Benefits of long-term sobriety!
One of the first things we urge folks to do is a
cost-benefit analysis (CBA) about their drinking. The idea is to identify
beliefs you have about the role alcohol plays in your life, and to start
disputing the ones that are irrational or which lead to unhealthy behavior.
A next logical step is to make a list of the benefits of
abstinence: the changes—large and small—you notice right after you
quit drinking. Clear-headed mornings, more pocket change, things like that.
But people often mention plateaus. Periods when abstinence
has become familiar and urges may not be an issue day to day. You've listed all
the benefits. The CBA is getting stale. The costs are receding into distant
memory.
That isn't a bad thing! When abstinence becomes normal and
the presence or absence of alcohol in your life is no longer central to your
day to day activities, you've achieved sobriety.
Sustaining that can be enhanced by affirming the benefits
and noticing new ones. Sometimes these are just greater appreciation of the
first things you noticed. Others may require that you step back and recognize
achievements and changes that are not obvious.
If you're not there yet, perhaps my own observations will
help you keep feeling motivated....Some of these are simple, and others are
pretty abstract. Results may vary!
Weight loss.
Taking hundreds of calories out of your daily diet can't
help but be beneficial to most people. Shortly after I quit drinking I decided
to lose weight. Somewhere I had read that if you cut your calories by 1/3, you
could lose 3 - 4 lbs. per month. Taking the wine out was already done and made
the rest easy. Over the next ten months I lost 45 lbs., and they've stayed
away.
Improved diet.
This isn't just a result of consciously choosing to lose
weight. The sudden drop in carbohydrates led to a big change in my appetite.
Wiebe has provided some great info on blood sugar in relation to alcohol abuse.
I had found it very important to have snacks available at certain times of day
to ward off the end-of-day sag, and I just gravitated towards fruits, nuts, and
juices.
More open to new foods.
When you are regularly consuming one type of beverage,
you're over-working certain of your taste receptors and underusing others. I
would avoid clashing foods. Wine tended to make me avoid other sour foods; beer
would make me avoid fruits. My kids were stunned when I started enjoying Thai
food, Greek pizza, and other things they'd never watched me eat before. Maybe
it's just the fact that we're already making changes so we're more receptive,
but I think the Ômouth physiology' is a big factor. Would you eat gourmet
pickles if you were drinking wine?
Greater likelihood of actually exercising.
Drinking is an activity which is increasingly passive as
the evening wears on. I don't remember taking brisk walks at midnight before!
Less fatigue.
This was one of the first things I noticed, and it
continues to impress me how much time we spent tired when we're
drinking/drunk/hungover. When I'm rototilling at 7 am, I realize the likelihood
of my ever doing that was pretty remote in the past. Now I wonder if I'm
bothering my neighbors (don't worry folks, they're about 5 acres away—I'm
not the neighbor from hell!).
More money, better financial planning.
That extra pocket change sure adds up! At first I tracked
what I would have spent carefully, on a sheet of paper on the refrigerator.
$600+ a month in my case! I'm sure someone here can top that.
Complex brain functions improved: ability to synthesize, organize, and
process information.
This one is difficult to prove, since I don't have
any tests handy to measure brain function. But my monthly columns take
less than half as long to assemble. Website work, which requires close
attention to tags and layout, is much easier.
Less procrastination.
Inability to keep on top of complex projects usually
relegated them back to the bottom of the pile. Now I have confidence that I can
get them done -- so I do.
Get far more accomplished in the evening. Read more books, periodicals.
Greater appreciation for the arts, particularly film.
More productive time, more energy, more confidence. More
alert, more interested, less passive. Able to read subtitles for more than half
of a film!
Greatly reduced anxiety.
This was one of the huge benefits of quitting drinking: my
chronic anxiety and panic attacks disappeared. I don't fully understand why,
but I'm not complaining. And the lesser anxieties that had plagued me have
dwindled to the point that I almost smile when I feel one of those odd twinges
that used to be so debilitating. I'm convinced that alcohol is a major
contributing factor in anxiety, panic attacks, and phobias.
Allergies and asthma reduced.
There could be various reasons for this—sulfites in
the wine, physiological effects of alcohol, stress and anxiety interactions.
Whatever the case, my use of medications for these has reduced by almost half.
Greater equanimity.
Less emotional.
More open to change.
Some of this is from repeated application of sobriety
tools (recognizing irrational beliefs, disputing them, planning for urges).
Some of it is just having the alcohol and its byproducts out of my system. A
lot of it is simply from having embraced a new outlook on life: new beliefs
leading to more comfortable emotions and healthier behaviors. My kids have
really noticed this. They think I'm just more fun to be with. In "the old days"
they could never have imagined going to concerts with Dad, much less having a
great time.
As time passes your urges do diminish in intensity and
duration. I'm convinced that your brain pathways regrow and your synapses stop
misfiring. The lifestyle changes you made to enhance your decision for
abstinence pay off. Not just right away, although noticing those changes is
very gratifying...the tangible and psychic benefits continue to accrue with
each passing week.
Sometimes people ask: does it get easier? Yes! It gets
easier and it get better when alcohol and drugs are no longer part of your
life.