’t recognize what it was for months. And I tried to tough it out with yoga. That was a bad idea. Depression was nothing like I think we all imagine it. I wasn’t sad, this felt more like demonic possession. This thing wanted to kill me.

Stopping drinking wasn’t crossing the finish line for me. I realize now that I wasn’t addicted to booze as much as I was/am addicted to feeling extra good. And there’s lots of ways to get that buzz. Yoga is one of them for me. It’s a full on addiction. Yoga reliably gives me something beyond mere fitness. It’s a physical high. Friends and family say “Yes, but it’s a good addiction!”.  I smile and pretend to agree. 

What do you do to maintain sobriety?  Like I said, my yoga cross-addiction keeps me busy. I also am a huge fan of the r/stopdrinking subreddit on Reddit. I highly recommend this to anyone thinking of quitting drinking. Its tagline is “a support group in your pocket”. And it really is. I have posted and commented like a demon on there since I quit. It’s a great source of encouragement and you really feel like part of a community.  A digital AA, kind of. 

I don’t crave booze. Just the occasional muscle memory twitch now and then. I’m sure Xmas will feel a bit different without Baileys over crushed ice.  Though I cannot over-emphasize how sick and tired of drinking I was. I had simply had enough.  I was done. I am done. Baileys is just sugar.

I also seriously think that part of me wanted to get sober just to see what the buzz of not drinking would be like after all this time. And I have to say I like it. The physical and mental benefits are amazing. If nothing else I won’t drink simply to maintain my newly trim and flexible self. That alone is enough for me. Hey, I never said I was deep ;-)

What are you grateful for? I am grateful for the sense of calm and peace I sometimes have now. Not all the time. But quite a bit of the time. That’s new. I am grateful that I won’t slide into middle-aged Margaritaville.  I have always had a lot of energy but I have new levels now. And I look ten years younger. I feel like time has stopped in a strange way. Quitting drinking is like visiting a new country. You walk around with a newly heightened sense of everything. Going to the movies alone is so much fun. Milk duds and Coke. And those huge seats. That never would have happened before. Though I did notice they sell cans of IPA in cinemas now. I can’t think of a worse place to knock back IPA.  The bathroom visits alone. 

Any advice you would give to newly sober folks? Being sober isn’t a new you. It’s the old you come back after a long time away. Fall in love with having fun in simple ways again. There was a time when you had lots of fun before alcohol. And let’s face it, it’s our ability to have fun that got us into this mess in the first place. Physical activity is a great idea. Giving up drinking is already a huge step in the healthy direction. Why not go all the way?  Also, drink Topo Chico Mexican sparkling water. It has the same ‘mouth feel’ (as they say in the beer industry) as beer.