Before I quit drinking, I sometimes visualized a super-charged version of myself as a non-drinker that would inspire me, but what concerned me was some of the media and other messaging around stopping drinking. “It was the hardest thing I ever did.” “One day at a time.” It sounded HARD, and dreary, as if these people missed drinking all the time and white knuckled through every day.

I wish I’d known that it’s just not like that for most people. So what is it like? For a lot of us, the first 30 days are hard—you are tackling an ingrained habit that brings a reliable hit of dopamine. But even then, it wasn’t hard ALL DAY LONG. It was hard starting around the “close of business,” the time I would have had a drink, and would continue for maybe an hour or two after that. Then once I built new routines around arriving home at night, that part got easier.

Once the nightly itch for a drink subsides after a few weeks, things get even easier. And after about 90 days, when you’ve really started to rewire your brain and build new habits, the day to day rolls along quite naturally. There will be times that you will want to drink, definitely, but they get fewer and farther between, often sparked by a new “first” you’re doing alcohol free—the first business trip, the first romantic dinner out, the first wedding, the first vacation, that kind of thing. And when you do those things once without alcohol, repeating the experience takes far less effort.

The point is, it gets easier ALL THE TIME. The longer you go without drinking, the less you think about it. I wish I had known that. Now? I just never really have the urge to drink. There are sometimes fleeting moments where I notice I’m in a setting where I would have had a drink in years past, but even then, I don’t crave it.

So, if you’re just starting out and miss drinking, know that it won’t always be this way. Brain rewiring takes time, but it happens, and you’ll eventually feel as elated about other things, healthier things, as you felt about drinking.