How the Game of Golf Helped Me Find Sobriety and Regain My Mental Health
What you do next matters more that how you got there
Most people hear the word golf and think, “out with the boys, getting hammered and who cares what score I post.”
Honestly, that used to be me too.
Golf and alcohol have been tied together for years. Early tee times followed by coolers in the cart. Birdies celebrated with shots. Bad rounds blamed on drinking too much or not enough. For a lot of people, it feels normal. Accepted even.
But for me, golf eventually became something completely different.
This is how I have used the game of golf to remain sober for the past eight years and I am not looking back.
Eight years ago my life was not in a great place. On the outside, things probably looked fine. Career. Responsibilities. Relationships. The usual things people use to measure whether Somone is “doing okay”. But internally I was struggling. Anxiety. Stress. Emotional exhaustion. Loss. The kind of mental weight that slowly builds until you stop recognizing yourself.
Like many people dealing with addiction or mental health struggles, I spent a long time trying to outrun what I was feeling instead of facing it head on.
Alcohol became the shortcut. The numbing agent. The temporary relief.
Until eventually, it wasn’t relief anymore.
I was making everything worse.
The turning point for me was realizing that sobriety could not just be about removing alcohol. If all you do it take something away, you leave a giant hole behind. Something must fill that space with purpose, routine, challenge and connection.
For me that became golf.
Not country club golf. Not gambling golf. Not “let’s get blackout drunk on the back nine” golf.
Real golf.
The kind where you wake up early because you actually want to be there. The kind where the sound of the first tee shot cuts through the noise in your head. The kind where four hours outside forces you to slow down and breathe again.
Golf gave me structure when my life felt chaotic.
It game me something to work on besides myself while somehow still helping me work on myself at the same time.
All because real golf exposes yourself.
You cannot fake patience on a golf course. You cannot fake emotional control. You cannot fake discipline. One bad shot can ruin your mood if you let it. One bad hole can spiral into nine more if your mindset collapses.
That realization changed me.
I started understanding that the same mental habits hurting my golf game were hurting my real life too.
Impulse control.
Frustration.
Negative self-talk.
Trying to escape discomfort instead of working through it.
Golf became therapy without me realizing it at first.
There is something powerful about standing alone over a golf ball with nothing but your thoughts.
No notifications.
No distractions.
No way to blame anyone but yourself.
Just you and the next decision.
That space became healing for me.
Some days the golf course was the only place my mind felt quiet.
Other days it taught me how to sit with discomfort without trying to numb it.
And over time, sobriety stopped feeling like punishment. It started feeling like freedom.
I became healthier physically, but more importantly, mentally. My relationships improved. My focus improved. My ability to be preset improved. I started rebuilding confidence in myself; one day at a time.
It didn’t happen perfectly.
There are still hard days. There are still moments where life feels heavy.
But I learned something important through golf and recovery; progress does not require perfection.
You just keep playing the next shot.
That mindset eventually became part of the reason I started Green Ferret Golf. A brand that was never only about apparel. It was about mental strength, purpose, connection and creating conversations people are often afraid to have openly.
Because the truth is many people are struggling silently.
Especially men.
We are taught to suppress things. Push things away. Stay tough. Keep moving. But mental health and addiction do not care how successful you look from the outside.
Sometimes the strongest thing a person can do is ask for help.
I am incredibly grateful that I found sobriety. I am grateful I found golf in a healthier way. And I a am grateful the game gave me a path back to myself when I desperately needed one.
If you are struggling right now, I want you to know this:
You don’t have to have everything figured out right now.
You do not need to become a completely different person overnight.
You just need to take the first step.
Then the next one.
What you do next mattes more than how you got there.
This is how recovery work too.