This Is When I Knew I Needed To Give Up Drinking Alcohol

The signs weren’t obvious to me at first.

It took me years to realise that it was becoming problematic.

The moment I realised

I was walking back from dinner in Northern Thailand with my partner and our two friends. We were a week and a half into the holiday and we had spent every night drinking in restaurants.

Walking along a quiet dust path back to our hut, I told my partner how anxious I was feeling.

I felt nauseous, as though the food was making me feel ill. This was a symptom of anxiety that I often felt, and never ever has it actually been the food.

This was the first night we hadn’t had an alcohol drink.

I went to bed feeling anxious, sick and shaky. I worried that I’d fallen ill in such a remote place and that we wouldn’t be able to leave to carry on our journey as planned the following day.

The next morning, I felt a lot better. I still felt anxious but nowhere near as bad as the previous night. Night time is always the worst for me.

Over breakfast, my partner highlighted to me that it sounded like I was having withdrawal symptoms.

I told him that often if I stop drinking for a few days, I feel really anxious for the first two days. Then I start to feel better and about five days in I feel really good.

He took out his phone and googled alcohol withdrawal, and the results mirrored what I had just said.

I didn’t feel like my level of drinking was unusual. I didn’t get drunk often, in fact I hate the feeling of being drunk. I did drink most days though, just one or two glasses of wine.

Over the next few weeks I started to consciously think more about why I drink and the effect it has on me.

Anxiety

I realised that anxiety was a major factor in why I drink, but that it was also an effect of drinking. If I have these anxious withdrawal symptoms, then surely I can eliminate some of it by not drinking at all.

I read up on it, and so many people attest to their anxiety levels dropping after they stop drinking. It’s not an immediate effect because, like me, they have used alcohol as an anxiety relief, but it’s a longer term effect which can only be celebrated.

All this time I thought alcohol was helping me to be calm in certain situations that my anxiety would not when in reality, it was making it worse.

Self esteem

I’m pretty sure most of us feel more confident after a drink. It’s one of the benefits of alcohol, increasing our ability to be sociable and to give us courage to talk to new people.

Have you ever woken up the day after a night out and felt the fear of what you said, how you came across and what others thought of you?

It can be hard to remember all the tiny details of a night of drinking, and you worry other people may remember things that you don’t.

Words and actions of the night are analysed inaccurately and the unknown gives you an insecure feeling.

So was alcohol really giving us self confidence, or was it fake?

We often don’t feel that confidence slip through into the next day, in fact for me at least it tended to get worse.

I wondered then, whether not drinking could actually give us more confidence. Could being sober and remembering the whole night make us feel better about ourselves the next day? Having full control over our words and actions could make us self assured that we won’t say or do the wrong thing.

Self control

I’ve never considered myself to have much of this.

I drank often.

I ate a lot of chocolate.

I spent more than I earned.

I’d consider myself to have done fairly okay in life so far, but imagine what I could do with more self control.

If I could keep up running until I compete in some of the worlds best ultramarathons.

If I could sit for long enough in front of the same novel to actually finish it.

If I could write so frequently that I make money from it.

If I could avoid alcohol so that I’m no longer relying on it to get me through certain situations.

Self control is clearly something that separates a lot of people who are really successful in what they do, whether it’s running, writing, art or anything else.

Proving to myself that I can go a year without alcohol and still function like a normal human being, perhaps with more control over my health and well-being, is probably the first step.

If I can go sober for a year then I can definitely:

Give up sweets

Run a marathon

Write a book

Learn the keyboard

The biggest form of self control, for me, would be to not pick up a glass of wine every evening for an extended period of time, to prove to myself that I’m in control of my actions and decisions.

Fast forward to now

It’s been a year since that Thailand trip, and I’ve now decided to give alcohol up altogether to see the real benefits of sobriety first hand and to prove to myself that I don’t need it.

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