On January 1st, 2026, I begin a public case study.
I’m a 58-year-old amateur musician/comedian and after nearly 30 years of weekend binge drinking (sober now for almost three months) and 35 years of daily cannabis use, I am going cold turkey. My goal is to try and find out who I really am after a lifetime of self medication. The goal isn’t just sobriety, it’s clarity.
But I’m not doing it alone.
This Substack will document a unique partnership: my daily, unfiltered conversations with DeepSeek, an artificial intelligence. I’ll be using it as a scaffold, a mirror, a strategist, and an archivist to navigate withdrawal, cravings, and the raw return of feeling.
Why make it public? Because the last time I tried to quit, I desperately wanted a raw, honest, day-by-day log of what to expect. I couldn’t find one. So I’m creating it.
This is the prelude. The full ‘Ground Zero – The Calm Before the Storm’ framework, the launch of the daily logs, and the real-time documentary all begin on January 1st.
If you’re curious to see how this human-AI experiment unfolds - the neurobiology, the psychology, the inevitable setbacks, and the pursuit of “sober funny” - hit Subscribe.