Twenty years in the room.One decision that changed everything.

Twenty years selling to CxOs at some of the biggest names in tech. On paper, I was crushing it.

And I bought into the culture completely. Happy hours. Vendor dinners. Client outings where the most expensive bottle on the table was the whole point of the table. Work hard, play hard. That was the deal, and I was in.

I watched what that deal actually costs. Colleagues passed out in elevators. People making fools of themselves in front of clients they'd spent months building trust with. Careers and relationships gone, and not just at the bottom of the org chart. Leaders at the highest level, too.

I remember walking into the middle of a busy street in downtown Denver, not paying attention, and coming within a foot or two of getting clipped by a bus. My buddy grabbed me back. Didn't think much of it at the time. Looking back, that's exactly the point. None of this ever felt like a crisis while it was happening.

I never lost a job. Never blacked out. Never wrecked a car or ended up in a hospital. That's what made it easy to ignore. I was just quietly aware that alcohol was chipping away at something. How clear my head was. How patient I could be. How sharp I actually showed up. How good of a husband I could be, father I could be, friend I could be.

There was a Sunday during a family ski trip where I came home too hung over to make the most of the day, and ended up losing my patience over something small with my wife and daughter. Nothing about that day was dramatic to anyone watching. But I knew exactly what caused it, and I knew it wasn't the first time.

Around 2019, I started asking myself a question that had nothing to do with any crisis. Is this the life I actually want? Alcohol included?

It took me six years to actually do something about it. Nobody knew. Not even my wife. Not white-knuckling, not counting down, just mentally preparing for a different life the way you'd prepare for anything else that matters.

On April 16, 2025, I retired from alcohol. Not because I hit a wall. Because mentally, I'd already made the decision before anything ever went seriously wrong.

Four months later my LDL dropped 29 percent, from 212 to 142. I lost 14 pounds without touching my diet. Within ten months I was off two medications, including blood pressure medication I'd been on for years. My blood pressure went from 168/104 on amlodipine to 120/77, completely unmedicated.

My thinking got sharper, and I don't mean a little sharper. Executive-level sharper, in ways I never thought were still possible. I got the version of myself back that I'd been missing for ten years.

I'm not a counselor and I'm not running a program. I'm a sales executive who spent two decades in corporate boardrooms closing deals that mattered, and I made a deliberate decision to find out what else was possible. Because I wanted to be better professionally and personally.

I've carried a number as an individual contributor, run a territory, and sat across the table from CROs on the other side of the deal. Wherever you are on that ladder, I've been there.

If you've been thinking through similar things in the back of your head, I already know what that sounds like. Reach out and tell me where you are.