Day 14/28
As we reach the halfway mark I talk about what this means to our sober journey and what effects being sober for this length of time has on our body.
Ohhhh ohhh! We’re halfway there! But we’re not living on a prayer. We’re living on sobriety, we’re living with a clear mind and we’re living having full knowledge that we’ve now managed two whole weeks, that’s 14 days or 336 hours together without drinking any alcohol!
When you set out on this sober venture with me I imagine a fair few of you would’ve had this down as a marker, maybe as an ok, I’ve got this moment. Well, I can tell you that you have, you have it in you to make it through whatever period of sobriety you’ve set yourself. Whether you decide that 28 days is enough, or whether you have decided to go sober for the whole of January or even the rest of your life. You’re in it to work on this journey of sobriety for yourself, no one else. You don’t need to look to anyone else for approval now, your opinion of you is the key one that matters and I will keep repeating this to you until I am blue in the face. I am proud of every single one of you who. For those of you who started on their journey into being a more mindful drinker, or being a teetotaler or an even a better sober ally. I am proud that you have made a commitment to learning more about sobriety and have made it something you care about.
I know you’ve all come here for the facts, so we’ll get down to it.
💧 Liver health
Alcohol-Related Liver Disease or ARLD is caused by prolonged over-consumption of alcohol. Our livers are smart, they can regenerate themselves, but each time we drink alcohol some of those smart cells die and as a result, our liver’s ability to keep on regenerating itself is depleted. The first of the alcohol-related liver diseases is called Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease. Drinking a large amount of alcohol, even over a short period of time (a few days is enough) can lead to a build-up of fats in the liver. This harms your liver’s ability to filter toxins from your blood and is, therefore, a forerunner for more dangerous liver illnesses like Alcoholic Hepatitis or Cirrhosis.
However, by stopping our consumption of alcohol for two weeks, our body has the ability to kick those harmful fats out of our liver and will start to function fully, again.
🍔 Stomach health
Put simply, consuming alcohol irritates our whole body, but in particular, our digestive system. Drinking alcohol, even a little, will make our stomach produce more acid than usual and could lead to gastritis (inflammation of the stomach lining). This is the main cause of the stomach pain, the sickness and even diarrhoea that can come after a night out drinking.
Just two weeks into sobriety, your stomach lining will begin to return to normal, eliminating those symptoms and allowing you to fully absorb the nutrients your body needs from the food you eat. So if you binged over Christmas, your body will now start to get back to its full fighting fit state.
This weekend I’ll be serving up another cocktail recipe for you all.
Until then 👋
Sources: NHS and drinkaware
