Stop Drinking Alcohol NOW!

Photo by Matteo Vistocco on Unsplash

No, this isn’t part of an ad campaign from Alcoholics Anonymous. Nor is it another self-righteous lecture about the evils of the devil’s brew or how drinking is indicative of low moral character and will ultimately be your undoing. I want you to stop drinking alcohol right now — not tomorrow, not next week, not next month, but today — because your life will change for the better if you do, more than you realize.

If you don’t think you have a drinking problem now, when you completely give it up, you will realize that you actually did.

Had you told me a month ago that I’d totally stop drinking and be happy about it, I’d have spit in your beer. I had already cut back to two or three beers a day, so why did I have to quit? The impetus for quitting was simple: I was feeling sluggish and a bit depressed for reasons I couldn’t put my finger on. My sleep wasn’t the best and I was spending much of my days in a zombie-like trance.

Drinking was just a bad habit to which I had become accustomed as an easy way to relax and pass the time whenever I didn’t know what better to do with myself.

Ultimately, it came down to this: I wanted to live my best life, to be capable of doing all the things I wanted to do. Clearly, alcohol wasn’t killing me, but it was preventing me from reaching my fullest potential, and for what? For the “joy” of spending a couple of hours every night numb to the world? To make it easier to socialize?

On top of that, I’d been hearing a lot of scary anti-alcohol messaging in the media, messaging linking it with cancer, for example, and noticing that more and more people seemed to be drinking Coke with their meals instead of wine and beer. I could see the emergence of a growing anti-alcohol movement that I didn’t think I’d ever be part of. Until a month ago when I decided to join Keith Richards and give it up.

It wasn’t as hard as I expected. In fact, I experienced few impulses to go to the bars where I had spent numerous hours in an unproductive and pointless stupor. That is how I knew for sure that the time had come to quit. I didn’t even miss it.

The main challenge — or should I say, opportunity — was to reclaim the time I’d spent in idle drinking for better purposes such as reading, listening to podcasts, writing in my journal, practicing Spanish, or exercising.

To be sure, I was never a “problem drinker” or an alcoholic, and you’re probably not either. Drinking was just a bad habit to which I had become accustomed as an easy way to relax and pass the time whenever I didn’t know what better to do with myself. Getting over it did not require the ball-busting effort it seems to take for people whose dependence on alcohol has deeper psychological roots.

The main challenge — or should I say, opportunity — was to reclaim the time I’d spent in idle drinking for better purposes such as reading, listening to podcasts, writing in my journal, practicing Spanish, or exercising. It took some getting used to, of course, but realizing that I could consciously make new choices made it relatively easy to focus my attention on things other than drinking.

So here’s where I’m at a month after quitting. I put together a list of the current and expected advantages of not drinking alcohol, as follows:

1. Easier to lose weight (we’ll see).
2. Stomach feels much better. Acid reflux is no longer a problem, so I can now drink coffee again. Café con leche, anyone?
3. Less farting, thank god.
4. Sleep better and wake up feeling more refreshed.
5. More vivid dreams; I can remember my dreams.
6. Need less sleep.
7. Save a significant amount of money; can spend more money on other things.
8. No more days feeling sluggish and depressed; more energy.
9. Better liver health (presumably).
10. Noticeably improved appearance.
11. Enhanced self-awareness.
12. Greater optimism and passion for living; better mental health.
13. Lower blood pressure — I’ve measured it.
14. Stronger libido.

Perhaps alcohol’s saving grace is that it greases the social wheels and makes it easier to enjoy social encounters that would otherwise be boring or stressful.

The initial week or ten days of abstinence were a little weird, not because I missed alcohol but because my body was in shock. My mind was especially affected as it could not believe it was no longer functioning under the numbing influence of a drug it had been accustomed to for over thirty years. As a result, it felt spaced out and incoherent. The adjustment phase lasted two weeks or so but was not particularly hard to cope with. In fact, it encouraged me because it was evidence of the fact that my body and mind were in the process of detoxing from alcohol and adjusting to a life without it.

There is one consequence that isn’t so great: some people have a hard time accepting that I don’t drink anymore. They seem incredulous and a little resentful, like it hits a sore spot for them, and that maybe I think I’m better than them for having quit drinking. It’s necessary in order to socialize, they tell me. Perhaps alcohol’s saving grace is that it greases the social wheels and makes it easier to enjoy social encounters that would otherwise be boring or stressful. But it’s a price that I am willing to pay for all the hours of all the days when I have more energy and clarity of mind to function productively in the world.

So there you have it, for good or ill, as my favorite alcoholic writer Hunter S. Thompson liked to say. Make up your own mind. Try it and see if it isn’t a revelation how much better your life is when you quit. You can always go back, as I doubt alcohol will cease to exist any time in the near future. But I’ll bet you a six-pack of Budweiser that you won’t.