Patient Newsletter: January 2023
The truth can hurt... and then it can help.
Dear Patients and Friends,
First let me apologize for the length of this letter. But the message is too important to worry about word counts. If you follow me on Facebook, much of this will be repetitive.
This is technically my first newsletter of the New Year, and it's highly unusual and unexpected for me to be using this newsletter to describe a "New Year's resolution." I am not a fan of New Year’s resolutions. The thought of making a huge and lasting change simply because of a calendar page turn really overwhelms me. Before I get to the “resolution" part, I need to share some history.
I did not start drinking alcohol consistently until relatively recently. I never drank as a teen and never drank a sip of alcohol in college (honest truth). Even as an adult I only rarely had a glass of wine or a cocktail on vacation.
In fact, I know the day that my consistent drinking was “born.” In the summer of 2016, we were out to dinner at our favorite restaurant at the beach. This place had a daily changing drink called the “Barkeepers Punch” on the menu. That night, the “punch” was bourbon based. That first sip changed me. I realized that moment that I really liked bourbon.
Over the next few years, I tried different bourbon-based drinks and ultimately, while visiting New Orleans, discovered the Old Fashioned (forget the Sazerac — that did nothing for me).
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