Issue #50

Happy Thursday, Clubbies,

This is issue #50.

The first one went out June 26, 2025. Someone asked what they should expect from this newsletter and I told them, honestly, it was too early to tell. Fifty Thursdays later, it has been one of the most consistent things I’ve ever done.

📖 What 50 Thursdays taught me about drinking differently. I went back and read all fifty. Three ideas came up over and over, and I don't think that's an accident: the Jamo Fund, because a game beats deprivation every time. Club soda on the rocks in a real glass, because it looks like a cocktail and asks nothing of anyone. And the one I keep relearning: nobody's watching your glass as closely as you are. Friends, bartenders, strangers — I braced for all three to judge and never needed to.

That's the whole thing. Not drinking less. Drinking differently.

I closed that first newsletter with this: I am going to learn from you much more than I can teach you.

It turned out to be the operating manual.

Every good idea in the last 50 issues came from a reply, a bar conversation, an interview, or someone stopping me on the sidewalk because of the CSC shirt. The zebra striping issue came from a reader question. The at-home playbook came from people telling me the bar advice didn't help them on a Tuesday on the couch. The app exists because enough of you said the Jamo Fund math was annoying to do by hand.

I write the words. You keep handing me the material.

What's the one issue that stuck with you? The thing you actually tried, or forwarded, or screenshotted?

Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.

The long version is at the link below: the parts I got wrong, the people who made it real, and the line from issue #1 that turned out to be the operating manual.

produced by Scott Nixon

Joshua Gandee, host of the No Proof podcast, is nine years in. A former beverage director, he took a break with a dry October that just kept going. His big realization: he'd been using alcohol as a dimmer switch on the things he didn't want to deal with — but it dimmed the good parts of him too. For years he thought he needed it to be social, to be funny, to show up. When that person arrived without it, he saw it as a blessing. His advice: look in the mirror and ask who you are when you drink, and who you are when you don't. Then pay attention to both answers.

Know someone who's thinking about it? There's no membership requirement.

Part-time members, full-time members, "I'm just curious" members. All welcome. So whether you've got a friend who's been saying "I should probably cut back" every Sunday morning for the last six months, or a friend who's already all-in on the alcohol-free life and just hasn't found their people yet — send them your link . They subscribe to the free newsletter, you both win. No pressure, no program, no weird pamphlets.

Basically, if they've ever ordered a club soda (or anything else non-alcoholic) and felt like they had to explain themselves... they're already one of us.

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