If you’re tea-total, can you tell me the benefits?

[Butterscotchsauce]

I’m leaning towards giving up, just need some inspiration to help motivate me a little more.

If you’ve given up drinking, I would love to hear what you have found to be the benefits to your life or to others around you please, thank you

I also worry about normalising it for my kids. My littlest plays pretend cafe and brings me a glass of wine 😕

I'm not completely tee total , have maybe 5 to 6 drinks per year but after 1 drink I just want to change to soft drinks. I go off the taste now. As i'm getting older alcohol just doesn't hold the same appeal as it did in my 20s and 30s. I prefer feeling clear headed and present for my teens . I've got 2 daughters who need alot of emotional support at the moment, and i want to have enough energy and be mentally available for them. My younger self would be horrified that I drink very rarely now but life changes and priorities change and I much prefer living a mainly tee total life.

Sorry to be picky but it’s tee-total or teetotal. Not about tea.

@Littlecrake what’s avn of the hips?

This. I’ve never really been a big drinker but my husband was. He’s now tee total and “This naked mind” by Annie Grace was the trigger for him to give up. I recommend it.

I don’t know if it’s because of it or simply genetics, but I’m pushing 40 and no one ever guesses it - no procedures so far either and (unfortunately) very little discipline in terms of skincare. I don’t drink, vape etc. I’d say I drank about a handful of times in my life.

Plus the money saved and keeping poor decisions under better control. I hear so many grim stories related to being too drunk.

No wasting an entire day off with a well deserved hangover.

I can always drive. No matter where I'm going, when or why, I can choose when I go and when I leave, I'm not held to ransom by a taxi service, bus timetable or asking for favours from other people to go somewhere.
I can't sleep when I drink alcohol, and it tastes awful to me.

I always feel fresh as a daisy after an event. I watch other people’s hangovers and feel very pleased with myself.

The hangover just isn’t worth it.

No hangovers, clarity about the night before and no ‘oh shit what did I say’ thoughts, no banging headache or morning after anxiety. And, I can drive away or safely leave any event when I choose to. In my 50s though and tolerance to even the odd glass of wine changed for the worse.

Ha! I seriously always assumed the name came from tea! Looked up the tee origin, interesting!

I'm not a believer in being fully teetotal, unless you are alcoholic- extremes are rarely a good thing.

But it's not extreme at all! I haven't drunk for 8 years and it just becomes normal.

I drank heavily until.I was 40. Lots of drugs too.

I'm so much healthier, happier and I'm a much better mum. More present in the evenings and I have no hangovers which definitely affected my parenting. Life is far from perfect but it's just so much easier

More money

Better physical health

Better mental health & sleep

Enjoy company & friendships for what they really are - not how they are when drinking

I gave up alcohol about 6 years ago as part of a diet as I didn’t want the extra calories. My reasons for never going back to it include:

I still didn’t particularly want the extra calories
I prefer the taste of soft drinks
I realised that I don’t actually like feeling tipsy (although I used to think I did)
I don’t like feeling dehydrated/hungover
My migraines had stopped and I suspected being tee-total had something to do with it
Soft drinks are usually cheaper
It is literally poisonous. Your body can process it, but why would you want to give your body extra work to do?
It increases chance of cancer and other diseases

I thought you meant giving up tea!

I am not far off teetotal, as in giving up alcohol - went right off it after a nasty dose of pneumonia with 5 weeks of ABs - but will still have a glass of wine, or a lager, when eating out (not often) or when we have guests at home.

I don’t miss it at all.

For fellow teetotallers… do you feel you have to explain yourself at social events for having a coke for example instead? I’m 38 and not drunk in about ten years. I still feel judged for being the odd one out.

I don’t get anxiety for days anymore.
I’m no longer overweight.
My skin is much clearer.
I sleep well.
I don’t waste my weekends feeling like shit.

I don’t feel judged, but I feel like they feel they can’t have a drink unless I do too. They’ll want a glass of wine, encourage me to have a glass of wine, and when I refuse to have a glass of wine they won’t have one either. Which I think is a shame. They should have a glass of wine if they want one, what I do is irrelevant.

The main difference to me has been sleep.

I once had my soda water and lime for free in a bar because my normal impatience combined with my unusual order at 9pm on a Friday night in a packed bar in Soho meant the bar staff assumed I was hanging onto my sobriety by my finger tips. So that was an advantage, saved me about a fiver.

That works for you, fine- but cutting something, which is a social norm ,out of your life completely is extreme whether you recognise it or not.

I mean, if your children can't persuade you then I'm not sure anyone else can.

I don't drink, I haven't really drunk for 30 odd years. I might have a few teeny tiny glasses of baileys over ice over Christmad but I really mean a few, and I usually have half the bottle left at Easter. I just don't really enjoy feeling tipsy and especially hate the headaches afterwards. I also like a clear head and I like to know that if I need to go anywhere I can without having to sober up.

I'd suggest your kids are trying to tell you something, I recommend listening to them.

Better for your body, better for your bamk balance. And these days there are so many alcohol free choices!

Erm...no it isn't.

You sound like you could do with some support yourself, whether you recognise it or not!

It’s a very personal motivation, and that will dictate your success or otherwise. It is nuanced I’ve found.

I was finding myself drinking more and more regularly, and worryingly (for me at least), I was starting to THINK about the next opportunity for a glass of wine. I’ve never drunk at home during the week, so a night out midweek would mean a drink and I’d be looking forward to that as much as the event itself. It was an insidious mindset that sort of crept up, and frightened me somewhat.

If that hadn’t happened, I’d have happily carried on drinking I think. It just started to feel like an unhealthy relationship was forming around drinking. My parents have also had a fairly alcohol-dependent existence, I was aware that they drank far more than I would like to so could see the slippery slope I was on.

As I was not a heavy/problem drinker when I gave up, I did not find the results of becoming teetotal life changing, but there were definitely benefits.

Definitely a huge improvement in sleep and skin. Huge. Anxiety much less. A deep sense of doing something good for my body. Lost weight without trying. Just a general feeling of Health and clearheadedness and calm, it’s hard to describe.

I don’t really miss it, but do find that other people around me find it difficult which makes me feel sad, particularly DH. He misses not sharing a bottle of wine with me at dinners out, or champagne on Christmas morning. We have many, many happy memories of silly drunken nights and fun, so much fun. It is easier to lose inhibitions when drinking and he (and I) miss that spontaneity and hilarity. Friends definitely find it unsettling and will often not drink when usually they would if we are out together. Ironically, I never had the same issue the other way round and would happily drink when my husband wasn’t, but everyone is individual. I still bloody love a pub and go regularly.

I sort of wish I could drink 2/3 times a year, but know myself well enough to believe that it would be the beginning of drinking full time again - there would always be a ‘reason’ to drink more regularly. I truly enjoyed alcohol and the effect it had - the relaxation, the silliness, the fun that went hand in hand with a night out with alcohol. It is definitely noticeable that my tolerance for long, late nights out has waned and I am sure it is due to my lack of inebriation!

Ultimately though I enjoy being teetotal more than that, easily. It’s a trade off.

If you love drinking and all that comes with it (whatever that looks like in your life, everyone is unique in how/when/why they drink), then it will feel like more of a loss and a deprivation, like something is missing. If you’re starting to feel ropey and can tie that to your drinking habits, you will really feel the benefits.