Quitting Alcohol Pros and Cons

[Ego]

I did go to my first wedding while sober and proved that I can in fact dance my face off and have a great time, even in a big crowd where I only know 4-5 other people. I no longer buy the social lubricant excuse from myself.

Reminds me of those BarLab experiments from the 2000s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR2_YpocWQk

[Smashter]

I had a particularly nasty hangover 3 months ago, and I haven't drank since.

5 years without alcohol at this point!*

For the first time since I started this journey, I've been toying with the idea of seeing if I can have 1-2 drinks every now and then. Perhaps I am deluding myself, but it seems like there could be some positive effects for heart health.

It also just seems fun to have a drink with a good friend or my wife every once in a while, if I'm being honest.

Nothing has been decided yet, but the idea has been gaining traction in my mind.

Cons of starting again:
- I might not stop at 1-2 drinks, and it might become more than "every now and then"
- I lose a little bit of my status as "the guy who goes against the grain and does hard things that many others can't". I like being that guy.
- I drop in esteem amongst certain acquaintances who may have changed their drinking habits for the better because of me. This is like 3 people, lol.
- I have a love of streaks, and this has been a good one
- Alcohol is expensive

* edit: I had originally written 7 years, thinking I stopped right after this original post. Turns out I didn't quit for a couple more years.

[loutfard]

Perhaps I am deluding myself, but it seems like there could be some positive effects for heart health.

You're deluding yourself indeed. No such effect has been found. The rumours about a glass of red wine are just that: rumours.

[Frita]

Cons of starting again:
- I might not stop at 1-2 drinks, and it might become more than "every now and then"

It’s interesting that you’ve reset and are considering options. I will certainly wish you well regardless of your decision and will follow along.

Not advice, just my experience: When you all started on this journey, I considered moving toward alcohol-free. I found that I could stop at one beer (12 ounces of 4-5% ABV mostly), lost my preference for IPAs, reduced the number of days I drink per week from two to one maximum, or will often sub out a bubbly water or soda or even just water. Sometimes I toy with totally stopping but kind of like being flexible.

[delay]

Perhaps I am deluding myself, but it seems like there could be some positive effects for heart health.

It also just seems fun to have a drink with a good friend or my wife every once in a while, if I'm being honest.

Alcohol allows you to relax. Relaxing feels good for your heart. As you suggest in the second sentence.

Optimizing for one thing comes at the cost of another.

[Dave]

I just crossed the 2 year mark of no alcohol, uneventfully, with no new reflections on thoughts on it. Still think it would occasionally augment a situation, but overall happy with where things are at.

Like @Smashther, I toyed with the idea of having a drink here or there...but haven't done so and really I don't think about it so much. I've never been a home drinker, so it doesn't really align well with having a young toddler and not "going out" much...although who am I kidding, haven't done much of that anyways in a long time .

[ertyu]

Fwiw, scientifically, there is no amount of alcohol that is "healthy." People who drink less aren't bad off because they simply take in less poison.

[Smashter]

Nice work on crossing the two year mark Dave!

You all are probably right, the heart health thing seems pretty tenuous.

I like delay’s point about the relaxation piece. Perhaps i am subconsciously desiring instant relaxation, given some stressful things going on in my life.

Frita, sounds like you have a great handle on things and have found a nice balance. Maybe I should work on this whole flexibility thing, that’s somewhat foreign to me, haha. I tend to pick one way of doing things and never stop, even if that way isn’t serving me anymore.

[Dave]

Frita, sounds like you have a great handle on things and have found a nice balance. Maybe I should work on this whole flexibility thing, that’s somewhat foreign to me, haha. I tend to pick one way of doing things and never stop, even if that way isn’t serving me anymore.

Hah, this entire post echoes true for many areas of life for me as well. Taking extreme approaches, which work really well for a while, and then fail because something else changes, and it takes a while to realize that and recalibrate.

But interrelated there's also the personality thing of moderators vs. abstainers (not sure if it's scientifically supported or not, but seems to resonate with my observed experience). I've never been a good moderator and have had success being an abstainer, so I tend to just stick to that and it seems net positive. For some others, it's overly restrictive and net negative, perhaps someone like @Frita having a drink once a week.

[Frita]

But interrelated there's also the personality thing of moderators vs. abstainers (not sure if it's scientifically supported or not, but seems to resonate with my observed experience). I've never been a good moderator and have had success being an abstainer, so I tend to just stick to that and it seems net positive. For some others, it's overly restrictive and net negative, perhaps someone like @Frita having a drink once a week.

For me, it’s situational. I can drink a beer and be done. Kettle chips and Doritos are different stories. A big bag will be empty if we’re alone. My solutions are to not buy them and grab one of those little 1 ounce bags if at a social event, enjoying the whole bag (which I dump on a plate so it looks more substantial).

[bryan]

I don't see many drawbacks to drinking, "a lot" or a little.
...
One drawback I definitely note would be getting a surplus of calories for the day(s) and the potential for getting a beer belly. I've curtailed that a bit in the last year by switching to mostly club soda drinks in indulgence scenarios.
...
There was a point last year where I thought my drinking was beginning to be a problem (month or so after a long-term relationship ending, drinking a lot every day)
...
become a regular at an all-night dive bar here; two or three nights a week, same nights, going through a shift change or two.. Kind of nice being a regular so far. People that I talk to here smoke a fair bit so I've actually taken that up to be able to join on the smoking patio (the indoor smoking places are too much..) without being a non-smoker and looking desperate to just keep talking or something.

The person I started dating near the 'end' of the pandemic went sober (alcoholic) a couple months into the relationship. I ended up joining her after some months, in solidarity. Though, after a year or so, we've agreed it's fine if I drink in moderation when I'm out of town without her.

I stand by what I've said earlier.. for myself.

Folks have asked me if I noticed any differences etc.. I think for a while and tell them not really. Though, if I were to start back to how I was drinking, I'm confident it would be different, but not sure how long it would take, if ever, to get back to that 'normal'.

I have become self-aware enough to say that a lot of my behaviors like social drinking/smoking was from a place of loneliness, social insecurity. Therapy has helped. After a few months, it's really not too strange or whatever to be the sober one (more and more of us these days!) in a social situation. More than anything, that sort of awkwardness for me is more, again, about the social insecurities. I guess that would be the pro.. that I have to be more intentional/active/practice social situations, leading to some self-growth.

The main con (so far, for me) is just the occasional missing pleasantness of having a pint and unwinding or connecting in certain situations, I think.

It is interesting to observe others relationships with alcohol, with this new perspective.

[mountainFrugal]

Quitting alcohol was one of the best decisions I made in this past year. It is very easy to fool yourself otherwise.

[Green328]

Quitting alcohol has improved literally every facet of my life. My regrets? Two. Not doing it sooner. Not transferring the money saved into a separate account just to watch that grow.

[Smashter]

A separate "here's what I would have spent on booze" account that you get to watch grow does sound like fun

[AxelHeyst]

I am currently drinking the last of the bottle of scotch it is tradition that my brother gets me for Christmas every year, and besides a beer or two on my birthday and one on my way back from Alaska that's all the alcohol I had in 2024. Honestly I could do without even that much - I might ask my bro to change it back up to when we just contributed to a charity and gave each other a card. (Gift giving is neither of our love languages, if you can't tell).

Reminds me of those BarLab experiments from the 2000s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR2_YpocWQk

I'd missed this the first time around. tl:dr the social lubricant effect of alcohol is a placebo. Fascinating! If only the power of the mind could be harnessed in some way...

Kind of related: In August when I visited my romantic entanglement in Alaska for the first time, she had just gotten into roasting her own coffee beans and there were unlabeled mason jars full of beans all over the place. One week after I arrived we discovered that we'd been drinking decaf. I would not have known if we hadn't discovered the fact of it - I was dragging ass a bit that week, but I chalked it up to recovering from the long ride.

[thef0x]

Alcohol allows you to relax. Relaxing feels good for your heart....

Optimizing for one thing comes at the cost of another.

This seems like a short sighted take.

RANT:

Short term, alcohol is a depressant and does have an acute relaxing effect. Long term use does not, however, feel good for your heart; quite the contrary, alcohol directly damages the heart. (https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/d ... iomyopathy)

Alcohol, long term, does not increase relaxation, even if it does have that acute effect; see ACD and the stiffening (opposite of dilating/relaxing) & weakening of arterial walls. Chronic use of alcohol increases cortisol, the stress hormone. Alcohol increases blood pressure, also leading to a weakened cardiovascular system.

Beyond all the social and psychological issues with being addicted to or dependent on a powerful substance like alcohol, excess use physically causes heart damage, liver damage, and any use is a direct cause of various cancers. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5513682/

Alcohol is a carcinogen. https://cancercontrol.cancer.gov/brp/hb ... and-cancer -- ~5.5% of all cases of cancer are attributed to alcohol consumption, and 5.8% are associated with dying from cancer.

There is no healthy quantity of alcohol to consume; even the smallest amounts of alcohol use causes cellular damage that can lead to cancer. This is not up for debate at this point, re the "one glass of red wine" mediterranean diet crowd.

I still have a glass of good red wine on a special occasion and I enjoy a lager on a hot summer day while eating spicy food but I'm not kidding myself about it being healthy.

When I was going out 5-7 nights a week to socialize, I used 0 alcohol. Using an expensive substance that makes you dumber and causes damage to your body is a terribly crutch to depend on for socializing. Heaven forbid you meet someone and wanna have some adult fun together but your tool..kit is not up to snuff. Better to just learn how to be social without. If you can't bring fun, adventurous, loud, spontaneous, excited energy to a room without a substance... IMO that's some weak shit. (Apologies for the harsh stance, this is just my opinion here, however unpopular / uncommon).

With all the new options of NA beverages, it seems trivially easy to go without these days, even out at a bar or special occasion.

If you're "into the taste" then switch to high quality, interesting teas, coffee, or any other NA beverage that is genuinely healthy. Feel free to get me cookin about the neuroprotective benefits of caffeine.

It's easier to optimize for true tranquility without the use of alcohol.

More sources:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5513687/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6705703/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... via%3Dihub

[AxelHeyst]

If you can't bring fun, adventurous, loud, spontaneous, excited energy to a room without a substance... IMO that's some weak shit.

I'd add that of you find that you genuinely can't be outgoing/loud/spontaneous/etc without alcohol despite actually putting in some effort... congratulations! You've just discovered that you're not an outgoing/loud/spontaneous/etc person, you can't fake it, you can't authentically "get there", and you can accept that about yourself and live the rest of your life enjoying creatively expressing your true nature, which is quieter.

Not everyone has to be the life of the party. That's **fine**. Learn to like who you actually are, and give the finger to the straightjacket of socially programmed ideals of who we 'ought' to be.

[jacob]

Alcohol is a carcinogen. https://cancercontrol.cancer.gov/brp/hb ... and-cancer -- ~5.5% of all cases of cancer are attributed to alcohol consumption, and 5.8% are associated with dying from cancer.

There is no healthy quantity of alcohol to consume; even the smallest amounts of alcohol use causes cellular damage that can lead to cancer. This is not up for debate at this point, re the "one glass of red wine" mediterranean diet crowd.

The universe is carcinogenic and being alive is the leading cause of death. For example, oxygen is a rather aggressive chemical and we breathe it in all the time. It's really hard to stop though!

Lets put the numbers in perspective.

Cancer kills about 20% of all people. Its main competitors are heart attacks, strokes, and COVID. Personally, if I had a choice, I'd pick heart attack as the way to go.

About 40% of those cancer death have risk factors attributed to lifestyle choices. The other 60% are just bad luck---instead of resulting in another cause of death.

The cause of death by cancer ranked by lifestyle choices is: https://www.cancer.org/research/acs-res ... ctors.html

• Smoking - 29%
• Obesity - 6.5%
• Alcohol - 4%
• Physical inactivity - 2.2%
• UV radiation - 1.5%

These are the actual death rates. The chance of getting cancer are different because some cancers are more survivable than others. For example, the chance of dying from skin cancer from being outdoors is much lower than the chance of getting it and surviving relative to ditto lung cancer from smoking.

These numbers add up to about 43% in terms of preventable lifestyle choices. This means that (0.2*0.43=) 8.15% of deaths could be prevented and replaced by death from some other cause (including random-cancer, perhaps from breathing oxygen) if everybody adopted a healthier lifestyle by not smoking, not drinking, not eating too much, not eating red meat or skipping the vegetables, not being physically lazy, not having unprotected sex, and not going outside in the sun.

Some cancers are more preventable than others. For example, HP-virus induced cancers are 100% preventable by vaccination. Other cancers have other factors, e.g. lung cancer from air pollution. Not mentioned in the North American numbers I used above are infection-induced cancers. These accounts for 18% of cases worldwide and about 3% in the US. This is large enough to take into account insofar one lives in a way exposed to infections. Most Americans don't but some choose to ... for reasons.

If we multiply these numbers by 20% (the overall cancer rate), it becomes clear why a particular unhealthy lifestyle choice doesn't actually move the life expectancy number all that much (a couple of years maybe). What, therefore, becomes important are negative changes in quality of life vis-a-vis positive changes of perceived quality of life from partaking in those activities. A 0.2*0.065=3.25% increased chance of death by donuts compared to the perceived lifetime joy of stuffing one's face with donuts is practically immaterial. More important would be how obesity affects the rest of one's life in positive and negative ways. For alcohol, the primary/material con seems to be whether someone makes stupid and life-changing decisions under influence such as drunk driving, engaging in risky behavior (drunk sex?), or showing up drunk on the job.

PS: In case anyone thought the oxygen thing was a joke, it's not. If you want to reduce your risk by another few percent, you need to move to higher altitudes where the air/oxygen concentration is thinner. There's a significant difference in cancer rates between living at sea-level and living at altitude.
PPS: OTOH, living at altitude also increases ionizing radiation due to less protective atmosphere from solar/cosmic radiation. Spending a significant amount of time high above (e.g. pilot) also makes a difference. I don't know what the trade-off rate is.

[Jean]

@jacob
While I agree with most of your point about cancer, don't some of those thing (alcool, obesity) also significantly increase your chances of dying of other stuffs than cancer?
While cancer sucks, it is mostly a number game, and you can always get one, and in addition,you really need to practice a carcinogenic behavior a lot to increase your cancer risk.
I once spend a day working with asbestos, and instead of getting angry at my boss, i ran the number, and the increased cancer risk was about the same as two packs of cigarettes.
Thats not nothing, but nothing to get crazy about.

But i really have a hard time believing that you find it so much better to not drink at all, vs drinking sone times. When I don't drink at all for a few month, i don't feel noticeably better. Otoh, it is still really enjoyable to be slitghly drunk, or just the taste of chasselas with cheese, or pinot noir with cheese, or just a nice lager, that taste like good bread crust.
I don't use a lot of my intelligence to make decisions, so i don't tend to make much worse decisions when drunk. Actually, i find it much easier to take decisions when drunk, because i go much less far into the move tree.
I sometime wonder if i wasn't "designed" to be drunk all the time, and if being sober for most of my life isn't a waste.
In earlier times, people used to drink lighly aloolic beverage as a sole source of hydration. What i read was equivalent to 2 liters of lager a day.
That's one big for every meal.

The only reason i don't do an experiment is because i don't want to become addicted to alcool. That would suck. But alcool isn't really expensive either. This would amount to less than 800.- per year.

But every time i spent a few day slightly drunk all the time, it was great days.

[bos]

Last year, after a long day of hiking, picking berries, and swimming in a mountain lake, I shared a bottle of red wine with @Jean. It was a warm evening, and we sat together for a while. I really enjoyed that. Perhaps the hiking had balanced out the alchohol taken? But I also think the conversations we had could have happened without the wine.

I had alchohol only 3 times last year, which does make me a special-snowflake compared to friends and colleague's. I am of the opinion that "drugs" including alchohol do bring you in a different state and alter your personality temporary, which can be used. It's like a potion in a game. At parties I often skipped alchohol, but I never liked it when people proudly said "I don't need alchohol to have fun". Then you are missing the point of any drug in my opinion.

Saying I’ll never do something feels too final. I’d be fine if I never drank again, but i'll keep the door open.