Boxing Day, 2017.
The day I quit drinking.
Not with fireworks. Not with a collapse.
Just a quiet, irrevocable decision that turned out to be one of the most competent things I’ve ever done.
A while back, I bought a new shower curtain.
It’s that gray-green one with the hand drawn sloth sitting cross-legged in a lotus pose, eyes closed, arms resting gently on its knees, toes curled in that oddly tender, almost-human way sloths have. The vibe is unmistakably zen creature attempting enlightenment.
I hung it in the bathroom at the end of my hallway—where it now functions as another “painting” in my art-filled house.
And immediately, something bothered me.
The sloth’s mouth.
A slight downturn.
A faint hangdog curve.
Less serene forest monk and more quietly disappointed guidance counselor.
Old Carla would have clocked this and done nothing.
Old Carla would have told herself:
It doesn’t matter.
Why are you like this?
Just transcend it.
And consciously, I would have.
But subconsciously—the part of me that actually keeps the score—that tiny downturned mouth would have lodged itself somewhere deep, quietly irritating me twice a day, every day—like a splinter in the psyche.
New Carla did something else.
Within a few days, I grabbed a black marker and drew the faintest upturned corners at the edges of the sloth’s mouth. Not a grin. Just a knowing, wry smile. The expression of a creature who has figured something out and is pleased about it.
Problem solved. Permanently.
That’s sobriety.
Quitting alcohol isn’t about grit or deprivation or becoming A Person Who Doesn’t Drink.
It’s about noticing what’s off—and fixing it directly, instead of numbing yourself into tolerance.
Alcohol trains you to endure instead of adjust.
Sobriety hands you a Sharpie.
I didn’t fully understand this in 2017, even as I quit.
That fall—Thanksgiving 2017—we went to Iceland. We visited the Blue Lagoon, that otherworldly geothermal spa near the airport that everyone goes to whether they mean to or not.
Louis had already quit drinking.
I hadn’t.
And instead of honoring where he was, I badgered him until he drank with me there. Because that was still how I thought vacations worked.
Drinks equal celebration.
Drinks equal memory-making.
Drinks equal proof you’re doing it right.
That moment sticks with me now—not because Iceland wasn’t magical (it was), not because the spa wasn’t beautiful (it is), but because I associate Iceland with quitting drinking and not quitting drinking at the same time.
A hinge year.
We didn’t plan wellness then.
We stumbled into it.
The spa wasn’t intentional restoration—it was tourism. An accident.
Fast forward a few years.
I’m sober. Fully. Cleanly. Without nostalgia for what I left behind.
I go to a Nordic spa outside Quebec City—and this time something fundamental has shifted.
I’m not wandering from drink to drink, hoping pleasure will accidentally happen.
I’m engineering feeling good.
Heat.
Cold.
Silence.
Water.
Sobriety doesn’t make life smaller.
It hands you a better reward system.
And here’s the deeper change: I don’t hope to feel better on vacation anymore.
I plan it.
Vacations are no longer about escape.
They’re about restoration.
That’s new.
And it mirrors another subtle shift sobriety brought into my life—one I only recently noticed.
There are downsides to quitting alcohol.
One of them surprised me this year.
I used to be The Diplomat.
The peacemaker.
The smoother-over.
Alcohol made that role easy.
It made me diffuse. Socially available. Always orbiting the room, absorbing friction, translating tone.
When I quit drinking, I also—quietly—stopped orbiting.
I socialized less.
I conserved energy.
I became more intentional about where and how I showed up.
And something was lost—not in me, but in the ecosystem.
Drama needs mediators.
And when the mediators step back, unresolved tensions don’t disappear.
They metastasize.
That realization clarified something important about what comes next.
If I’m going to play a stabilizing role again, it won’t be by dissolving myself into the room.
It will be on my terms.
Hence: The Quill.
Not just a broadcast center, but an HQ.
An office.
A place with walls, hours, intention.
Sobriety doesn’t make you antisocial.
It makes you architectural.
Another downside?
You lose excuses.
When you don’t drink, you can’t blame your feelings on the wine.
No I was just tired.
No it was a weird night.
If you’re sad—you’re sad.
If you’re angry—you’re angry.
If something doesn’t fit—you have to look at it.
No anesthetic.
No delay.
Which is brutal.
And also—freedom.
That’s what the sloth taught me.
I didn’t wait to “get used to” the sad mouth.
I fixed it.
I don’t wait for discomfort to pass anymore.
I adjust reality.
I don’t wait for vacations to heal me.
I choose places, rituals, heat, cold, movement, beauty—and let the body do what it already knows how to do when it isn’t poisoned or distracted.
I don’t endure my own life.
I edit it.
That’s sobriety.
That’s how you make your sloth smile.
***
[OPEN — soft, grounded]
Today, in 2017, I quit drinking.
Not dramatically. Not at rock bottom.
Just… decisively.
And here’s the weird thing I learned since then.
[BEAT]
I bought a shower curtain with a meditating sloth on it.
Hung it at the end of my hallway—another painting in my house.
But the sloth looked… sad.
Old me would’ve told myself to ignore it.
New me grabbed a Sharpie and gave the sloth a tiny smile.
Problem solved.
That’s sobriety.
[SHIFT — reflective]
Alcohol trains you to tolerate things that don’t fit.
Sobriety hands you a marker and says: fix it.
Back in 2017, we went to Iceland.
Louis had already quit drinking. I hadn’t.
I badgered him into drinking with me at a spa because I thought that’s how vacations worked.
We didn’t plan wellness.
We stumbled into it.
[BEAT — contrast]
A few days ago–sober almost eight years and counting–I went to a Nordic spa in Quebec—and something had fundamentally changed.
I wasn’t chasing numbness.
I was engineering feeling good.
Heat. Cold. Silence. Water.
That’s new.
Sobriety didn’t make my life smaller.
It made me architectural.
I don’t endure my life anymore.
I edit it.
And that—
is how you make your sloth smile.
[CLOSE — direct]
If you’re sober-curious: it’s not about giving something up.
It’s about fixing what’s off—directly.
Happy Boxing Day to me. 🌲