A Return to Simple Pleasures
5 things you'd be surprised to know I enjoy as much as I enjoyed drinking
One of the biggest lies alcohol ever told me was that it had a monopoly on enjoyment.
By the time I quit drinking, I had become convinced that alcohol was the only reliable way to lift my mood. If I’d had a difficult day at work, simply knowing I was going to have a few beers that evening was enough to make me feel better. That feeling often started long before I opened the first one. Sometimes it arrived right after lunch. The anticipation itself became part of the reward. Looking back, I can see that alcohol had quietly trained my brain to believe it was the only dependable source of excitement, comfort, and relief.
The tragedy is that this happened so gradually I never noticed what I was losing. I didn’t wake up one morning and decide that baseball, reading, conversations with my family, or creative projects were no longer interesting. Alcohol simply crowded them out. It became the fastest path to feeling better, and over time everything else began to pale in comparison. By the end of my drinking, I honestly believed that if I removed alcohol from my life, I would also be removing one of the few things that still brought me joy.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
One of the greatest surprises of sobriety has been discovering that the simple pleasures I thought I’d lost forever were still there. They had simply been buried beneath years of chasing a chemical reward. They didn’t all come back at once, and they certainly weren’t as exciting in the beginning. But over time, something remarkable happened. My brain slowly relearned how to find satisfaction in ordinary life again. Today, there are countless things I genuinely look forward to that bring me every bit as much joy as drinking once did, and unlike alcohol, they leave me feeling grateful instead of guilty.
Here are five of them.
This Old House
and Jeopardy!
People laugh when I tell them this, but two of my favorite ways to unwind are watching This Old House and Jeopardy!. I’ve spent some time trying to understand why those particular shows have become such a comforting part of my evenings, and I think it comes down to the kind of world they create.
Every episode of This Old House begins with a problem and ends with a solution. Skilled craftspeople quietly go about solving difficult challenges with patience, competence, and kindness. Nobody is yelling. Nobody is manufacturing drama for television. It’s simply talented people doing meaningful work well. I find that incredibly calming.
Jeopardy! offers something different but equally satisfying. In a world where everything seems open to debate, there are right answers and wrong answers. The rules are clear. The questions have answers (or the answers have questions, as it were). Someone wins, someone loses, and everyone goes home. After spending all day making difficult decisions or navigating complicated situations, there’s something wonderfully refreshing about that kind of clarity. Years ago, I would have told you nothing could compete with the anticipation of having a drink after work. Today, I genuinely look forward to those two shows.
Spending Time with My Wife
Bridgette and I have reached an interesting season of life. Our daughters are becoming more independent, our careers are changing in ways both expected and unexpected, and many of our conversations now revolve around what comes next.
We talk about where we might want to live someday. We imagine different versions of retirement. We wonder what kind of work we still want to do, what projects we’d like to pursue, and what we want the next twenty years to look like. Those conversations have become some of my favorite moments of the week because they remind me that life is still unfolding. Alcohol kept my attention focused on getting through today. Sobriety has given me back the ability to dream about tomorrow.
Building Things That Don’t Need to Exist
I’ve always enjoyed building things, but sobriety has given that part of my personality somewhere healthy to go.
None For Me is one example. Cr(af)ted, my alcohol-free cocktail website, is another. Neither project exists because someone asked me to create it or because it fits neatly into my job description. I work on them because I genuinely enjoy the process of making something that wasn’t there yesterday. They’re creative outlets, welcome distractions from the pressures of work, and opportunities to leave something useful behind.
Looking back, I realize that I once thought alcohol was my reward after a productive day. Now the work itself has become the reward. There’s something deeply satisfying about spending an evening writing an essay, refining a recipe, or improving a website instead of simply trying to escape the day that came before it.
Reading
I’ve never been a particularly fast reader, and somewhere along the way I stopped feeling guilty about that. I enjoy taking my time with books, whether they’re about business, theology, history, or Batman. Some nights I read ten pages. Other nights I read fifty. It doesn’t really matter.
What matters is that reading has become one of the ways I unwind instead of one of the things competing with alcohol for my attention. When I was drinking, there was always a sense that I needed to hurry through whatever I was doing so I could get to the real reward waiting in the refrigerator. Today, the book is the reward. Spending an hour learning something new or disappearing into a good story leaves me feeling refreshed in a way alcohol never actually did.
A Good Fire
If there’s one thing that surprises me most, it’s how much I enjoy building a fire.
Not just on crisp fall evenings, although those are hard to beat. I’ll light my Solo Stove on a summer night, a cool spring afternoon, or the middle of winter if the weather cooperates. There’s something timeless about sitting around a crackling fire. It slows everything down. It gives me permission to stop checking my phone, stop thinking about work, and simply be present.
Years ago, I believed the only thing capable of changing my mood after a difficult day was alcohol. Today, I know that isn’t true. Sometimes all it takes is a comfortable chair, a fire, and the people I love sitting nearby.
Joy Was Waiting All Along
If you’re still drinking the way I once did, you may be reading this with a healthy amount of skepticism. I understand that because I probably would have reacted the same way. I would have assumed that someone who finds this much enjoyment in watching This Old House or reading Batman comics simply didn’t have the same relationship with alcohol that I did.
Trust me.
I did.
What I didn’t understand was that alcohol had slowly convinced me it was the only thing capable of making life interesting. It had trained me to believe that anticipation, relaxation, celebration, and reward all came from the same place. That turned out to be one of the biggest lies addiction ever told me.
The beautiful thing about recovery is that those simple pleasures don’t disappear forever. They come back, slowly and quietly, as your brain relearns that joy doesn’t have to arrive in a bottle. A baseball game, a good book, a conversation with your spouse, a creative project, or a fire in the backyard may not produce the dramatic rush that alcohol once promised, but they offer something much better.
They last.
And every one of them reminds me that I wasn’t giving up the good life when I quit drinking.
I was finally getting it back.
If None for Me resonates with you, hit the ♡ and subscribe. It helps others find this space and keeps the conversation going. Thank you!