Six reasons to stick to an alcohol-free lifestyle

Patience is a virtue, a virtue that I've lacked for most of my life.  I am ridiculously impatient.  When I leave a voicemail or send an email or Whatsapp, I expect an immediate response.  When I see something I like, I have to buy it straight away.  When I'm on a diet, I want instant results.  When I'm standing in a queue, I'll start getting anxious if another queue moves faster than mine.  Basically, I'm terrible at waiting and my appetite for instant gratification is insatiable.

When I've stopped drinking in the past, I've tended to make it through dry January or sober October by counting the days until I can finally be reunited with the bottle again.  I will have noticed an uplift in my mood but the positives never kicked in quickly enough to compensate for the sacrifice of 'fun' and 'inclusion' and I would pick up a glass or six again.  On the few occasions I've quit the booze for a couple of months, in addition to the uplift in my mood, I will have noticed my skin start to glow and my weight dip, but nothing ever happened fast enough to stop my drinking in it's tracks.  This year though, I have flicked the switch in my head to 'non-drinker' mode and by default I have acquired some patience.  The changes I have experienced have been both surprising and astounding and they continue to creep up on me all the time.

Happy head
The first major change was to my mental health.  Within a couple of weeks I felt less anxious and calmer.  I went through an irrationally angry stage for a while, but thankfully, that passed.  By around day 100, I realised the vicious negative chatter in my head had been quelled and that has had the biggest impact on me to date.  I feel as though I am radiating happiness and positivity.  Without my gloomy internal running commentary I am far more accepting of me, realising I am enough, I am worthy and I am fine just as I am.

The physical changes have taken longer to manifest but week by week I am seeing the differences in me without alcohol.

Changing for the better...

Puff and it's gone
After around six weeks I started to see that my face was noticeably slimmer.  Four months down the line and I can see that my thighs and stomach are much less chubby and puffy. While the scales have actually gone up slightly recently, I am without doubt slimmer - people comment on it all the time now.  Alcohol is proven to cause bloating as it is an inflammatory substance which can result in the body swelling.  In addition alcohol dehydrates and the body's reaction to dehydration is to retain water.  Without booze, I've simply deflated!

Vanishing cellulite 
I am one of the many unfortunate women who is afflicted by cellulite and the cellulite on my bum and legs has been the bane of my life for as long as I can remember.  Now, I wish I could say that after four months of sobriety all my cellulite has vanished into thin air, but I can't.  However, in the past couple of weeks it has notably reduced.  While alcohol doesn't cause cellulite, it does make it worse by constricting the blood vessels in the skin.  I certainly feel more confident around the pool and in communal changing rooms with my slightly less dimpled thighs and bum!

Glowing skin
Drinking deprives the skin of vital vitamins and nutrients and after about a month of being alcohol-free I started to look at my reflection and see a younger, glowing face looking back at me.  From around the six week mark, friends started to comment on how well I was looking and this has continued.  People who haven't seen me for a few months are quite taken aback with how different and healthy I look.  Without stripping my skin of the things it needs, it is flourishing.

Hair today
My hair has never been happy in Hong Kong.  In the humidity, it has always become hideously frizzy and two years ago, it became horribly brittle, snapping off and becoming worryingly thin.  In fact, the reason why I cut my hair short was because it looked so straggly and unhealthy long.  In the last three weeks, I have realised that despite the humidity it is no longer frizzing like it used to.  In fact, it's looking shinier, thicker and healthier than it's looked in years.  Alcohol is a diuretic and a lack of body fluid causes dry and brittle hair making it prone to breakage.  In addition alcohol can deplete the body of zinc and iron, which are two key minerals for healthy hair.  I could have saved myself an absolute fortune by simply giving up drinking sooner, rather than spending money on hair treatments and blow drys!

Tan-tastic
One of the most surprising physical changes has been my skin's ability to tan.  I went on holiday to the Philippines over Easter and despite spending very little time working on a tan, I came home looking really brown (for me).  Since returning to Hong Kong, I have managed to maintain the tan well.  During my time living in Asia I have found it quite hard to tan, typically turning an unattractive reddish brown.  This year, I'm a really nice golden brown.  I looked this up to see if this had anything to do with being sober and remarkably, research has shown that the body metabolises alcohol into a compound called acetaldehyde which can cause the skin to be more sensitive to the sun's UV rays.  Who knew that boozing was partly responsible for my pale English skin?

Giving up drinking has unquestionably been the best thing I've ever done for me.  In retrospect, I wish I had had the patience to push on through past a month or two in the past to experience all these benefits.  Chatting to sober people on the Facebook Club Soda groups, who are far further into their alcohol-free lives than me, they attest to the fact that the positive changes just keep on coming if you have the patience to stick to your resolve.  So as far as no drinking goes, I will remain patient so I can carry on this illuminating journey.

My three favourite things about sobriety

A couple of years ago I joined my husband for a business lunch with a potential client of his.  When we offered him a drink he declined all offers of alcohol, explaining that he was giving up drinking for a year.  I asked him why he had chosen to stop drinking, primarily because I found it quite bizarre to meet someone who was willingly abstaining from alcohol without being pregnant or a raging alcoholic.  He replied that he had heard that if you gave up drinking for a significant amount of time you were meant to experience a 'spiritual awakening' and he wanted to see if this phenomena was true.  I remember taking a slug of my wine and thinking he was a bit of a weird hippy.  However, I'm now over 100 days into my alcohol-free life and I'm beginning to see that there may be a hint of truth in this.

To date, my three favourite things about being sober are:

1. Time

Now that I am free from hangovers and the apathy that accompanies them, I have so much more time on my hands.  I get up early every day with ease and I have reinvested a lot of my spare time into looking after myself properly.  This includes doing yoga, swimming or hiking on a daily basis, and reconnecting with things I used to love doing that had fallen by the wayside, like reading and writing.

Evening hike up The Peak

2. Clarity

Over the past three months I have noticed a gradual defogging of my mind.  Slowly, without alcohol, I have been freed from my struggle with anxiety, anger, guilt, shame and sadness.  No longer is my brain racing and swirling with negativity and regrets.  The outcome has been two-fold.  Firstly, I have been able to focus on the areas of my life that matter and most recently, this has given me the chance to start revisiting goals and dreams that I now feel equipped to fulfil.  Secondly, I have started to be much kinder to and accepting of myself.

3. Calmness

There is significant research to highlight the correlation between drinking and anxiety.  I used to medicate with alcohol when I was feeling stressed and anxious, but now I can see that alcohol only exacerbated my anxiety.  Over the past 103 alcohol-free days my mind has slowly calmed, my thought processes have become far more rational and there is less negative, distracting chitter-chatter in my head.  This has made it far easier to deal with every day annoyances and to let go of irritations instead of dwelling on them.

The amalgamation of these three elements has lead to a small epiphany or 'spiritual awakening'.  I am starting to rediscover and reconnect with a part of me that I had lost and I am starting to like myself  rather than relying on validation from others.  I recognise traits and passions from the girl I was before I started numbing life and hiding behind my alcohol security blanket. Rediscovering the me that had been forgotten, ignored and hidden for so many years and finding that she's a kinder, gentler, calmer, more compassionate, more introverted, more forgiving, more creative, more introspective and less impulsive woman, has been both uplifting and enlightening.  This poem perfectly expresses how I am feeling right now as a result of my 'spiritual awakening'!

Love after Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the others' welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

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How to survive your first alcohol-free holiday

This is a blog I wrote a week ago when I was on holiday...

I’m writing this blog from my first alcohol-free holiday with friends. It’s 6.30am and I’m up with my first cup of coffee looking out across the ocean watching the monkeys play on the beach, willing them not to come any closer to me (but more about that later), while everyone else sleeps. I am truly loving my first sober holiday but there are some big differences between this holiday and every other holiday I've been on since I was around 17.

My blog writing spot

Embracing the daytime

As I’ve morphed into a booze-free person it has started to dawn on me (you’ll get this metaphor in a second!) that I am an early bird, not a night owl. I would much rather be in bed before ten and be up before seven. This seems to have spilt over into my holiday routine. It’s quickly become apparent that I’m working on a different time scale on this holiday to all of my friends. When I’m leaping out of bed enthusiastically at 6am, my mates are still snoring away. On the flip side, when my friends are revved up to take the party to the next level, I am stifling yawns and sneaking off to bed.

The downside to this has been that when I decided to take on the monkeys who were smashing bottles outside our room at 6am yesterday, there was no one around to save me as I became surrounded by the little f**kers, snarling and flashing their teeth. It appears monkeys don’t like being told what to do and when you piss off one monkey, the whole tribe will come to their aid. Unfortunately, my tribe weren’t available to help me so I had to defend myself!

The bottle-smashing monkeys

Expelling the fear

Now that I don’t drink, the breakfast buffet has become a far more pleasurable experience. This is because I can enjoy it without a splitting headache and cringe-worthy memories from the night before flashing back to me. Now I no longer have the fear, I can look everyone in the eye with absolute certainty that I didn’t embarrass myself in front of anyone the night before. Hopefully I come across as a far warmer person now as I am able to greet people with a smile and a cheery ‘good morning’. 

 

Committing to anything

Over the past three alcohol-free months, I have gradually realised just how many things I wouldn’t have committed to in the past, knowing that I would be too hungover the next day to cope. I feel a little sad thinking about all the things I have passed up on doing and the opportunities I’ve missed thanks to debilitating hangovers. However, this holiday it has been exhilarating to find that I am able to commit to being up early and, for example, going diving in the morning, safe in the knowledge that I will be clear-headed and raring to go.

Sitting out on the fringes

While during the day on the holiday I have felt very much part of the crowd, once the alcohol starts flowing, there is a noticeable change. I move from being part of the group to looking in from the periphery. When you have played out your entire adult life as one of the chief instigators of drunken debauchery, it feels unfamiliar and abnormal to no longer belong to that group. To be honest, I feel like I’ve lost part of my identity and I’m not entirely comfortable yet with this new sensible, calm, less extrovert character that is emerging. 

Becoming an observer

Without alcohol I have become an observer rather than a participator. I have witnessed the standard loss of volume control, the incoherent and repetitive conversations, the meandering stumbles home, the loss of use of limbs, the collapsing and being incapable of getting back up, the sound of alcohol-induced vomiting and the screaming rows. I’m really not commenting on this judgmentally as I have pretty much ticked all of these boxes on various booze-fuelled holidays in the past. However, it is a great relief that I am now watching the mayhem unravel rather than being one of the centrepieces of the carnage. 

Saving money

Finally, I have spent very little so far on my holiday as I’m predominantly drinking water, with the odd calamansi juice or fruit shake when I’m really pushing the boat out! Knowing I have saved a lot of money by being sober has made it easier for me to justify taking my PADI Enriched Air Diver qualification so that I can dive for longer on nitrox. So, I will come away from this holiday with something of value, rather than a pair of sore kidneys - win/win!

Overall, would I want to change my first alcohol-free holiday? Abso-bloody-lutely NOT! OK, so there has been the odd moment where I haven’t felt as though I have slotted into the group as comfortably as I would have done, had I been drinking too. Nevertheless, the benefits far outweigh this minor negative, which is far more about me getting used to my new normal than anything else. I just need to stay patient as I know that sooner or later I will acclimatise to being this more reserved, less chaotic version of me.

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