Why mummy gave up drinking

Day 407. I just finished putting away my Christmas decorations. I do this every year on December 27^th. As far I’m concerned, as soon as Boxing Day is over, Christmas is finished. By no means I am being ‘Bah Humbug.’ I love Christmas and my tree is usually up by mid-November. I love the run-up to the festive season and I usually plan an extraordinary number of activities between November and the big day. By the time Boxing Day comes around, I’m just well and truly over it.

Christmas is a beautiful time of year but it’s also incredibly stressful. There are so many things to organise, and for mums in particular, navigating the to-do-lists, festivities, family gatherings and the never-ending list of requests from the school (do they know we are busy people?!) is a thankless job of epic proportions. It’s no wonder so many people drink to excess during this time. Alcohol is pretty much everywhere and you’ll struggle to find any social engagement that doesn’t involve copious amounts of liquor. Booze is the ‘go to’ for most adults who want to take the edge off a stressful time.

By the end of December, it’s pretty common to go crashing into January with a month-long hangover and a liver that feels like it’s been battered with a meat tenderiser. For most of my adult life I’ve done exactly this, and after the decorations came down, I looked forward to January, just so I had an excuse to quit wine for a month, give my body some well-needed rest and try to heal some of the damage from a period of intensive and excessive alcohol consumption.

The problem was, I rarely succeeded. There have been occasions where I completed the whole month sober – but more often that not, I would fail by the end of week one. On the occasions where I did manage the month, I counteracted ‘dry January’ with ‘wet February.’ After one month off the sauce, I would conclude that sobriety was over-rated, boring, miserable, and I once again picked up the wine – believing that this was the answer to my previous month of utter misery.

I’d go as far as to say that ‘dry January’ was entirely counterproductive – because by February, I’d hit the booze harder than I did in December. I’d tell myself that I’d probably regenerated a whole new liver in 4 weeks – so the new virgin organ was ready for a good pasting.

So why did I fail at dry January most of the time and when I did succeed, why did I batter my liver twice as hard during February? For the same reason that MOST people do the same – lack of understanding about what alcohol is and what it does. Once we know why we feel the way we do when we first give up, it begins to make sense.

If you’re attempting ‘dry January,’ the chances are that you’re doing so because you’re aware that alcohol has done you some serious damage over the Christmas period and you probably currently feel like shit! You know that your body needs a break. You want to feel better. And you’re likely feeling a little, if not very concerned about your health. If you’ve drunk to excess over the Christmas period, the first issue with crashing into a sober January is that your withdrawal symptoms are going to be far more unpleasant than if you had stopped on any other month of the year.

If you have been drinking regularly throughout December, stopping suddenly is really not much fun for the first few days. In the first week it’s pretty standard to feel angry, irritable, anxious, tired, restless, lacking in energy and feeling generally low (but to name a few symptoms). This is why many people don’t get beyond the first week – because it feels so bloody unpleasant both physically and mentally. The only way to lessen these early symptoms is to seek help from a doctor and get medication – or to drink. Alcohol withdrawal is instantly relieved with more alcohol. To get through the first week of withdrawal in Dry January, you basically just have to grit your teeth and ride it out. The cravings can be unpleasant for the first few days – but they are entirely tolerable. It’s not excruciating – it’s just uncomfortable. After 4 -7 days, the intensity of the symptoms lessens significantly. Knowing this fact is crucial. If you believe that the first week off alcohol is representative of sobriety, you’ll never want to go there!

So, what happens after week one? Anxiety begins to ease and the irritability, anger and restlessness ebbs away. This is replaced with some new symptoms which are not as unpleasant, but can be quite debilitating. The number one symptom – tiredness. For some, this isn’t just feeling like you could use a nap – it’s soul-crushing exhaustion that feels similar to the flu without the runny nose. When I quit drinking for good, I was positively narcoleptic for the first 2 months. I couldn’t get up in the morning. I went to bed early. I took naps in the day. Nothing relieved the tiredness and I started to worry that my energy would never come back. I assure you, it does! For most people, after the first month, their energy returns with gusto. It’s an amazing sensation to suddenly feel energised after a month of sleeping more than a new-born baby. Tiredness is one reason why people go back to drinking during January – simply because they feel a bit rubbish!

Once you’re beyond the first week, the exhaustion can be easily circumvented, just by getting decent rest. But the toughest symptom of all (for me) wasn’t the exhaustion, it was the boredom. I attempted ‘dry January’ many times. Feeling ‘flat’, miserable, bored and generally lack lustre were all triggers for reaching for the vino again. I believed that drinking created fun and without alcohol, this seemed clear proof that being sober was boring as fuck. What I didn’t know, is that because my brain was so accustomed to frequent alcohol consumption, it had stopped producing Dopamine – the happy hormone.

Dry January feels boring because of the lack of Dopamine. The sad reality is that many millions of people attempt dry January without ever knowing this fact. They wrongly conclude sobriety is terribly boring and alcohol is the elixir of happiness. The real shame about this is that people go back to drinking having completely the hardest month in sobriety – the first one! If they only went on to complete ‘dry February,’ they would start producing Dopamine again, get their energy back, pass the narcolepsy stage and feel really great at the end of it! The second month is boring – but it’s so much easier than the first. By Month 3, you really start to get to the good stuff that sobriety gifts you.

If you’re going to attempt to stay sober through January, why not try February and March as well? Only when you start to get your energy and Dopamine levels back can you truly begin to see the amazing benefits of becoming permanently sober. If you stop on January 31^st, you’ve done all the hard work but you don’t get any of the rewards. If you quit to improve your health, as the vast majority do, then don’t run the risk of turning February into a drunken rebound car-crash – give yourself a real opportunity to heal, reboot and at least see what sobriety could look like for you. Isn’t it worth having a go for the sake of a few extra days?

If you’re going to try and quit alcohol for January, try following these tips – you’ve got nothing to lose. Once you unravel the myths about alcohol, you will realise there are countless benefits to sobriety and literally zero advantages to drinking. If you’re prepared to devote one month to recover your health, what have you got to lose by adding a couple more when they are much easier than the first, just to see the joys that life can potentially hold for you?

My tips for smashing dry January

1. Don’t stop at January 31^st. Commit to going until the end of March. What’s the sense in quitting for a month to improve your health and then going back to battering your liver in February twice as hard? Anyone who abstains and then goes back to the sauce, invariably winds up drinking more. One month sober cannot give you any indication of what sobriety looks like. The first month is shit! You have to push through this to get to the good stuff!
2. Read ‘quit lit.’ Devour quitting literature as if you are making the decision to quit for good. No bad can come from learning about alcohol and what it does to your body. When you educate yourself, you’ll be far more likely to stick to abstinence – particularly when you’re aware of the physical and mental stages of withdrawal and why you feel the way that you do when giving up. You’ll also unravel all the myths surrounding alcohol which will help reduce cravings and give you incentive to carry on. Once learned, it can’t be unlearnt. The facts will serve you for life.
3. If you’re setting New Year’s Resolutions, and one of them is to eat healthily, put this one off until March! Quitting alcohol can cause huge cravings for sugar and carbs. Just go with it. Eating sugar helps with cravings – sugar and pizza are far less evil than alcohol. Once you’re through the first couple of months you can focus on good nutrition, but in the early stages of sobriety, the only thing you need to worry about is staying sober. Everything else can wait.

Think about why you are choosing to do Dry January. If you’re worried about your health, give yourself the chance to really improve this. Something in you is telling you that alcohol is not the answer – or why would you want to stop even temporarily? You know your health is at risk. Maybe you will decide to go back to drinking after 3 months dry – but maybe you will see that life has so much more to offer once you understand what it actually feels like to be truly sober. And it does. More than you can begin to imagine.

Much love readers. x

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