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 quit drinking cold turkey 4 days ago.
I feel mild anhedonia, experiences I normally enjoy are muted or feel like they're happening to someone else and I'm only watching, if that makes sense. I have too much energy during the day and it's hard to relax fully in the evening. My appetite has dropped a lot, but I still want to eat because I've increased my lifting recently. It's kind of the way you feel hungry when you have a cold. You feel your body's need for sustenance, but no foods are particularly appealing. My libido has dropped considerably, though that may also be due to the extra fatigue from increased lifting. In the evening, light is too bright and noises are too loud, kind of like when you have a bad hangover. My baseline stress level feels higher; on a scale of 1-10, I was previously around a 3 or 4 most days, and now I feel like I'm stuck at 6 all the time. Sometimes I suddenly feel exhausted during the day and want to rest, but I'm too wired to actually relax before bedtime, sort of like when you've had too much caffeine to sleep.
On the bright side, my feels like it's working at 200% speed. While I was doing well at work before, now I'm absolutely crushing it. I don't have heartburn or any other gastric trouble anymore, I don't have much appetite for junk food, and I find temptations to my various vices almost trivially easy to resist. Getting up in the morning is getting a lot easier. I have the focus and the patience to listen to chat with my kids in the evening after dinner. I can handle more chores. I can take care of my wife better. I can control my temper much more easily. I spend probably 1 hour less per day lying on the couch. I picked up a physical dead tree book and started reading it for the first time in many months. I'm not thirsty all the time, and my body doesn't hurt as much when I wake up in the morning. My heart rate gets back down to the low 50s when I sleep at night. My sleep quality is much better. And maybe best of all, I don't feel the sense of guilt and self-loathing I've learned to live with every night when I go to bed and every morning when I wake up. That's probably what keeps me going each day more than anything, I don't feel like I suck anymore.
I was (am? well, hopefully was) a 5-8 drinks a night kind of guy which, while clearly not good, doesn't really seem like "real alcoholism" when you google alcoholism and read stories from people downing a fifth or two of vodka and blacking out every night. But that amount was apparently enough to slowly change my mind and body over months in ways I hadn't even realized, and I'm dealing with the aftermath now. It's very... sobering.
I wrote this as a personal reflection and thought I'd share it in case any other folks are on the same path.
Congratulations on the victory! I don't struggle with drinking myself, but I have a similar struggle with eating sweets so I get how hard it can be.
Just a word of caution here: minimizing one's behavior is itself a red flag for alcoholism. My brother in law was an alcoholic, to the point where he just died in December at only 38 years old. But the entire time he insisted that he didn't have a problem, and that he didn't drink as much as (insert example here of people who drank even more excessively than he did). So I would just encourage you to avoid the temptation to say "well my drinking is ok because X".
Regardless, well done on the progress! Keep going strong, brother!
+1. That sounds quite excessive to me.
See e.g. https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-drinking-patterns which defines "heavy drinking" as >=5 drinks on ANY day, or >=15/week. You're at 35-56/week. If you drink it very slowly, it's a little less concerning, but I think you're way past the gray area. A doctor friend told me they start asking questions (but there may not be a problem) at 14 drinks/week.
Or, in calories, that's 100/shot = 3500-5600 calories/week = 1-1.6lb/week. If you're drinking beer or fruity cocktails, multiply by 1.5-3. I'd even be concerned about someone having that many calories of icecream per week. At the same weight, you could replace with healthier foods and your body would be running on much better fuel.
Or, in dollars, even if you're drinking fairly cheap booze at $1/shot, that's $35-56/week = $1820-$2912/year. Might or might not be a lot of money depending on your job, but that feels nontrivial even from a FAANG salary. Especially since, if you're anything like me, a dollar spent on booze often means several more spent on munchies.
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Thank you. And you make a good point. I have also had early deaths in my family due to alcoholism, so I try to be very critical of my own rationalizations. Still an uphill battle though. I'll try to post about it again in a few weeks.
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