Quitter (Part 2)

Booze

So, more than 3 months ago, I stopped drinking alcohol.

Compared to quitting soda pop it was a snap to do. I think I looked at my quit app to remind myself  maybe once a week for the first month or so? Compared to hourly checks when I first quit drinking Coca-Cola.

Which in a way is not too surprising. I was a daily Coke-drinker when I quit pop. A first-thing-in-the-morning, jonesing, sugar fix desperado. And, while I have been a daily alcohol-drinker at times during my life, I wasn't at the time when I quit. I was probably having 1-5 drinks a week, depending on my social calendar.

Now I only look at my app when someone is cajoling me to have a glass of something and I want an easy way to explain why the answer is "no". Hey, I'm three months in. The quit app is the new AA token.

My quit app on Day 90. It has taken me a while to finish this post; I am now at Day 102.

Why?

I decided to stop drinking for 6 months to find out if there was a correlation for me between alcohol consumption and the hot flashes and mood swings I was experiencing as symptoms of peri-menopause. Back in July, I noticed those symptoms had ramped up big-time. I went from experiencing one or two hot flashes a week to several every day. And my mood swings became more severe, too. The lows that had been lasting 2-3 days started lasting 2-3 weeks.

I was about to throw myself on the mercy of the nearest naturopath when I thought to myself, am I doing everything I can do? Am I eating right, getting regular exercise? Why not run an experiment to see if alcohol is a trigger for me? Are these things not worth a try before I spend hundreds of bucks (that I don't have to spare) on alternative medicine?

The proof is in the pudding (and I'm not talking about 150-overproof)

Three months in, I feel fantastic. I still have some hot flashes, but rarely more than one a day and often none at all. My mood seems a lot more stable, too. And, I feel more "with it" emotionally. It seems clear to me, that I am in the subset of people for whom alcohol has an impact on peri-menopausal symptoms. 

Of course, it might not be the alcohol itself that is the agent of change here.

I've been thinking lately about the phrase "The opposite of addiction is connection" and the ideas that go along with that (if this is the first time you're encountering that phrase, you might want to take 17 minutes to check out this TED talk).

I think it's possible that the act of not drinking has opened me up to more connection: with myself, my life, the world, my feelings and my friends and family. If we sometimes drink to make up for a lack of connection, I wonder if choosing not to drink alcohol can make it easier for us to connect?

Connection has never been particularly easy for me. Since I started drinking at age 19, alcohol has been my main medication for my struggles with connection and intimacy – and like many western medications, while it does nothing to cure the root cause and has terrible side effects, it does do a pretty good job at masking symptoms. Alcohol often succeeded at numbing the feelings I had about my struggles with connection. But drinking also made it harder for me to have authentic connections – and, well, I'm sure you can see the potential for a vicious cycle there...

A new leaf

I feel like I'm spiralling up. I think that not drinking is helping me to get better at connecting. I'm not sure where that's going to take me. What I can say is that I am loving the experience of not drinking. I feel more like myself. And I like myself more. 

It takes me back to when I was a teenager. I was a little goody two-shoes: no booze, no drugs, no sex, no tobacco. (But lots of cursing.) That was a good space for me at the time. It was simple, and it was a simplicity that I knew I needed then. 

I guess it's not surprising that during the huge hormonal shift of peri-menopause, I am finding comfort in the same strategies I used during my adolescence. Not drinking feels simpler than drinking. And it's a simplicity I know I need right now.

Of course, it's a little weird socially. And culturally. I suddenly notice what a huge emphasis our culture puts on drinking. It runs throughout TV shows, movies, books, music and conversation. Most of my friends and acquaintances (with a few notable exceptions) are drinkers. And I used to be someone who LOVED to drink and often talked and joked about drinking.  

So, I'm adjusting. 

And it feels good. 

Without question, three months is the longest I have gone without drinking alcohol since I was 19. That's 27 years of greater and lesser dependence on alcohol. I'm holding things open, but I expect to breeze through the rest of my 6-month experiment and won't be surprised to see it transform into 12 months, which may well become 24 months, which may well become...

PS: Unlike pop, where I have an occasional bottle or can, quitting booze has been an experience of 100% compliance. I'm not saying I haven't had a few times when I badly wanted a drink – like the day I moved for example, and some of the more stressful days during my building project – but so far I have wanted to not drink more than I wanted to drink.

PPS: Just for fun, here's one of my favourite laments about going sober: Coffee Dogs by the redoubtable Kevin Quain. (The only working link I could find for this song is on Spotify, so you'll have to login to listen).

Quitter! (Part 1)

Soda pop

So, about 300 days ago, I quit drinking pop.* 

Screen cap from my Quit for Health app.

I'd had a one-a-day habit for years. I started with Diet Coke in my teens (more like three-a-day back then), but after I drank way too much aspartame pulling an all-nighter in Uni, I switched to the full-on sugar version. Never a coffee-drinker, I settled into the habit of drinking one Coke (or an occasional Dr. Pepper) in the morning to get myself going.

Or, if I was trying not to drink pop first thing, or at all (both of which I attempted many times), it would be my fall back emotional safety net if things got bumpy in the middle of the day.

I resorted to it if I felt sad. Or angry. Or if I needed energy. Or if I needed to dig deep to find one last burst of cheerfulness to get me through the day.

I thought quitting was going to be a miserable experience. I thought I would become a total ogre and that everyone would hate me.

Quitting was hard, don't get me wrong. I probably looked at my quit app hourly (or more often than that!) for the first couple of weeks. And for a couple of months, I would say my mood was a little darker than usual, but not ogre-calibre. As the months have gone on, I feel like my more-or-less usual self without needing those bursts of sugar – which I used to think were an integral part of me, something I couldn't possibly live without.

This far into the Year of Quit, I don't really think about it anymore. I think I've transformed into a person who doesn't drink pop.

And just look at that screen cap up there to see the amount of sugar I have not consumed in 300 days – over 11 KILOGRAMS! That's more than 5 and a half of those bags of white sugar you buy at the grocery store. Terrifying. And I thought nothing of it for years and years.

It's kind of amazing. And it's probably the first time in my life that I am glad to think of myself as a quitter.

*In the interest of absolute accuracy and transparency, I have been 98.5% pop-free for the past 300 days. Which means I have had pop four times, once by accident and the other times when I was feeling unbearably cranky. Nobody's perfect, and 98.5% is close enough for me.