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I quit drinking for a year

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Re: I quit drinking for a year

#41

Post by bkjelden »

Interesting, over the last 18 months or so I've dabbled with both quitting/aggressively cutting back on drinking as well as aggressively cutting back on sweets (some periods where I've been super dedicated and others where I'm not).

Counter to OP's experience, I've actually found sweets to be more impactful than alcohol. That is to say eating dessert after dinner will impact my sleep more than a drink or two, and the periods where I lost weight have been more closely correlated with the periods where I was eating very few sweets.

Of course with both, the delta between low/moderate consumption and a baseline of zero consumption is low - it's the excessive consumption that causes trouble.

Like OP I found the daily ritual to be pretty easy after a couple weeks, but like OP I also missed the social aspect (and this is why I've sort of settled on the opinion that giving up drinking completely is not worth it, at least for me). If I felt like I was experiencing a step function improvement in life quality I'd keep it up... but for me it just hasn't been the silver bullet it's made out to be.

I'm not really one to label one food ingredient as the cause of all health problems, but if I had to choose one I would choose refined sugar long before alcohol.

Re: I quit drinking for a year

#42

Post by intrasight »

esafak wrote: post #19
chrysoprace wrote: post #17

I've found that nowadays I largely like it for the taste (which often surprises non-beer drinkers) and so I'm quite pleased that non-alcoholic options are becoming more widespread. My main wish is for non-alcoholic craft beer to become much more widespread and cheaper. In Australia alcohol is taxed at a ludicrous rate, but non-alcoholic drinks are not, however they often attract the same price - which is disappointin…

One thing that annoys me is that non-alcoholic beer is subject to age checks in the US. I assume it's because the programmers didn't create a separate group for them, so they ring up with the rest of the liquor, triggering a check? Maybe there's a good reason ('coz that's not one).

Weird since kombucha has 0.5% and they don't age check that.

Re: I quit drinking for a year

#43

Post by friggeri »

I stopped drinking 8 or 9 years ago, and I haven’t missed it. Not that it ever was a problem, I enjoyed a glass of wine or a cocktail every now and then, but I was training for an ultra marathon and figured I’d stay dry while I trained for a couple of months. Had a glass of wine a few days after the race and felt completely hammered, at which point I realized if I wanted to drink again I’d have to “train” my body for it, and thought that was totally backwards. I haven’t found any situation where an alcoholic drink can’t be replaced by a glass of water, an NA beer or a mocktail. I’m also very lucky to be married to a wonderful woman who arrived to more or less the same conclusion and we enjoy being the boring ones who don’t drink (but never get a hangover).

Re: I quit drinking for a year

#44

Post by yangikan »

pton_xd wrote: post #6

> But gradually I noticed that I didn’t really want a drink, I just wanted a thing. ... It could be alcohol, but I found dessert worked just as well. Whoa! That's not healthy at all... ;) I've found non-alcoholic beers are actually pretty tasty these days, moreso the longer its been since having a real beer. They definitely scratch the itch to "have something" while out socializing. I don't miss the alcohol at all.

Which one do you like?

Re: I quit drinking for a year

#45

Post by TFNA »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #10

I have been trying to ask people this but its havent gotten a satisfactory answer. Sure alcohol is ingrained in society, sure Americans tried prohibition and all that but its not gloom and doom. Muslims who are about 2 billion choose not to consume alcohol and go about their lives without it. They just do fine without it. How does that work for them? ? I mean I have never consumed and never will so why is it that you…

The Muslim world has plenty of alcohol drinking. On one hand you have countries that are majority Muslim but alcohol is legally sold and widely consumed, like the Balkans, Central Asia or parts of West Africa. On the other hand you have countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran where illegal homebrewing and distribution (of often very foul stuff) is rife but society does a very good job of keeping it under wraps.

Re: I quit drinking for a year

#46

Post by cokerocks »

Wait, people do damp januaries?

I have been doing no-soda januaries and septembers for 15 years now, as a way to avoid kidney stones, something my family has a number of cases of.

Everyone told this to reacted as if it was a novel concept and thought of doing it for smoking or coffee. I never heard of damp januaries before.

Re: I quit drinking for a year

#48

Post by abrookewood »

loveparade wrote: post #9

I haven't had a drink in 6 months or so. Not because I wanted to stop, I just have not had the desire to drink recently. Now I would love to tell you about all the amazing magical healthy benefits that have come with that, but unfortunately there are none. I feel no difference at all.

Yeah, I did the same for roughly 6 months and I don't think that I felt better .. I just never felt SHIT.

Re: I quit drinking for a year

#50

Post by senkora »

dhruvkar wrote: post #16

For 12 years, I did one year ON, one year OFF (2012 - 2024). On my ON years, I felt compelled to drink, every night I had at least a beer, if for no reason other than, I wanted to make the "most of it". On my OFF years, I didn't feel the need to drink, and generally slept better, lost weight and was more focused. Stopped drinking completely after that.

I applaud your commitment to statistical rigor.

On a related note, “sequential analysis” is the keyword in stats for experimental designs that allow for stopping the experiment early in the face of clear results: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_analysis#

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