Are you asking: “Why and how to stop drinking alcohol?”
This is my confession and an article I wrote on December 31, 2020, when I stopped drinking alcohol, and I have kept it up ever since :).
I didn’t have an answer to the question of how and why to stop drinking alcohol for quite a long time.
What should my motivation be for “not drinking”?
After all, it is considered a social taboo not to have a drink with friends, at lunch, or on a summer terrace.
Won’t my friends look at me strangely? And think that I’m weird or something?
These are exactly the questions I asked myself in March this year, when I became vegan and ate my last slice of meat ever.
And you see, in a month and a bit it will already be a year since I simply haven’t had any meat, and I’m alive.
I even have more energy than ever before, and I don’t feel “heavy” after every meal.
But we’ll talk about why I stopped and what motivated me to do so in another article.
Now back to that demon, alcohol.
It started sometime when I was seventeen, when I first started going to pubs with my friends.
Oh, and so I don’t forget, we were really “IN” at the time.
To be honest, it had never seemed strange to me before to get drunk with someone, to “go out drinking”—after all, everyone around us did it, not to mention the fact that our parents also used to throw wild celebrations and parties with friends in the garden when we were young.
So why should I have given it any thought when it was such a “socially very accepted habit”?
And it isn’t a habit typical only of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
I lived in the USA for many years and still go there, and I have to say that there are really a lot of regular drinkers there; perhaps even considering the disparity between the number of people living there and here, the concentration of drinkers in America is far greater.
It’s true that in the USA people tend to enjoy spirits such as vodka and whisky.
Beer isn’t as popular there as it is here.
So why am I thinking about it now and even becoming a little inwardly indignant about it: “What the hell was I doing with my life?”
The truth is that a person first has to “mature” into thoughts like these.
Everything happens for a reason and a purpose.
Without difficult life experiences, I would not have arrived at the thoughts I’m sharing here now.
It all started this March.
That was when I matured enough to become vegan.
Honestly, I never would have imagined it, and I would not have believed that I would last this long or that it would change me as well.
Especially my tastes.
The first motivation that made me start thinking of drinking as a “problem” was my little daughter.
More than once, she saw me in the evening before bedtime when I had come back “from the terrace” with my friends and looked the way I looked.
That was my first impulse to reflect on it.
To be honest, the thought of her growing up, becoming wiser, seeing me in some state, and me setting this kind of “example” for her terrifies and discourages me immensely.
And I don’t mean that she should never try alcohol; as I wrote above, a person simply has to come to that decision on their own.
After a few months of veganism, my tastes started to change a little; I no longer craved “junk food” (simply, food that is basically rubbish).
And something changed inside me.
It’s true that lately I’ve had periods when I didn’t even have a beer for a month (I don’t drink spirits at all, and haven’t for a long time), but then I would go to a friend’s place and we would drink, say, six beers together.
Later, I would have seven beers in an evening with the guys.
Nevertheless, I felt a change.
Not only did I drink more than I had years ago, but my body also started reacting somewhat strangely.
I used to be able to “throw it down under pressure” and it didn’t bother me; I felt sick the next day, but carried on.
In any case, since the summer of this year, I started feeling really strange after every drinking session.
I don’t know whether I had drunk myself into a different phase, whether it was due to a different rhythm in my body, which I may have changed through meditation and a different way of perceiving things, or whether I had simply developed some kind of intolerance; in any case, I started feeling sick even after one or two beers.
It simply wears me out.
I have a drink and feel sick.
Within a moment I feel strange, I’m in a bad mood, and I have no energy.
I simply feel that my body is clearly telling me: “No, not like this; this is not the way.”
And in a considerably worse way than when I used to have a hangover.
My liver tests and everything else are completely fine; I simply think I have entered a different stage of life and mentality.
And that has brought me here.
It’s New Year’s Eve, December 30, 2020; I didn’t buy even a bottle at the store for tonight, even though we’ll be sitting with family and friends in the evening and celebrating the arrival of the new year (hopefully a better one in terms of world events than the current one), while I’m sitting on a chair at the table, looking at my laptop and writing this confession—or rather, “pouring my heart out”—here on the blog.
The day before yesterday I had three beers with my girlfriend’s father, and yesterday I was tired all day, without energy or a good mood.
Today, on the other hand, it’s the exact opposite; I feel good, absolutely great, and I certainly don’t want to spoil this state in any way.
That’s why it evokes a thought I’ve had for several months now: “to stop drinking completely.”
What will my friends and family think about it?
So what?
They survived our veganism; they’ll survive this too.
Besides, because I lived abroad for a long time, have my own family, and the situation in the world is what it is, I don’t see my friends as much anyway, and we no longer make drinking and partying as big a deal as we used to, years ago, when we went from one bar to the next.
In the summer I tried going to the pub terrace on my motorcycle (I have a Babetta 210 and a new ČZ 175 470 Sport), so that I would have an excuse not to drink, and it worked quite well.
No one said a word to me—and why would they?
It’s true that not every “friend” would probably react this way; fortunately, I have what I would call intelligent people around me.
On the contrary, if they really are friends, they should fully support you in any such decision and not try to talk you out of it.
Especially a decision like this.
So why am I writing this?
Simply because I want to try.
I want to try giving up beer—even occasionally—and being fine, with a clear mind.
I’ve read many opinions on the internet saying that when there is something you really want to achieve, it’s a good idea to “announce it publicly” on the internet or social media so that it motivates you to stick to it.
So here I am, putting it out there.
I’m done.
I’m done with beer too.
Whether I’ll manage to stick with it, the devil knows.
I’ll certainly report on my progress.
But I think it will be worth it.
To be fine, happy, and full of energy.
After all, if it doesn’t agree with me, I don’t enjoy it, and it makes me feel worse and worse, why force myself?
The body is a genius (nature even more so), and it knows perfectly well what is good for me and what isn’t.
And all these hangovers and bad moods are the result of what our bodies are telling us we shouldn’t be doing.
Am I not right?
Honestly, I don’t know whether I’ll stick with it and avoid the “outside influences” that might make me continue, or whether I might simply have weak willpower.
It’s possible, but as a resolution that I’ll try to keep, I can make it, can’t I?
And what about you? How do you handle drinking?
If you have any advice or experience, please leave me a message below in the comments.
Once again, thank you for reading this “confession”; have a great time in the new year and enjoy your New Year’s Eve celebration.
Oh, and don’t overdo it with the alcohol :), so you don’t feel sick!
