I wanted to cover this adventure in two ways, first an overall description of my perspective of alcohol throughout my life, and second a look at how I’ve reacted in the weeks since I’ve stopped drinking. Examples such as how my body has reacted, some things I expected that didn’t happen, and other things that did happen which totally caught me off guard. This is the second part of my adventure in cutting alcohol from my life.
After over 15 years of drinking alcohol to relax, I injured myself unintentionally. It was silly, embarrassing, and incredibly painful. I lost the ability to trust myself which absolutely destroyed my want of touching alcohol again. I figured I knew what I was in for when I stopped drinking, and what I didn’t know I figured I’d research to see what was in store for me.
Contrary to popular belief, everyone reacts differently to similar stimuli. Whether we are talking psychologically or physiologically, it seems that while some things can be predicted as a side effect while others’ reactions are much more opaque to predict. It seems as though quitting alcohol is on the side of more opaque reactions than predictable. I had read multiple articles and op-ed pieces ranging from religious to scientific to experience pieces trying to take in everything that could be awaiting me. None of them quite measured up to my experience.
I’m not trying to build this up to a crazy level, I didn’t have a transcendental experience and become the all-knowing space baby in the center of the universe (shout out to WheezyWaiter on that one…). Nor did I have no reaction, I’d say my reaction was just better than the middle of the road in terms of severity based on what I’ve read. I’ve found in many articles I read that true, full-blown alcoholics have severe physiological reactions that can be life-threatening. Nothing like that happened to me. I also didn’t start obsessively storing small bits of alcohol in bizarre places like a squirrel saving up for the winter (thankfully) – who wants to shop for the tiny bottles to hide everywhere anyway?
In the following days from my injury, I was primarily focused on healing and… frankly bathing which became a sincere struggle. I couldn’t walk and I was tied to my new crutches. I went to urgent care to see if I had fractured anything (luckily I hadn’t) and the doctor confirmed it appeared to be a sprained ligament or tendon. None of this was fun, especially going down the stairs like a 6-year-old so I could work – essentially scooting on my butt so I didn’t have to put pressure on my leg. So over the next 10 days or so I went from using a shower stool and crutches to a cane to hobbling on my own. It took a solid couple of weeks before I could walk somewhat normally. In this time of recovering, I didn’t have any want or need of alcohol.
Week 3 was interesting as that was when the dreams started. These weren’t normal dreams that faded in sunlight, these were uber-intense (not quite nightmares but certainly weren’t fun) dreams that stuck to me as I write this multiple weeks later. The dreams never really made sense when standing up to scrutiny, such as the one I’m not sure why I was trying to mediate a reasonable and rational conversation between the press and President Trump during a Denver Bronco game while my wife was so upset at me she asked for a divorce… but it felt real. These dreams lasted for a few days (5ish) and I honestly had trouble going to sleep at night because I didn’t want to dream. I wasn’t on any medication or radical changes to my diet so I’m attributing this to the stopping of alcohol. When I looked this up, it appears it’s possibly a side effect (specifically found articles where this occurred for people who quit drinking for the month of January, which is a thing people do these days it seems).
A positive side of week 3 was that I started to notice my body changing, had greater muscle tone, and wasn’t as hungry. I was down about 3 pounds and physically felt more energized than I have in a long time. Drinking alcohol creates in me a level of weariness – the more often I drink the more tired I feel throughout the day. Cutting the alcohol pretty much eliminated the weariness. I was a bit sleepy because of the dream weirdness I mentioned above, but it wasn’t the soul heavy weariness I was feeling due to alcohol.
Between weeks 4 and 5 the sugar cravings hit. This was something I read that could happen. It sounds like a lot of previous alcoholics generally have their teeth rot out of their heads because after they stop drinking they move to sugary things to replace the alcohol. These cravings coming off of dream weirdness was something I would have preferred to avoid if possible, but here they came!
Growing up my mother always spoke about how if there’s sugar in the house she needed to eat it, something I never understood. I’m fortunate enough to not have ever really known true addiction as a teenager. I would (oh so respectfully, be assured) roll my eyes at her and say ‘just don’t eat it!’ as she exclaimed that she can’t help it. This (shockingly) was not helpful to her and not until I was deep into my 30’s going through this process did I get a small glimpse at what she was probably battling and a small taste of what more serious addicts feel. My mind became bent and obsessed with the prospect of consuming sweets of all kinds. ‘How about having a cookie, maybe a brownie… how about a nice piece of pie? I know they have reasonable pie portions at the store… they keep cake there too ya know…’ We keep fixin’s for s’mores right outside my office and I felt an intense pull to just having a marshmallow (‘why not?’ says the voice in my head). I knew it was some weird reaction coming from my body and maybe some kind of withdrawal side effect as my body attempted to level out without the constant influx of alcohol, but boy did that voice in my head sounds like me and reasonable. It took a few days of not sating that particular demon for it to silence, and I’ll thank it to not return.
That pretty much catches us up to the time I’m writing this, week 6ish (I keep trying not to count the days/weeks as it becomes weird at a certain point). I’m down about 6 pounds and hopeful it will continue to decrease as time moves forward. Looking at this rationally, I was drinking anywhere between 500 and 2,000 calories at least 3 nights a week for years. Suddenly losing those routine calories and not backfilling them with boatloads of pies, candies, or other calorie-dense yet nutritionally deficit foods should impact my weight for the better but time will tell. All in all, up to this point it’s been a positive move for me. I do miss being able to numb myself in all my frustrations instead of trying to find more healthy ways to deal with them, sitting down to a bottle of Jack Daniels is easy in the moment, but hell in the long run. I have yet to be fully tested by an overwhelmingly stressful life-changing event (and am not actively inviting one) to test my sobriety, though being old enough to understand a modicum of how life works I know it’s coming. I’m just taking things one day at a time as I didn’t have a drink yesterday and have no intention of having one today.
Quick note – It’s now been roughly 12 weeks since I stopped as I look to post this, I’m down about 12 pounds and honestly feel better physically and mentally for as long as I can remember. The sugar cravings stopped around the time I initially wrote the post (lasted a couple of weeks). Who knows if this will keep up or what the future will bring. As of this writing, cutting alcohol is still a great change for me.
