Lessons From A Month Off Alcohol!

I like to regularly take time or a month off from alcohol and I started when I did a Dry October with the help of Club Soda, an organisation set up to help people cut down or give up completely. I’d been concerned about my drinking for a while.

My booze consumption had steadily crept up and there was rarely a day when I didn’t have a tipple. Taking the edge off was a favorite reason to reach for a glass at wine o’clock. So I decided it was time to change a very long term habit and see if I could give up my favourite vice.

When I started the month off from alcohol, I seriously doubted whether I would complete the challenge. But I completed it and I also learnt some valuable lessons along the way.

Here’s what I learnt from taking a month off alcohol:

1. It’s easier to stay off the booze when you’re not alone. Club Soda says we usually get pissed together so why should we get sober alone? Doing a dry month with other people, even if they’re all online and anonymous, sure beats trying to do it by yourself.

2. It also helps to tell people what you’re doing and make yourself accountable. That way if you give up early, you’ll have to face those looks of wilting pity at your lack of will power. Fear of that alone might just be enough to keep you on course.

3. Doing a month off alcohol with your partner is a good idea. Trying to do it when they are still drinking is not. Either way you’ll likely both get a bit grumpy.

4. Alcohol is so much a part of British culture that it’s hard being social without it. Even the smallest of communities historically had a place of worship and a pub. We wet the baby’s head with champagne and we raise a glass or few at a wake. You get strange looks if you say you’re not drinking just because you don’t want to.

5. When starting out on a month off booze, avoiding social situations where drinking is expected helps keep up the momentum while you break your drinking habit.

6. Pubs and restaurants would be nicer places for the non-drinker if their non-alcoholic beverages extended beyond cola, lemonade and fruit juice. There are many decent alcohol-free beers around and even a few wines, but try buying them anywhere other than in a large supermarket and you’ll just get a blank or even patronising stare. “

This is a pub, love.” It really shouldn’t have to be a choice between water and something that rots your teeth if you want to be social but not tipsy.

7. You won’t lose weight on a month off booze if you’re rewarding your abstinence with treats like chocolate. Hard truth but truth it is.

8. Doing a month off booze means getting to grips with procrastination. It requires you to postpone immediate gratification (giving in to the desire to have a drink) in pursuit of the longer term goal of sustaining a month without giving in. This lesson can be applied to other areas of our lives where procrastination rears its timewasting head.

9. Turning down free champagne is not impossible when you’re focused on your long term goal.

10. I’m not an alcoholic! Cambridge Dictionaries Online defines an alcoholic thus:

a person who is unable to give up the habit of drinking alcohol very often and in large amounts

Cambridge Dictionaries Online

I had begun to question my dependence, but no longer. Phew, that’s a relief.  But the challenge is not to go back to my old habits, which I have to confess can be easy to do, especially when stressed!

But I know using it as stress relief isn’t very sensible. And it doesn’t help with hot flushes/flashes either! On the rare occasions I have a flush, either alcohol or sugar are usually to blame. Read more about alcohol and menopause here.

After my month off alcohol,  I felt I had a new relationship with alcohol. Though over time I did tend to slip back into drinking a bit too much. So then I cut back for a time again. I don’t want to go dry for good but keep trying to enjoy drinking in a more mindful way.

I’ve realized I never really need a drink and certainly don’t ever deserve one. But if I want a drink that’s fine. I make the month off booze an annual event – sometimes even twice a year – I call it liver maintenance.

Now there’s just a little issue of a chocolate addiction to deal with.

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