Anyone given up alcohol? What happened?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’ve decided to give up alcohol for a month and see how I look and feel and the end of it. I’ve just finished my first week.

I tend to drink 5 days out of 7; usually four or five drinks. That adds up to quite a lot, both in terms of calories and units of alcohol drunk.

I’m not particularly missing it at all, and I’ve no intention to give up completely - but I’ll stop drinking at home. This first month is just an experiment with no alcohol at all, then I’ll probably drink only when I’m out with friends, once a week or so.

So, why did I do it? Well, I noticed I was starting to look terrible. Skin looked bad (not hideous - just quite dry with some redness in areas which you probably wouldn’t even notice in the wrong light), can’t shift the 10lbs of weight or so that I want to shift, and I look older than my age. How much of that is down to alcohol I don’t know, but, hey, it’s worth a try.

So, anyone done this? Gone from quite heavy drinking to none at all for a while? Did you notice yourself looking or feeling better? How long did that take?

2

I was a 3-4 (500 ml) beers a night man for years and years, pretty much every day. I’d say heavy drinker, nowhere near alcoholic (Irish or English definitions, not AA ones!).

I stopped drinking six weeks ago. Like you, it isn’t permanent or final. I still love a beer and have had two social booze-ups in the last 6 weeks; it’s just that I’ve just changed my default behaviour.

No cravings, don’t miss it.

What happened? Started feeling great about 4 or 5 days in.

Skin improved a bit but not hugely (I still smoke a lot of cigarettes). I’m exercising a lot more - my motivation is massively improved.

So far I’ve lost 12 lbs. My beer gut has disappeared and my moobs have turned back into pecs. My girlfriend (who doesn’t drink) is now complaining I’ve lost too much weight and I need to start drinking beer again.

But the biggest change: I sleep absolutely fantastically now. I used to wake up every 3 or 4 hours, including one piss break, every night, and managed about 6 hours max. Now I sleep 7-8 hours straight through every night. And recently I was ill and needed to sleep, and I managed 13 hours straight! From thinking I was a chronic insomniac I now know it was just the beer. I still wake up groggy but coffee sorts that out and I feel on top of the world about an hour after I awake, as opposed to maybe by lunchtime before.

One word of warning though: about 3-5 days in I got a couple of weird dreams, as well as a mild feeling of depression. These are normal alcohol withdrawal symptoms and go away on their own, so watch out for them but know what they are. They’ll disappear quickly.

3

Quit drinking about a year ago. Went from 5 nights a week, to zero. Beer was my booze of choice.
Over the last year I’ve lost a significant amount of weight. I haven’t changed my diet, nor my (admittedly low) level of exercise. I feel better, but dont know if I should attribute it to no alcohol, or, to achieving a healthy weight.

4

I gave it up over 21 years ago. Alcohol and drugs were ruining my life. So after a significant number of failed quitting attempts (and more painful consequences) I finally managed to leave said substances alone. I relied heavily (and still do) on the support of a peer group who choose to do the same.

Life’s been 1000 x better for me since then.

5

Several years ago, I found I was up to three to four beers a night. Hey, summers are HOT here! I met a guy and wanted to impress him* (he didn’t drink) so I switched to iced water. Lost several pounds, saved lots of money.

I still have three, maybe four beers on a Sunday while watching football, but not during the rest of the week. I might order a (classic) martini if hubby and I are dining at an upscale restaurant, but we don’t do that often. Also, when I cut back on the beer, I found my cravings for large amounts of salty high-carb junk food diminished, so that helped with the weight loss.

*My Machiavellian design worked…we got married. :smiley:

6

I’m currently giving up alcohol as a precaution, but since I rarely had more than a couple of drinks a week (usually wine), I don’t miss it.

7

Yes. I don’t really want to talk about the circumstances, except to say that they were almost disastrous and are still affecting me to this day.

8

What ever you do, don’t quit drinking. I had my last drink at lunchtime, and I already feel like shit.

No, I basically gave up drinking several months ago, feel better for it, get more things done each day, more positive things accomplished.

Am also enjoying the money saved.

9

About once a year or so I stop drinking for a couple weeks, mainly to test out me or Mr. Athena’s theories that drinking causes lethargy/bad sleep/lack of motivation/whatever happens to be bugging us at that time. Inevitable the first day or two I feel great, but then the lethargy/bad sleep/lack of motivation comes back, even though I’m not drinking. I think it all has more to do with allergies than alcohol. Regardless, by the next year, I forget the allergy theory, and test out the alcohol theory, with the same results.

10

I gave it up for about two years after my fiancee left me. I was scared what would happen if I drank cuz I wasn’t the best of drunks before that, so I didn’t want to chance it.

Mostly what happened was I got A LOT of free soda. Whenever we went to our local bar they just comped me soda since I usually drove. It even got to a point where they just told me where the spout was and I filled my own drinks.

I started up again after a while (although never as much) but I now got rid of alcohol again since I just had another longtime girlfriend up and leave me and the one time I tried drinking it away I got really really bad. So back to no drinking for me again…

11

“I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. When they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.” ~~Frank Sinatra

I haven’t felt that good in 14 years.

12

I’d like to point out that, depending on many factors of which I know little, its my impression that going cold turkey on the booze can actually be life threatening. You might want to do a bit of research on this first.

13

Yeah – I didn’t give it up, but I keep it to 10-14 drinks per week. A week or any length of time of “forgetting” to drink at all is not unusual at all. At the apex of my depravity, I was at least 10-15 units per day, which was neither sustainable nor desirable for me. I also have rules – to guard against physical dependency if I’m drinking too much over. One day of partying means the next day, have none. What I do consume tends to be two or three times per week.

Nothing happened – I lost a little weight, felt more cogent in general, and slept a lot better (I actually have dreams now, which is nice), and am better hydrated. It doesn’t sound like you’re drinking so much as to worry about withdrawal, so I’d bet you’ll just end up feeling a little better.

If I were you, I’d just work on making some minor tweaks to your current schedule, if you feel it’s too much – leave drinking to a few times a week, maybe. I don’t generally keep alcohol in the house, though, so that makes it pretty easy to moderate.

Real withdrawal is something else entirely – even if you’re not at the DT stage. Someone mentioned depression, upsetting dreams, paranoia, reduced cognition function, tremors – sweating profusely I’ve experienced as well as upsetting toilet functioning and it’s just generally bad all around. I found good nutrition helps – lots of fiber can help with evacuating on the toilet. It will make you feel better, at any rate, as much as anything short of riding it out with chemical help (benzos).

14

I have a practical question about this. I’ve toyed with the idea of cutting out alcohol for a while to see if has any benefits - the improved sleep and weight loss both sound good. In theory, just by eliminating booze and making no other changes to my life I could drop 5-10 lbs easily.

But. If I stopped ingesting calories by alcohol, wouldn’t my body notice the decreased calorie consumption and just turn up my appetite, so that (unless I deliberately dieted) I’d eat more food to replace the calories not consumed by drinking?

15

You’re correct that someone who is a heavy daily drinker should be medically supervised when they try to stop because there is a danger of having a seizure or “DTs” (confusion,unstable vital signs, shaking, hallucinations) after suddenly stopping heavy alcohol use. Alcohol withdrawal can be potentially fatal for someone who has become physically dependent on it. However, after a week without any alcohol, the original poster should be out of the woods if he hasn’t had any withdrawal symptoms by this point.

16

I didn’t find this happened. I think the ‘empty calories’ theory holds weight here (pardon the pun). In fact my appetite decreased a bit.

billfish678 I am not a doctor so don’t take my advice and I defer to trained people who actually know what they’re talking about, but IMO the kind of drinker who is in danger of severe side-effects and needs to be medicated to withdraw isn’t a “5 days out of 7; usually four or five drinks” drinker. I drank more than the OP and more constantly and as stated, a couple of strange dreams and a vague feeling of disaffection were all I experienced.

17

The people that DID die while trying to stop with the booze don’t generally post :slight_smile:

Just sayin.

18

About 4 drinks a night/ 1 or 2 times a week, so not much really. I’m off alcohol for a little over another 5 months or so. I stopped caffeine and the occasional cigarette at the same time, and the only thing I noticed was headaches from stopping the caffeine.

19

I haven’t stopped completely, but I’ve very much curtailed it.

During college, alcohol was a nightly dare. In Colorado, you could drink 3.2% beer at 18; this was just before Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign got drinking ages up to 21. So my sophomore and junior years’ night were usually spent at the local pub, that actually had what were called “Drown Nights”, where it cost $6 to get in, but pitchers of beer were only 25¢. (And I just had to get my money’s worth.) Then when I turned 21 as a senior, the challenge was to try as many varied liquors as I could (with my roommates). We had a lattice wall that we were successful in filling with about 125 unique types of liquor.

After college and before I was dating my future wife, I’d drink 3-4 beers a night. On weekends, I’d have 6 or so at a bar in the city, meaning I was drunk driving about 100 times a year. (Ended up with 3 DUIs, one with a freakin’ rollover crash.)

After getting married, I didn’t feel like drinking if my wife wasn’t (we’d split a bottle of wine about once a week). Then, when I became a father, I just got a sense that it’d be better if I had all my faculties in case we had to rush the baby to the doctor (we did when she was 3 weeks old).

Now, I have maybe 1 drink a week, usually a craft beer. If I ever do have more than one a night (or a 24-oz size), I feel so stupid having a buzz. I’ve seen pictures of classmates on Facebook that are my age, but look about 10 years older; you can tell it’s from booze.

My alcoholic sister, who just turned 58, looks like she’s in her 70s. Our mom, when she was in her 70s, looked like she was in her 60s. So about 2 years ago, you could probably honestly say my mom and sister looked like siblings.

I have absolutely no desire to feel drunk/stoned/ODed, like I used to in college. I’m glad whatever gene my sister got (probably from her biological father) isn’t in me. We’ve had years of heartbreak with her, losing touch with her children, a second and third divorce, etc. This last two months she’s had no drinks, and is finding support. I hope it keeps up, but I’ve heard horror stories about falling off the wagon.

20

Yeah, that’s really not an issue here. :slight_smile: