The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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I posted last week about trying to drink less. I went 5 days sober, which is at least past the alcohol withdrawal hump. I'm on vacation currently, and a bit of peer pressure and boredom led to me breaking my very short sober streak. I'll continue sobriety experiment when I get back from vacation. Which sounds like famous last words, but I will follow through. The first five days of no drinking was easy enough, and the results felt good.
212 days sober here.
What's your goal in regards to 'drinking less'? If it's literally just getting the number of drinks over a week / month down, then all you should worry about is tracking your drinks (plenty of apps for that) and looking for a gradual trend down. Eventually you'll find a sustainable level.
But is there something else? Are you worried your drinking is getting you fat and out of shape (it is) or that it's just sort of generally reducing your cognitive sharpness even if you aren't hungover every day(it is) or maybe that it's having a mild negative effect on mood stability? (it is)
If you want to quit. Quit. Hard sober for the rest of your life? Not necessarily. I think a good goal is to do 365 days sober and keep a log of how you're feeling about every 10 days or so. You'll learn a lot. You'll learn how to deal with out of nowhere cravings. You'll understand more about emotional and stress triggers. "Sober Octobers" aren't long enough and I feel like "stay sober for as long as you can including up to forever" creates an all-or-nothing kind of thinking that can lead to hard relapses (fun fact: a lot of programs have definitions of sober that allow for some level of drinking. I think this is absurd, but that's a personal opinion).
In my experience so far, the physical and mental health benefits are obvious and unambiguous. Social situations aren't difficult to navigate after you've said "no thanks" about 10 times. (As another aside, just use "No, thanks" or "I'm not drinking tonight" as your responses. Don't get into any more detail than that - that's when people get weird. Be ready to repeat yourself. A lot. )
The tradeoff is that my life is fundamentally more boring. Alcohol, like other drugs, is a quick hack to emotional regulation. How it manifests will be person dependent. For me, I no longer have any reflex to drink if I am sad, stressed, overwhelmed etc. That's a great thing. I miss drinking now when I am feeling very good. A Big Business Thing happened at work a few weeks ago and, when it did, I really wanted to tie one on on a friday night knowing that not only did I have nothing to do on Saturday, but that I could probably take a few days off the next week because of the big win.
I cleaned out some old home depot boxes in my garage instead. Anti-climactic.
I'll tie it off here. Start at the beginning; what do you want your drinking life to look like?
Talked about it in last weeks thread. But id like to be a social drinker, having a few drinks one night a week if I'm out with friends or something.
Right now I'm closer to averaging about 4 drinks a night every night. That's too much and the health effects seem noticeable.
I slowly and unintentionally shifted into heavier drinking. I think partly as a treat for myself as I struggled to eliminate sugar from my diet.
I find stopping the drinking to generally be easier than stopping sugar.
I'm in better shape and health than I was pre-pandemic when I actually was a social drinker. Not saying the alcohol helped at all. But I started exercising weekly, cut out sugar from my diet (and cut carbs a bunch, but not entirely), and started intermittent fasting.
I don't want to entirely quit drinking for the one negative you've stated: life is more boring. My life is already very boring as it is, and it honestly frustrates me. Especially during extended periods where I have no social activity outside my immediate family. Drinking allows me to have fun at social events. I'm too much of an introvert when I'm sober.
You've got a handle on the situation. I think you'll put together a good plan.
The only thing I'll admonish you for - and it's only because you mentioned in three times in the post - is the "I gave up sugar" line.
Booze is concentrated sugar. That's the whole point of it. One immediate effect of going sober; you'll likely drop 5 - 10 lbs with zero other changes to diet and exercise habits.
It's a common myth, and I'm not sure where it started. But no, booze doesn't metabolize into sugar. It gets broken down into something more like a fatty acid if I remember correctly.
Perhaps the myth is because blood sugar levels can spike while drinking. The liver will prioritize metabolizing alcohol over maintaining blood sugar levels.
Interesting. I didn't know that and had just absorbed the myth.
This makes me wonder about weight less after alcohol cessation. I wonder if it has more to do with poor eating habits that often come with drinking and, perhaps, some sort of digestive disruption.
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Ethanol itself is 7cal/g in theory, but it's not fully metabolized in practice. So a pint of Guinness (4.2% abv) contains 210 calories according to the label. If you have three, it's 610 extra calories, enough to ensure a caloric surplus for that day. But you probably drink it with snacks, and it's easy to double or triple the calories with crisps, cheese sticks and wings.
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