On Quitting Alcohol
I quit drinking alcohol about four months ago. I wasn’t your stereotypical alcoholic, beating my wife after drinking and so on, but I did average about 20 units per week compared to “doctor-approved” max 14 for men.
That has been going on for many years. Actually, to be honest, for as many as I can remember. It was just a couple of beers with the gang after work, sometimes more but not too often, or a couple of (big) glasses of wine at home with/after dinner, with an occasional binge though not as much as when I was younger. At this point, frankly, I don’t even care whether I “qualified” for this or that definition of alcoholism. It’s not about that anymore.
I relapsed for several weeks once since quitting in a typical one-drink-won’t-kill-me type of thing, but have gone dry again and it’s holding. Most importantly, I have made it over the psychological peak: alcohol is just another drug, like heroin, cocaine, tobacco, etc. except that it’s legal and a bit less debilitating than heroin. If you think that’s a shocking, radical statement then you should really get to the bottom of why you think it’s so shocking.
At some point the question of what alcohol is doing to me, psychologically even more than physically, becomes a lot more important than whether it’s legal (what’s important to society), or how functional you can manage to be (what’s important to your employer and landlord). If legality and functionality is the meaning of life then yes, alcohol will do and heroin won’t. Heroin will get you fired, evicted and eventually in jail. Congrats, you made it in life, you’re none of that?
Psychological effect is really what did it for me: nobody is getting off this planet alive. The goal is not so much to stick around longer waiting for some miracle to happen — you can extend that by maybe 10 years at best assuming you don’t get hit by a bus — but what happens between now and your departure. You can live a fabulous six months or waste 30 years. A drug is not going to help you live fabulously. If it is, then why pussyfoot with alcohol, really, go directly for the vein, live six months or a year in a drug daze and call it a life.
“Screw life without being able to have a beer or glass of wine”? Screw life if you can’t live without it, frankly. Really. Imagine a heroin addict telling you life is pointless if you can’t be on heroin and your reaction. Lemon water tastes just as good as alcohol if you are willing to taste it (when was the last time?) or ultimately tell yourself it does. It’s all in your head. If a drug is what brings us together (bars really are just licensed drug dens), and keeps us around, socializing, then those relationships should be reexamined. Heroin addicts hang out together but we know what drives those relationships: not love for each other. Once a week guilty pleasure? I can’t do that, maybe some people can, but not me. It’s also much harder to say no to people if sometimes you drink and sometimes you don’t, and then you tell them you won’t drink with them. Drink only on the weekends? Yes, but then it’s binge drinking and the weekends are just a giant headache, great idea? Tried it all.
It’s a tough month or two quitting, but life goes on, and it’s not the worst thing. Many, many worse things. Now I just have to figure out how to be social in a world full of drug addicts. :) That I understand is a big hold up for many thinking about quitting. You can’t just leave everyone who drinks behind, since that probably includes 90% of your family and friends. The answer to that is one of those rare people you know who doesn’t drink and never has, even at bars. They manage to survive don’t they? After a while peer pressure subsides and everyone accepts it: you just don’t drink.
Lucky, my wifey has one glass of wine roughly every 3 months, so I won’t be tempted at home.
As a temporary crutch, I’ve rediscovered Coca Cola. Coke makes you fat? A glass of wine or a pint of beer have the same amount of calories as a can of Coke Classic (google it). Coke Zero has a sweetener that causes cancer in lab rats? Alcohol causes cancer in real humans. The million excuses of an addict.
A little bit of alcohol is good for the heart because it lowers stress (numbs you). There are many other ways to deal with stress, though, and it’s not top secret stuff either. Life is stress, almost by definition. Dead people do not stress. Stress (life) should be embraced/dealt with, not ran from. If you shun stress, then you choose to turn into a vegetable, all physiological processes and no awareness.
If you are still suspicious and think it so radical to be able to go through life without alcohol, after work tonight, when you feel exhausted, do some cardio or run outside for 10–15 minutes around the block— no gym membership required — and see it will destress you just the same as a glass of wine. Too tired to exercise? You need to separate between mental and physical exhaustion. If you’ve been sitting in an office all day you are not physically tired, no way, how? You are mentally exhausted, nothing to do with your muscles. It’s not even about losing weight or being healthier, which might also, incidentally, happen if you get addicted to exercise as a way of dealing with mental stress.
Zero need for alcohol if you value life at all.