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Notes -
New Years resolutions updates- we're a little over a quarter of the way through the year, how is everyone doing?
For myself, I have meaningfully reduced my intake of restaurant food in general by better planning/meal prep and an increased willingness to eat leftovers. This is cheaper but I haven't actually seen any health benefits; I'm not sure if this is because my health was already pretty good or because I need to do something or other else, maybe exercise.
76 Days sober.
Jan 1 - present.
I didn't have a rock bottom moment or full on dependency, but I was undoubtedly drinking far too much and for not good reasons. My estimate is somewhere just north of 1,000 drinks for 2023.
Expected: Energy, mood, discipline, mental health all far,far better. Everyone says this and it is true.
Unexpected: Quitting was easier than I thought. After day 10, I felt genuinely confident I could maintain sobriety. After day 20, I started to feel proud. After day 30, I actively started thinking about how much it would suck to relapse. After day 50 .... I just don't think about drinking anymore. I've been to dinners, bars, and hangouts with friends where everyone else was drinking and have had to turn down offers multiple times in one night. It just hasn't been hard. This was very unexpected.
There have been zero downsides. Social life hasn't suffered. A (minor) additional unexpected - the number of people who genuinely give you a "Good for you" style response and mean it. Some of these people, I think, may be struggling themselves.
I keep hearing about how great everyone feels after quitting drinking, and I kind of feel bad that I don't have a way to get that kind of improvement. For me, not being in a constant state of low-grade chronic alcohol poisoning is just normal, so I don't really appreciate it.
I don’t know. Like @Walterodim below actual hangovers suck but I can’t tell the difference between a day I had a couple beers in the prior afternoon and one I didn’t. I’ve also been off alcohol for extended periods and couldn’t tell the difference, so it’s not a two week detox or whatever.
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If it's any consolation I quit drinking for almost a year and didn't really feel any better at all except in one way: much better sleep.
I still don't really know what other people are experiencing when they say they feel so much better without alcohol. Sure, an actual hangover is pretty unpleasant, but I cannot tell the difference between a Monday where I had three beers watching football in the afternoon and a Tuesday where I had nothing to drink the day before. I also have a decent amount of health and performance metrics - resting heart rate, HTV, stress level, sleep score, and running/cycling data. Alcohol causes a noticeable, but transient increase in heart rate and stress level. If I drink too close to bed, it disrupts sleep. But moderation and avoiding late-night beverages results in no measurable or felt short-run differences.
A couple of theories for why I didn't see benefits from not drinking.
Drinking lots of water mitigates the negative effects of alcohol.
Something like half the people in America are diabetic or pre-diabetic. Many also have non-alcoholic fatty liver syndrome. Adding alcohol and sugar to the diet might be particularly dangerous for this group. But I'm decently fit and my liver function is good.
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I mean, at some point you can't just keep feeling better with life adjustments. There are totally sober, in shape people with zero financial worries who are depressed.
Nevertheless, the best, longest lasting, and simplest ways to level up (in ascending order):
Exercise. Start doing something you like (rock climbing, pickleball, softball (non beer league), whatever...) to build the habit. Then, use that habit to move to something maybe a little less intrinsically enjoyable, but more challenging (traditional weight lifting, etc.)
Diet. This doesn't mean diet as in "losing weight" but just being intentional about what you eat. Generally, people in developed countries eat crap most of the time or have very unstable eating patterns (binge to semi-starve cycles. For instance, "girl dinner" meme). You can really improve energy consistency and mood stability by building your own diet through experimentation. You find out what you're more sensitive to in the carbs/protein/fat breakdown and how different type of hunger hit you (yes, there are different types of hunger impulses). The only prescriptive advice I'll offer is that refined sugar seriously is the Devil.
Sleep. Simple to design and plan for, hard as hell to execute. There's no way around it; create and stick to a consistent sleep schedule. Some people need 6,7,8,9. Most people don't need more, everyone suffers with 5 or less over a long period of time. Polyphasic has always fascinated me and I'd love to commit to it, but I don't have that ability with current career. Sleep disruptors are as bad as sugars - put your phone in another room, no screentime at least 30 min before bed, don't drink.
Social life that isn't stressful or require management. One of the most "holy shit" things I've seen in the past few years as my friends have started to move into middle marriage (first kids, heading towards mid 30s and 40s) is how often one or other of the spouses will start to turn into a Professional Social Lifer. Calendars booked months in advance, complex logistical scenarios for transportation to and from, several different apps used to build invites, procure gifts, create agendas, fucking prepared outfits for the other spouse. It is all, ostensibly, just "hanging out with friends" but it's really about creating the Instagram representation of career/family/social-ness to present to others. It's already obvious that in many cases, these kind of couples are heading to divorce. Anyways, what you want to do is develop a core group of friends that's always down for a casual hangout. Forgive the term, but you want a group of drinking buddies. On top of that, add in some activity specific groups - gym buddies, hiking buddies, car repair buddies ... whatever you choose. Then, you can be sort of opportunistic for making new friends through these groups plus your career. If you have a spouse, you've just squared (I.e. to the power of 2'ed) your options.
Find and cultivate perfect self-actualization. Instructions unclear on this one, I'm sitting beneath trees and walking through deserts working on it, though.
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