One Year Alcohol Free: Reflections on Choosing Alignment

Last Christmas break, I made a quiet decision to remove alcohol — and other numbing habits — from my life for 2025.

There was no dramatic moment. No rock bottom. No crisis that forced my hand.

Alcohol simply no longer felt aligned with who I was becoming or the life I wanted to create.

My goals for the year were clear: optimize my mental and physical health, expand my business independently, find a loving partnership, and grow as a dancer. When I looked honestly at my visions, alcohol didn’t support any of those things.

I was never a heavy drinker. The year prior, I drank occasionally in social settings, but even then I noticed something important: it wasn’t meaningful to me. I often left interactions feeling disconnected, like the conversations skimmed the surface. Physically, I felt off for an entire day afterward. The trade-off simply wasn’t worth it.

What surprised me most wasn’t the habit itself — it was the response to my change.

My choice made many people uncomfortable. Friends encouraged me to “loosen up,” told me to “have more fun,” or pointed out that I’d “changed.” Some close friends tried to pressure me into drinking anyway. Even a family member called me “pretentious.”

When you step outside the norm, people often don’t know what to do with it. A few will understand and stay. Many won’t. That became one of the most revealing parts of the year.

Here are the five reflections that stood out most when looking back on my alcohol-free year.

1. Clarity of choice and future direction

When your body is no longer processing toxins, intuition becomes incredibly clear. My goals sharpened. Decision-making felt effortless. Relationships that weren’t aligned fizzled quickly. I made clean business decisions. I moved into the first apartment I saw — in my favorite neighborhood — without second-guessing myself. Life began to feel guided rather than forced.

2. Emotional honesty and intensity

Without a numbing agent, emotions had more space to be felt and processed rather than pushed aside. With support, I worked through grief connected to my past and allowed a wider emotional range to exist without needing to escape it — sadness, joy, anger, love. What surprised me most was how much lighter things felt when emotions were experienced instead of avoided.

3. Relationship pruning

When my nervous system was no longer constantly recovering, the difference between people who drained me and those who nourished me became impossible to ignore. I began to really reflect on how my energy felt after spending time with someone — was it vibrant and buzzing, or depleted and heavy? Some connections naturally fell away. Others deepened in ways I hadn’t expected.

The pruning wasn’t always comfortable. Letting go rarely is. But it was deeply freeing. I began setting internal boundaries instead of managing other people’s comfort. I stopped people pleasing and allowed my relationships to reorganize around authentic, mutual energy.

4. Health as a non-negotiable foundation

The physical changes were undeniable: eight pounds lost, clearer skin and eyes, shinier hair, deeper sleep. But more importantly, I developed a non-negotiable relationship with my fitness habits, nutrition habits, and mental health care. My body and nervous system felt regulated instead of constantly recovering.

5. Financial abundance

I saved money simply by not drinking and by choosing quiet nights in more often. But the bigger shift was internal. I did deep mindset work around my relationship with money — and had my first $10k revenue month in my business. Alignment created expansion.

One of the most meaningful moments came over Christmas, when someone very close to me told me that seeing me stop drinking helped him decide to stop too. He hasn’t had alcohol or weed in eight months. He didn’t tell me this when he started, but shared it now. I had already noticed more clarity and ease in him.

I’m not sharing this to shame anyone’s habits or suggest there’s one “right” way to live. I’m sharing it as an invitation to question the status quo — and to choose what genuinely aligns with you.

Sometimes the most powerful changes are the quiet ones.

Wishing you a peaceful, healthy start to 2026!

xo, Julieann