Laird Hamilton quit drinking after realizing he lacked the discipline to stop, despite thinking he could quit anytime. His mother taught him that authenticity with yourself comes first, then authentic relationships follow. He sees sobriety as part of a larger competition with himself.
The greatest competition is life. My mom said to me once when I was a kid, if you can't be true to yourself, you can't be true to anyone else. And so I thought, hmm, let me see if I say, hey, I can stop drinking anytime. And then the next day I drank, or the next week or the next month, then I really don't have a lot of power over it. All the dumbest things I ever did were when I was drinking. So that was a discipline thing. And that's a continuation of trying to get better.
