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’m not teetotal but have gone to drinking very little. Honestly it’s happened gradually I used to like a couple of wines in a Friday night.
I react badly to it now and I don’t enjoy how it makes me feel this combined with having a chronically alcoholic sibling and the death of another sibling made me both value my life more and realise how fragile it is .Im not messing with my health .

It gets me out of lots of clearing up I don’t want to do. I always offer to drive people home after dinner parties or on Xmas day. No washing up for me 🎉

Absolutely find this, even after YEARS of not drinking. As another poster has pointed out, it goes against the social norm and so a lot of people find it unsettling; almost as though you have a holier than thou attitude, which couldn’t be further from the truth in my case. But it is an anomaly in white British life - drinking is culturally ingrained.

I always hint darkly at a past of alcoholism (I was never an alcoholic) and they tend to shut up then….

So many benefits. Top ones are:

*Never having a hangover again
*Lost 20lbs when I quit my wine habit
*Better skin, brighter eyes
*Loads more energy
*More confidence and joy! This came more slowly, but realised over time I really, really don’t need booze to unwind, have fun, dance or socialise.

7 years since I completely stopped boozing. Did it in my early 40s and so glad I’m not going through menopause as a drinker - can’t imagine how awful it would be be!

TBH I can't think of a single advantage of not being teetotal.

If you don't like it why drink it though? I don't see that as extreme just as I never eat seafood because I don't like it or smoke because I don't want to.

As you get older you may find your friends split into 2 groups. One lot rarely drink as hangovers get much worse and it seems ridiculous to put yourself through it.

The other lot have more time now children are off their hands, working less and drink more and you start to see alcohol related deaths kick in.

It’s not extreme to not drink alcohol, what an odd assertion.

Life just feels a lot easier. Even though I’ve had a lot of bad things thrown my way this year it’s way easier to cope with when waking up clear headed every day. My emotions are stable, anxiety doesn’t touch me, I can crack on with whatever needs doing. No more days hiding away from the world, I’m up and out first thing.

On top of that my skin is great (eczema in remission), my waist is back to 25in and my hair has stopped breaking. Might not be a direct result but it hadnt been that way in the 12 years of drinking prior.

I feel responsible, stable and clever. I am reliable… in fact I’ve been given more responsibility at work because I’m the only person who is always in rain or shine always on time.

Studies show that no amount of alcohol is safe. Choosing the only proven safe option isn’t extreme.

What a strange point of view, not drinking alcohol is a perfectly normal thing. I'd be more worried about someone who thought like you do tbh

Being the person after the office Christmas do that people come up to ask how drunk they were. I've had some great conversations with colleagues I'd rarely have the chance to talk much to this way.

I've tried, but never really enjoyed alcohol so I can't say benefits of giving it up and I think others have most of it covered.

Having disabilities, it has been beneficial in medical investigations to be able to say I don't drink and to not have alcohol-related concerns be part of that.

For fellow teetotallers… do you feel you have to explain yourself at social events for having a coke for example instead?

At social events these days, I find I rarely do - I think the most I've had is people discussing the cost of their drinks vs mine. I have seen other people get it though, some of the men I've worked with have been questioned about it.

When I was young, yes I did. I come from a community where drinking a lot is very normal and when I was young, I'd get questioned a lot about drinking when discussing upcoming events, even had adults try to put alcohol in my drinks or give me drinks they said were juice but had schnapps in it like I couldn't smell the difference, or be at family events where I was only given alcohol, even though I was underage, and had to go find something else - I wasn't asked to explain myself, but it was just assumed.

As an adult, I've had some weird judgemental conversations about it outside of social events. I've been asked what I drink with dinner since I don't drink alcohol. I had some concerns that I didn't voice. These have all been with random colleagues rather than friends though. I've luckily been able to build a social circle where drinking isn't the norm - thinking of the people closest to me now, about 80% don't drink at all, the other 20% do on certain occasions so the social norm is very different I live in now is very different so it's fairly rare I'm questioned or in a situation I need to explain that I just don't want to drink alcohol and am happy with a J2O or whatever.

Haven't RTFT but assuming you don't mean just drinking tea.

I found my mood lifted, minor irritations got less noticeable, purse thanked me, I actually noticed health concerns I kept putting down to the alcohol (headaches, aches, stomach issues, energy etc) and have since had a lot of treatments which have helped my daily functioning. In hindsight I was drinking to deal with other issues, from anxiety to health, and stopping it enabled me to deal with both more effectively.

As in you get more sleep?

No hangover anxiety that last a few days after drinking. More energy. No wasted days with hangovers feeling rough. Save money. No eating rubbish when hungover and no excess calories from that and alcohol. Feel happier, less anxious, more energetic, sleep better. I've never had an alcohol use disorder but even just drinking for events and things left me feeling rubbish for days.

Converts are always the worst, your addiction is showing.

You might find as you get older you lose your taste for it anyway - I’ll drink a glass of champagne at a wedding or maybe a glass of wine with a fancy dinner but just knocking back booze for the sake of it, the desire to do so just stopped as peri-menopause kicked in.
We also had a new kitchen with a boiling water tap fitted about the same time - it became as quick to make a tea/coffee as get the wine out of the fridge, so I think by 40 something i was just drinking in front of the telly for habit rather than actual desire so it was no big deal to cut back to once in a blue moon.

Addiction to what exactly?

Losing weight. Sleeping better. Less grumpy. More energy. Better digestion. Less likely to get most cancers. Better breath. Less likely to eat crap. No hangovers. Hormones happier. More likely to exercise. Feeling smug 😎😎😎🙌🙌🙌

What is AVN of the hips?

This is for the minority of people discussing the tea-total vs teetotal thing. As I am a self-certified etymology nerd, I just looked this up, and thought others might be interested too.

“Tee” was originally a slang term used in the 19th century to mean total or complete. In the 19th century it was the equivalent of saying “total with a capital T”. There are records of expressions such as “tee-dirty” or “tee-unfortunate” to express a total amount of something.

The word teetotal was used in the way it is now for the first time by Richard Turner, a former alcoholic who was involved in a movement against alcoholism and was famous for saying “only teetotal will do”. Whereas other people thought that giving up hard liquor was sufficient to prevent alcoholism, Turner thought it had to be all forms of alcohol.

Interestingly teetotal seems to be the only word that made it into formal/official language. Other instances of using “tee” in this way appear to have died out with other 19th century slang that fell out of fashion.

Anyway sorry if this is boring. It isn’t unusual for me to find things interesting that other people very much do not!

Well of course you don’t miss it, you haven’t given it up lol

Stopped drinking 4 years ago and definitely I do not regret it. I feel I have more energy, I am more present and I have less weight issues. My mood has improved massively too.

I developed a food intolerance to anything with alcohol in it, which became so bad that half a glass would give me raging diarrhoea within the hour. So I stopped drinking completely.

Benefits - cheaper, never get that morning-after feeling, I can always drive, and that means I am in complete control of when we go home. Nobody ever tries to get you to drink when you tell them you are driving, so no social 'stigma'.

Disadvantages - They have yet to invent a decent-tasting substitute (with the possible exception of Gordon's alcohol-free gin), and one gets severely bored with fruity and/or fizzy drinks. Indigestion from all that fruity fizz isn't much fun either.

I finally stopped 6 weeks ago. I realised that alcohol is just poison. No beneficial effects for the body, only risks.

I spend all week exercising and then would just undo all that work with alcohol. Plus it affected sleep and made evenings and the next mornings a waste.

I can now eat more, and i also now eat less crap. It was a bit difficult for the first month, but now I'm over it - but I've been trying to get to this position for a few years lol. I have a few good quality alcohol free options instead should I need one. Just do it, stop justifying reasons not to. Brand yourself as a non drinker and stop putting your life at risk.