What’s a FADFOY?

FADFOY is a Year of Living Sober acronym for ‘First Alcoholic Drink For One Year’.

While the focus of this blog is about living a fun, healthy, fulfilled life without the need to drink any booze at all, it is, at least to me, also about learning to enjoy alcohol in a new way.

When my YOLS (year of living sober) is up, rather than return to my habit of near nightly drinking—a bottle of wine and a couple of beers—I’m planning on having a healthier relationship with alcohol, perhaps more so than ever before. In preparation for that change I’m counting down the days until my first drink in 365 days, and my FADFOY countdown is a fun way to remind myself that alcohol might be available to me every day but I don’t need to drink it just because I can.

My temporary teetotalism has taught me that maybe I’m just entering a new phase of my life’s journey with booze. I might not be through with alcohol yet, but I am open to living without it.

A ‘FADFOY’ is a rite of passage not for everyone.

In my teens I tested the limits with boozin’. In my twenties and early thirties I convinced myself drinking a lot was cool, hip and trés sophisticate. Now I know alcohol can be whatever I want it to be. And I want it to be just a part of my life—not the star.

So while I am counting down the days until my First Alcoholic Drink For One Year I know I can only look forward to experiencing that because I will have kept to my goal to have had 12 months without a drop. And, though I don’t say everybody else who is worried they might be drinking too much should have a YOLS, I can say that one extra benefit of doing so will be you can look forward to having what few big drinkers ever do: a FADFOY.

And I imagine that first alcoholic drink for one year will taste good.

Sweet, even.

My name is Ben and I’m a dipsomaniac.