I Stopped Drinking For 60 Days: Here Are 7 Changes That Happened As Result
An Experiment In Sobriety
Hi Folks! A little more on the “preachy” side this time but hopefully you get something from this!
Here is my experiment with sobriety and how it went!
“Come on have another one!”
I have answered this question in the affirmative more times than I can count so for the sake of evening the score I decided to stop.
About 60 days ago I stopped consuming alcohol and in this article, I want to tell you exactly what happened as a result.
I like drinking as much as the next guy and in taking a break I can assure you that my motives were in no way “puritan” or “religious”. I am an Irish Catholic and if anyone knows how to enjoy drinking it's us.
There is a quote out there by some saint or other that goes something like
“Beer is proof that God loves us and he wants us to be happy!”
And I don’t disagree.
Drinking is great, it can make life rich and beautiful and it can add depth and enjoyment to any celebration of life.
But as with anything, there is no “free lunch” and the downsides of drinking alcohol are often as long or longer a list than the upsides.
With that said the number one reason I decided to take a break was to have more clarity in my life.
One morning I was looking around for levers to pull and my eyes fell on the half-empty bottle of Jameson in my hand. No, I’m just kidding, truth be told I was not really drinking all that much anymore but I still felt like it was a factor.
For a point of reference, I was probably having anywhere from 3- 10 drinks per week which is a lot less than in my earlier years but still enough to potentially cause problems.
I am a sucker for experiments so I decided to cut the stuff out and see what would happen: so without further ado here are seven changes that happened.
#1 Less Ups, Less Downs.
The first thing I noticed was a more stable emotional state. On the one hand, the evenings did not seem to be as fun or celebratory without a drink. It's funny how even one glass of wine can turn a “blah” night into something fun and “feel good”. It felt strange and sort of “plain” to not be able to “celebrate life” by having a little something-something to finish off the day.
Without that evening drink or two, there was not the same heightened enjoyment of any given evening, some might call it withdrawal others might call it a reality. But there you have it.
So yea there are fewer “highs” but there are also fewer “lows” and the latter is not to be discounted.
Not getting the slightest bit buzzed in the evening resulted in better sleep and a deeper feeling of “calm” the next morning. They say upon when waking up you never regret drinking less the night before and I have found this to be very true. Once you start to settle into level-headed mornings the more “plain” evenings don’t seem so bad, in fact, you even start to enjoy them.
Overall there was a very tangible “leveling” of feelings both physically and emotionally. I felt like there was less “fake” happiness but also less chemically induced “fog” and “gloom”.
#2 An Identity Crisis
“Who am I without the booze?” At first glance, this might sound like an intense question to ask especially if you are just a casual drinker but if you give this a try then I can assure you it will come up. For me, this meant taking a look at where I placed my identity and how my behavior directly influenced my perception of it.
When you shift away from drinking as a pastime not only do you not pass time drinking but you also start noticing the time itself where the next question floats up which is:
“Man, what do I do with myself?”
And this leads right into the next change which is
#3 Re-encountering Boredom
When you cut the booze there is one less thing to hide behind whether it be social situations or time alone. If you have ever deleted the social apps on your phone then you know what this is like. You instinctively sort of “reach” for something to quell the chatter in your mind only to find that the distraction of choice is no longer there. What follows is a sort of awkward and uncomfortable re-encounter with boredom along with the present moment and whatever it entails.
I found this to be a pretty stark and surprisingly powerful experience. The awkward and the boring are things that I run from at all costs, especially in social situations, so having one of my common escape routes no longer available made me really squirm (Side note this does improve over time and eventually even goes away much of the time).
This might sound bad, and yea it is uncomfortable, but it does lead to true growth and better social skills as well as more comfort with the present moment which has its benefits (I think Buddha has said a few things on the topic).
#4 Longer-Term Thinking
For me personally, the next thing I experienced was longer-term and more “zoomed out” thinking. I found that switching even from a couple of drinks to no drinks drastically changed my perspective on life. Instead of seeing an evening as an individual event, I started seeing evenings and days as “links” in the chain of life where one leads to the next one and so on.
For me, that meant wanting to go to bed earlier and weighting my days towards the morning rather than the evening, which is a pretty big change but also a very rewarding one. I found that looking forward to mornings led to more hope and excitement for the future and an overall a more positive view of my life (Pro-tip, don’t cut coffee and booze at the same time because the way I see it coffee is the “party” of the morning so your gonna want to lean into that if you are not partying at night)
This might sound funny but when you are not celebrating a random night you start to think more about where you are going in life and where your current path is taking you. It is a little less romantic but it brings a lot more peace of mind.
#5 More Stable and Improved Mood
One of the nice things that I slowly started to notice was more “natural joy” along with more alertness and clarity. I felt like I was learning to be happy again without some sort of “chemical boost”, this sort of happiness was less acute but of a far more stable nature. The best way I can explain it is by saying it is more like the sort of happiness I experienced when I was a kid and less like the sort of stressed-out and nervous sort of happiness that I was used to as an adult.
#6 An Increased Sense of Dignity Responsibility and Confidence.
This is one of the better things I noticed. After a couple of weeks, I felt that if I was never drinking then I always had a deeper capacity for handling whatever life threw at me. The term sober sounds pretty lame for the most part but there is a deeper side of it that is really very profound. There is a sense of maintaining touch with reality and of not shying from your direct experience of life in the macro and the micro, and this results in feelings of genuine self-respect and confidence.
#7 An Existential Crisis
If I am being honest this is the biggest thing that happened as a result of not drinking for a prolonged length of time. Once you get used to it you start to realize how big a “ thing” drinking really is in our culture and I am not even saying that's for sure a bad thing, but it is a thing.
It’s everywhere.
It is the social lubricant the old friend, the go-to activity, the default outing, the nostalgic pass time and the list goes on. Not that you can’t socialize anymore but sticking to the club soda really makes you see things differently.
If you’re not gonna meet up for drinks then what are you gonna do?
As I said in the beginning I think drinking is wonderful, but I also think that we need to learn how to celebrate without it. And you don’t realize how strong the “drinking culture” is until you step out of it for a few minutes and find yourself in a sober wilderness, that is stark, unfamiliar, and largely uninhabited.
The term “sober curious” has grown in popularity over the past few years and sobriety challenges have become somewhat in vogue for younger people as health is now a lot cooler than it used to be.
I think this is actually a great term to describe the attitude which I found helpful when venturing into the land of sobriety, drawing a hard and fast line about your future relationship with “the sauce” is a little intense but deciding to get through just one social event without drinking (and not just because your driving) can be an interesting and even fun experiment.
Overall I found that being sober helps you go deeper in all the right ways. It cleared away some of life's fog and brought into focus things that are truly important to me.
I won't go so far as to say it's a superpower but if you are a casual drinker and feel just a bit stuck or lost in life then going and staying sober for a prolonged period of time is probably the single most dramatic and positive change that you can make in your life.
As someone once said, “there are levels to this shit”. I don’t say “never” and I won’t say forever, but I do say that it is well worth the experiment and I definitely don’t miss the hangovers.
If you are curious about this or want to give it a try there is a website called oneyearnobeer.com that has all kinds of tips and testimonials from people who have gone off the sauce (temporarily or permanently). It's pretty cool stuff and a lot of folks have seen a radical improvement in all kinds of different areas of life. So have a gander over there and then give it think for yourself.
Yours in the Bubly,
Ben