What Happened After Quitting Drinking for 30 Days

Everything feels a lot easier now.

I usually drink about 2-3 drink 3-5 times a week. Too much to be sure, so I decided to take a week off. By the end of the week I was feeling so much more energetic I decided to keep it going and eventually hit the 30 day mark.

One misconception I had is that after you drink the next day you’ll feel kind of crappy, but the day after you’ll be back to normal. I realized it really takes about three days to get back to normal and if you drink more frequently than that, you never get back to normal. After I was seven days in, I couldn’t believe how much better I felt. My normal day usually started with me waking up somewhere between 4:30 and 6:30, working until lunch about 2 or 3, then having a big crash that would take me out for the rest of the day. Now after lunch, I can keep productive until around 8pm, when I’m ready to go to bed in an hour or two anyway. I now have the energy to spend time on hobbies I had been meaning to get around to doing but never had the time or energy.

I was hoping to lose weight unfortunately just quitting alcohol does nothing for weight loss. I’ve heard some people say after asked how they lost a bunch of weight say “Oh I just stopping drinking beer and it all came off.” For me this is not the case, but what it did do was make it easier to count calories. If I count calories it’s a 100% guaranteed way to lose weight, but sometimes I lack the discipline to sustain it. Not drinking gave me back that discipline. It also helps my cravings, the day after drinking a lot of times I’d crave very calories heavy foods like a pizza or a cheeseburger. Now I am maintaining a much more reasonable diet on a regular basis.

My sleep has gotten better as well, but not perfect. I still wake up the pee in the middle of the night pretty often but when I look at my sleep tracker there are a lot less of those micro wake ups throughout the night.

Instead of drinking at night I find myself often going for a walk around the park or on a nature trail, going to the gym, or just running some errands at the end of the day. I still go to the cigar bar, which I thought would be kind of weird without pairing the cigar with a whiskey but I actually enjoy the flavor of the cigars more now that my senses aren’t dulled by alcohol. I also find it’s just as easy to have conversations with random people I meet there without alcohol than it is with. I really don’t feel like I’m missing anything.

I’ve also gotten more into cooking elaborate meals at the end of the day. It is a nice way to unwind, and looking forward to trying something I’ve never cooked before.

I don’t plan on staying sober forever, but for right now I’m really enjoying all of this this extra energy, and when I do start drinking again I think it should be a few times a month kind of thing instead of a few times a week kind of thing.