In a Christianity Today article, a 30-year-old Christian named D.L. Mayfield describes how her and her husband made a decision to abstain from alcohol:
Our first shock when we moved into [a low-income neighborhood] was the amount of substance abuse that surrounded us … I would go to get my mail and find a man blocking the stairs, passed out and unresponsive at 11 in the morning. We have neighbors who eat raw chicken when they are drunk and get terribly sick; others who suffer from alcohol-related psychosis and bang symphonies on the trees outside our window at all hours of the night … Empty vodka growlers line the living room of one… There are people in our building who die because of alcohol—cirrhosis of the liver, asphyxiation from their vomit, slow-sinking suicides everywhere we turn.
And suddenly, alcohol is no longer fun. Instead it is a substance that changes my friends and neighbors, making them unpredictable and unsafe … There are other neighbors here too, people who are in various stages of recovery … They shake their heads and tell me they don’t touch the stuff anymore. They find that every sober day is a gift.
After a year of living among them, I gradually just … stopped. I dreaded going to the liquor store, imagining the faces I would see there. I saw my neighbors get off the bus with a 12-pack in each hand, and I was less likely to get a beer the next time I was out. Eventually, I realized I could abstain from alcohol entirely, that it could even be a spiritual discipline for me—a way to pray and identify with my literal neighbors, who could not stop … Since so many were caught in the cycle of stumbling and picking themselves up again, it became good for me to not drink, as a way to stand with the brothers and sisters I was learning to love.
