No benefits when stopping alcohol

[Gem2J]

Hi Everyone
I hope you are all well.
For 5 years now i have drunk 4 pints of beer a night. I really don't want to do this and would prefer to stop drinking all together.
I am not as addicted as I thought I was, because my new years resolution was to slowly cut down. I have my four pints once every other day:) and I find it easy.
But now I have decided to go back to my 4 pints a night, because for me the benefits of drinking alcohol every night far outweigh the negatives.
And please don't read this if you are suffering from alcohol dependence, cause i do not want to encourage anyone, because alcohol is bad.
I am just writing this cause just want to make sense of it all, and get your thoughts?
I am very weight conscious. and work hard for my slim figure, and i am not willing to put on weight, no matter what the cost to my health. I have been overweight before and it ruined my life and self esteem.
So anyway you might think that if i cut down alcohol i will lose weight, but i have gained weight! And i am not eating pizzas and chocolate, on my days of not drinking alcohol i eat chicken, lots of veg and for desert I have an orange. But I eat until I am satisfied.
On my beer days i have 4 pints and a potato.
So really i can't cope with the weight gain and have decided to go back on the beer.
Also to buy all this healthy meals like chicken, veg and fruit it costs me double! and i am already on the verge of food bank and so it is cheaper to buy 4 pints of beer and a potato from Morrisons, and i would rather have that extra money to feed my kids.
I am never violent when I drink and it does not affect my day to day life, I work full time. But now after being made redundant I have found a new job that requires me to be awake at 5am for a 6am start. I suffer from insomnia and if i wasn't on the booze I don't go to sleep till 8am. And even if i take sleeping pills and drink no alcohol I still feel rough the next day.
Also i am a very LAZY person by nature. not working but at home. I have always been like this and on the days when I didn't drink alcohol well the house would be trash, alcohol enables me to keep on top of housework and pursue my online business dreams. If I stopped then i would be in bed 24/7 and a fat lazy slob
But I don't know how this is right, surely i should stop alcohol for my health? but I honestly don't see any benefits

After a week you will get better sleep. I drink hard when I drink I like a gin and tonic but as soon as I stop I can't sleep it takes me a week to get back into heavy sleep. It's almost as if my body is fuxked and it's repairing itself. You need to give it time to allow your body to repair and adjust. Your poor liver and kidneys is taking a good kicking.

@Gem2J why did you start this thread? What did you want from it or expect from it?

Hi I don’t normally post much but I am a nurse working in the substance misuse field. A large part of my job is working with clients who are drinking, assessing if they are drinking dependently and helping them detox if that’s what they want/need.
I don’t know if you are being honest when you say there are no benefits to stopping drinking but please read up on alcohol liver disease, liver cirrhosis, alcohol related dementia. You say you don’t mind losing 10 years of your life, but I have seen people die from liver disease, and it’s one of the worst ways to go (sorry but it’s true). Also you say you don’t have shakes etc now, but drinking daily WILL eventually end in physical dependency, and then you are at risks of seizures, wernicke's encephalopathy (again please Google if you’ve never heard of it)

But anyway, there are plenty of benefits of not drinking, which I think you know. Obviously your issue here is your eating disorder and your fear you will gain weight - please try and get some support with this! Also you have a lot of trauma from your childhood which needs addressing. I would encourage you to see your GP, and also reach out to your drug and alcohol service (they don’t just help you to stop if you don’t want to, they can help to reduce and work on the psychological reasons behind why you drink).

Agree. January isn't even in double figures and you have gone back to drinking because you have seen no benefits of being sober.

This is the text of a comedy sketch hopefully.

Hi OP,
interesting.
I stopped alcohol at 42, some years ago, because I simply couldn't cope even with smallest amounts.
No benefits whatsoever.
Not overweight, so no weight loss, no sleep improvement and skin I won't mention.
It's bullshit and I wish I could still continue drinking, but it's not a practical possibility.
😕

To put it bluntly
My dbro was not an alcoholic but drank daily.
He had 6 weeks between being diagnosed with liver disease and dying from it.

Hi there and happy new year! I will start by saying, four pints a night is a hell of a lot of alcohol. It really is. That’s 84 units per week. And 6216 calories per week. Just under two pounds of weight.

It takes a good while to see the benefits of quitting alcohol but they begin almost immediately. You may find your sleep isn’t great for the first three weeks. But trust me, it does get better. Being sober brings so much more too. I’ll never forget the clarity and calm it brought to my life. I just felt more motivated and happy. I’ve tried being full-on sober a couple of times. Once for three months. Another for nine months. Another for nine months.

Why do I keep going back? Because alcohol is a drug and the only one that is widely socially accepted here in the UK. It’s often considered the social glue to our culture. I do wonder if I’d drink at all if I lived in somewhere like LA.

Plus, I see alcohol as nicotine. It’s addictive. I’ve read all the books. Listened to all the podcasts. I know the absurdity of it all. I know I’m dependent. I’d say most people are but dare not admit it.

These days, I’ve taken a very balanced approach. I don’t drink on school nights and it’s great. I always have four or five consecutive nights off. (Anyone who has quit will see this as someone making “rules” and they’d be right!) And when I do drink, I spread it out over three days so I don’t hammer the liver with too much all at once.

I take what I enjoy from it. Two small bottles of beer on a Friday after work is enough for me. Half a bottle of wine on a Saturday sometimes. A pint on a Sunday after a countryside walk. Nothing more.

Sometimes I don’t drink at all. I’ve shifted my
focus these days to not see alcohol as a ‘treat’. Instead I see my sober days as delicious gifts. I get good sleep, I feel rested, I look better. Now my focus is on nutrition and exercise, good health.

See it as chocolate. We know it’s bad for us, so we don’t have it all the time.

This reframing has really helped me. And if I see myself slipping into old habits, I take a big break again.

Do I have a problem with alcohol? Probably. But don’t a lot of people? The ideal scenario is to quit entirely. Mindful drinking has become a good solution to me.

My advice to you would be to take a big break and see it as an experiment. Journal it. Now is the perfect time when winter makes us all hibernate. Say you’ll do a month at least. Get some alcohol-free lagers in that fridge. Or even better, some ginger beer or sparkling water. And reframe it. Focus on great food.
Emily English has a great cookbook for ideas.

Start a new book. A bedtime routine to unwind. Light candles. Find a new hobby. Don’t see sobriety as a deprivation, see it as a chance to feel alive again. Trust me, after a few weeks, you’ll be in much better shape. And those urges to drink will become less as you go along.

Best of luck to you. And don’t be too hard on yourself. Alcohol is a very addictive drug x

I am not as addicted as I thought I was

yeah... it was so easy that you're already looking for excuses to start drinking every night again.

You don't shit properly it runs out of you. You're killing yourself. You will end up dying young and your children will probably end up being your carer cancer will strike you. Your children are young and you will be a burden to them. They won't be able to leave their children with you because of your lifestyle. They will look at you as unreliable and chaotic.

This has to be trolling. No way this nonsense is real.

Alcohol is often a long-tailed health issue and you may feel 'fine' now, but the damage is being done and it will be far too late when the symptoms hit you and it could be years yet, but it will come. You need to visit the GP as I think you are self-medicating with alcohol and certainly must be suffering from malnutrition.

Well, you seem to have made your mind up so enjoy your spud life. Cheers!

What do you weigh?

I'm thinking you definitely have addiction and an eating disorder.

And I think your body wants and needs to be heavier and to get that you need nutrition.

'On my beer days i have 4 pints and a potato.'

...and here it is!

Can you / have you tried swapping 4 pints of beer for 4 pints of non alcoholic beer ? Or even 2 pints of beer and 2 pints of non alcoholic beer to ease you off or cut back a bit on the amount ?
There are many non alcoholic beers and drinks now a days and some of them are actually alright.

You know, of course, that eight days isn’t long enough to see any benefits, and that two pounds is within the realms of normal weight fluctuations.

The rest of your post is just barmy.

If you're living off 4 pints of beer and a spud then you must look like a walking skeleton. When you do eat chicken and veg you gain weight because you are eating nutritious food. You will look healthy rather than a walking skeleton and on deaths door. You won't balloon you will look like how you should a normal weight for your height.

Your liver and kidneys will feel the benefit for sure .... and your wallet!

It sounds to me like you have issues both with alcohol and with food and you are denying both (in true addict style which many of us will recognise).
Alcohol may be causing your body to lose fluid and so the short term weight may well be because you are more hydrated, not fat. Or even just a bit constipated. An 8 day weight fluctuation is nothing.
You need to give it a month AT LEAST. The benefits to your skin and your health will then be noticeable. Go completely cold turkey. People who drink like you do and feed themselves so badly do not look good - parched and scrawny and prematurely old usually. Obviously I don't know you and you may be the raging beauty that is the exception.
I grew up with alcoholics and have eating issues (very controlled) myself - I know what I'm talking about.

It's very hard to take an honest look at yourself and understand where your addictions are swaying your better judgement. But this is happening to you, trust me, and conquering that would be hugely liberating for you. Don't expect it to be easy.

Why is four pints the magic number? What if you tried three pints instead?

I'm curious about the every other day approach.

Take magnesium to help improve your sleep. Have you had your iron levels checked? You could be anaemic as nothing in your diet seems to support good iron. This would make you extremely lethargic..it can also cause heart palpitations and restless legs which feel like anxiety.

Anaemia can suppress your appetite but it also reduces your ability to burn calories. Once your iron levels improve it increases your ability to burn calories.

I'd book a GP appointment. You don't have to talk about the alcohol initially but you can discuss your sleep and lack of energy. They'll probably do blood tests

I do think you have an issue with alcohol but it's also very possible that your drinking habits are masking underlying issues which if you solve may help to reduce your dependency on drink. Because it will catch up with you.

so you are happy to continue behaviours that are not good for you? Behaviours that set a bad example for your children?
you need to report yourself to social services

Even taking the booze out of it Surely you know that a potato is not a balanced diet?

You have created a false dichotomy between being slim/alcoholic/dying young and the opposite (sober/overweight/long life).

Have you ever seen a cirrhotic patient? When your liver fails, many things go wrong but one of the worst is that you start to retain fluid because of protein imbalances - known as ascites. It manifests as a painful swollen abdomen. Requires regular hospital drainage, is unsightly, very uncomfortable, and dangerous. People with liver disease also develop gastric bleeds, which can be life-threatening, but are often treated as an emergency - these leave you weak, anaemic and in huge discomfort. As the alcohol nurse PP points out, dementia is a common problem in ageing alcoholics - and it is often a disorienting, aggressive and unpleasant experience.

Clearly you have reason to have problems (your childhood) which mean that your alcoholism, which may feel like a rational choice, is not. But don't make the mistake that many make that poor lifestyle will result in a clean, early death. They will not - you are extremely likely to have a prolonged period of horrible decline, and you will get little sympathy as you chose not to help yourself.

Your children will (and probably already have) suffered from your decision not to get help. The support and care you will need as the disease takes hold will be immense, and it will likely fall on them. You suffered due to your parents mistakes - don't continue the cycle with your own kids.

They are 18 and 19 social services won't be interested because technically they can leave home if they want.