I recently took a month off from drinking alcohol.
Running a startup over the last two years has led to many peaks and valleys in my life. On one hand it’s been rewarding creating a business from scratch, both building a company from the ground up plus living in Salt Lake City and the travel out West that has come with that. However, it has also been the two most stressful years of my life, especially not having the support system in times of crisis and not knowing if we’ll continue to be a business at several junctures.
To combat the chaos, I chose my yearly theme (Your Theme) as “the year of stability”. One area that needed stability was my weight. I had gained a few extra pounds as the result of almost non-stop travel and perhaps as a coping mechanism for extra stress in my life. This became my number one area to focus on in the early months of 2023.
I am happy to say that I’ve made substantial progress on this goal. I foolishly did not keep track of my weight during this process, however I do have another objective measurement: belt notches. I’m down two whole (hole?) belt notches from the beginning of this year. An accomplishment!
The core components of this weight loss have been cooking my own healthy meals (Mediterranean diet for me) and portion control. I will eventually write at length on the eating habits that work for me, however one extra aspect of weight loss I incorporated was cutting back on booze. I most certainly drank more at my last job (more on that later) than running this startup, but nonetheless, it did not help with keeping weight off, especially as the days keep adding on to 30. I cut back my alcohol intake in February and March of this year, but decided to take it one step further in April and do a dry month in order to primarily keep that extra weight off, if not also lose a couple more pounds.
It has become quite trendy to give up drinking these days, especially in the tech community. Just stroll through Twitter to see your favorite tech influencer stating how they’re sober living and have been 100x more productive. There is an element of truth to this of course. However, there is also an element of virtue signaling that comes with giving up alcohol in the tech community where it has become a badge of honor to bash booze. That said, I do support friends when they take a break from drinking and support others who give it up altogether because of the person they become when they're drunk.
I have worried about my own alcohol consumption several times in the past. I spent my 20’s split between New York City and London working for a tech company with an amazing culture. Everyone was generally young, hard working, incredibly smart and liked to have fun no matter which office they were based in. If I showed up to the office on a Friday and wasn’t hungover, then something was seriously wrong that week. Add to that that alcohol is a common bonding experience with many of my other friends, especially when we haven’t seen each other for a long time. This combination led to many many late nights out in my 20’s.
While I regret very little because my 20’s were incredibly fun, I have questioned whether continued heavy consumption will affect my long-term health. Even worse, was I becoming too dependent on alcohol?
For all those reasons, I decided April 2023 would be my alcohol-free month. I had no weddings, no travel, no crazy parties, nada. If I was going to take a month off, now was the time because surely summer would come and saying no to drinks would become harder.
April has come and gone and I’ve now spent a month free of alcohol. I would like to impart my own two cents on my experience giving up alcohol, devoid of any virtue signaling or any dogmatic fervor for alcohol. These are my raw thoughts based on my anecdotal experience going alcohol free for a month:
- I don’t miss drinking multiple times during the week
- There was one week in mid-April where I had a jam packed social schedule: multiple live sporting events and multiple birthday parties, spread over four days. In the olden days, I would have had at least two beers per day, if not more on the weekends. Once again, I have no regrets when I pulled this off in my 20’s, however I am very happy to not have done this in my 30’s. I know I would have felt like garbage come week’s end. I would have been a shell of myself; writhing in pain, regret and self-loathing. Having a convenient excuse to skip the booze made my life a lot easier.
- Alcohol will make you feel like shit the next day, but so does lack of sleep
- It is abundantly clear that giving up alcohol does improve your quality of sleep (https://www.sleepfoundation.org/nutrition/alcohol-and-sleep). That said, you need to make sure you actually get enough sleep in the first place. There were a few nights in the past month where I still went out late with friends, sometimes multiple nights in a row. I would wake up the next day not feeling hungover per se, but still not feeling quite like myself. My advice to myself and others would be to still prioritize rest before anything else. If alcohol is the one thing preventing you from getting the sleep you need, then cut back on it.
- Staying booze-free wasn’t that hard (at first)
- Sure, I was tempted to drink, but knowing that this was just one month helped me stay focused. I knew that it meant more to me to be able to stay true to my self-promise than to cave at the pressure of even the smallest occasion to drink (something I’ve easily succumbed to in the past). I’ve been far more tempted by food during healthy eating stretches than I have for alcohol during this stretch. I expected that same feeling while giving up booze, but I was wrong. That said, as the month wore on, the temptation to drink definitely grew whether it was a glass of wine at a nice restaurant, a beer at a baseball game, or just a drink catching up with someone. It was these smaller events that I missed much more than the wild nights out. That leads to…..
- Alcohol is fun, but tipsy > drunk
- As previously stated, in my crazy social week, I am glad I did not drink on all four days. That said I was bummed not to have been able to drink at one. I’ve overall had plenty of fun this month, so it’s good to know that I don’t need alcohol to have a good time. However, I do know that having a drink or two would have elevated some of my experiences a point or two on the fun scale. Simultaneously, I know that I had much better conversations not being super sloshed and looking way too drunk. Moderation is key here folks. I want to prioritize getting tipsy vs. getting drunk when I do drink. That said, there will of course be some nights where things will get wild, but I’ll save those for special occasions.
- Not drinking has helped me keep pounds off
- The math here is quite simple. If my normal food intake is 2,000 calories on average, and I’m adding 200 to 1,000+ on a regular basis, then it’s a no-brainer that you can keep weight off. I even had a few days where I definitely did not eat healthily or I backslid on the overeating part. Nonetheless, not having booze helped me not have to keep off even more calories that I would have piled on, even in the most gluttonous of occasions. Overall, my waistline is just the same if not better at the end of the month than it was at the beginning of the month.
- Every single one of my friends was supportive of my decision
- This is the most surprising turn of events on this list. I have friends who are real instigators when it comes to drinking. Even when I’ve reached my limit, they still coax me into having one more (that might say more about me than it does about them). I was fully expecting them to egg me on and peer pressure me into drinking (more like beer pressure). That said, not a single friend pressured me into drinking. They all supported me 100% and were proud that I was doing it. I would tell my friends that I was taking the month off from drinking for “health reasons”, but many of them said I didn’t need to explain my rationale. They had already accepted my decision at face value. This was a very comforting sign that my friends were looking out for me. There were people who pressured me into drinking, but no one who I’d consider a friend. It was clear that they did not have my best interest in mind, perhaps only their own. Had there been actual pressure from my actual friends, then perhaps I would have cracked much earlier on.
- I want to add guardrails on drinking
- To capture similar magic like I had during the past month, I think it’s best to create some type of system to keep my drinking in check. I don’t want to have back-to-back-to-back nights during a regular week of having booze, yet I do want to catch up with friends over a nice pint or glass of wine. I don’t want to have a wild night out every single weekend, but it would be nice to let loose just a little every now and then. Creating a consistent system of when and how much I drink is something I’ll be working on devising in order to capture some of the aforementioned benefits. It is almost universally easier to have consistent feedback than inconsistent feedback. Not drinking at all is consistent, but I ultimately do want to still have some fun.
Overall, I am incredibly happy with my experience taking a month off from alcohol and plan to do it again many times in the future. It ultimately allowed me to reexamine my relationship with alcohol and realize that it does not have a hold on me (like I feared), but that it is for my best interest to cut back a little so I can prioritize my health.
This is just me though. Alcohol might affect you or your friends completely differently. One of my friends has been alcohol free for almost an entire year and she swears by it. Her sleep has dramatically gotten better from not drinking and has been incredibly thankful for it.
Ultimately, you need to do what’s best for you based on your biology. If you feel it’s best to give up booze altogether, then do it. If you feel like you need to just cut back a bit, then do it. There’s no silver bullet solution here. You get out what you put in with your body, therefore you ultimately do want to prioritize healthy solutions. That said, life is also short and should be enjoyed while we’re here. It is up to each and every one of us to try to find the balance between those two statements.
Cheers! (cocktail or mocktail in hand)