My Gruvi Story #1

This is the first feature for our “My Grüvi Story” series- if you have a story you’d like to share please click here. For this first post, we learn more about one of our Grüvi ambassadors, Regan, and her alcohol-free journey so far.

Six months. Six months without a hangover. Six months without a single second spent drunk. Six months spent building myself up, not tearing myself down.  

My decision to live an alcohol-free lifestyle came before I knew that non alcoholic craft beer existed. The moment I discovered Grüvi was like discovering I could have my cake and eat it, too. I could drink a great craft beer without the alcohol. 

Before finding Grüvi, I mourned the loss of being able to enjoy something I loved while I watched my friends drink their craft IPAs and stouts. That is, until I began following a few sober lifestyle accounts on Instagram. That’s where I discovered Grüvi, and the possibility that non-alcoholic beer doesn’t have to taste like the one I tried in a hookah bar when I was 18.

My Background 

Most of the people I grew up with started drinking early in high school. But I was an avid runner and a straight A student, and alcohol had no appeal to me. I didn’t start drinking until my final year of high school, but I made up for lost time. I often drank myself into blackouts, and that habit followed me into college. 

Despite my partying, I managed to do well in college. I graduated a year early, and spent my entire college career as a Division 1 athlete for the Kansas State Women’s Rowing team. But I know for a fact that I did not perform anywhere near my highest potential, especially in rowing.

College Athletics

I spent all week training, sometimes up to 20 hours. Then I would trash my body over the weekend, and go into the next training week hungover. 

My team had a mandatory “dry season.” No athlete drank alcohol during this time. This coincided with our racing season, and we all complied. My fitness and performances would drastically improve, but I spent the whole five months waiting until I could drink again. 

Looking back, I put drinking in front of my opportunity to compete at the highest collegiate level. I was fine with partying my way through summer and fall training, because I believed it only mattered to stop drinking during our racing season. I was a decent athlete, but I’m sometimes haunted by the fact that I’ll never know how successful I could have been. 

After College 

My final season of rowing, and my final dry season, ended during the same weekend that I graduated. This was also only three weeks before my 21st birthday. I’ll spare you the details, but I spent more nights drunk than I did sober that summer. 

I stayed in my college town and found a job as an office manager for a chiropractic clinic. I worked as a bartender on the weekends. I started running again, which has been my greatest passion since I was 11 years old. But my drinking increased, and I was rolling into the office hungover most days of the week. 

After over a year of not making any improvements in my life, I moved to Colorado. I was sick of doing nothing but drinking with my friends. I hoped a change of scenery would help, and I dreamed of being a mountain runner. It turned out to be the best decision of my life, and the opportunities that followed changed my life forever. 

But, I was still drinking. 

Why I stopped

From the outside, my life was a grand adventure. I lived off the grid for a year, where I worked as a caretaker for a campground halfway up Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs. I ran and hiked for hours and hours every week. I climbed mountains, met the love of my life, and together we hiked an 800 mile section of the Pacific Crest Trail in California. 

But something always felt a little off. While everyone told me how great my life seemed, I was struggling mentally. I lived in a constant state of anxiety, with a brain fog that never lifted. I had started drinking less at this point, but alcohol was hurting me more and more with each drink. 

Drinking stopped being fun. Alcohol made me more anxious than I already was, and I started picking fights with my partner over nothing. I was getting hangovers after only a couple of beers, yet I spent so much of each day looking forward to my next drink.