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

You may feel that being thin and dying young is better for you. But is it better for your children? Is it better for them to have a mum with long-term alcohol complications like brain damage, pancreatitis, liver failure, etc? Or to have a mum who's got malnutrition? Or to not have a mum at all because she's died young?

Or might it be better for them to have a mum who's healthy and able to be around for them for longer?

You cut down for 8 days and were put off by a weight gain of 2lb.

8 days isn't long enough to experience the benefits of not drinking, especially when you've still actually been drinking. Your body needs longer to adapt and stabilise with a new lifestyle - give it at least 28 days of no alcohol as part of a healthy living plan and you'll start feeling a whole lot better.

If you're living off beer and the odd potato, your body will be in starvation mode because you've not been getting the right nutrients. Eating a healthy diet with appropriate portions of a good balance of nutrients will help you become physically fitter, and it honestly costs less than daily alcohol consumption. If you're spending more on food than you have been on your beer, you need to learn more about budgeting food shopping, cooking healthy meals from scratch and portion size.

There's a lot of support available to help you with your alcohol dependence, and I really hope that, for your children's sake if nothing else, you use that support.

I have to disagree, for me the substitute alcohol was just a reminder of what I was NOT having. (Same as cig substitutes). I just have water or tea now and do not miss alcohol at all. But its a long haul with lots of falling over. Just have to think like Samuel Beckett: Try, fail; try again, fail better.

Have you tried eating a potato and not having the four pints?! Surely you wouldn’t gain weight then as alcohol has a lot of calories.

you ARE dependent because you say you need alcohol to sleep. That will adjust when you stop drinking - what you’re feeling is mild withdrawals, which leads to major insomnia and huge anxiety. The insomnia and anxiety associated with withdrawals eases quite quickly when you stop drinking but it would be made worse by doing one day drinking and one not!

I guarantee you that over time you will lose weight, feel better and sleep better but stick with no alcohol for at least a straight week before you decide it’s better for you to drink?

You won't be thin when you are in liver failure. It will catch up with you eventually. Please consider trying again, good luck.

I might have misread your post, but your saying there's no benefits to stopping, but you havent stopped?

Its takes a while of being completely alcohol free to see the benefits particularly with sleep, give a few weeks then decide maybe?

The whole thing must seem like an insurmountable mess to the op, who is likely still in bed atm. I also think ADHD may be involved here, but only because what the op is saying reminds me a lot of my mum, whose mental health I’ve a a,used a lot! The combo of eating disorder and drinking is a tough one. The excuses, even tho so outlandish the op seems like a troll, are exactly the type of excuses my mum would make.

op, please go to your gp to discuss these various issues. 4 pints of beer is too much. One potato is not enough.

As others have said your black and white thinking is madness. You don’t need to spend a fortune on a balanced diet. Or at least, a more balanced diet than your current diet is. But you probably need some support to understand what a (more) healthy diet looks like.

it’s also bloody hard abstaining from alcohol especially when you are addicted and you’re looking at the perceived benefits. All I can say is a bad day during a sober life will be so so much better than a good day during an alcoholic phase. But your current regime is still alcoholic (1 day on, one day off, still over the weekly maximum). In this case, I will say draw on your black and white thinking. QUIT COMPLETELY. Decide to quit for 2 months starting now, rather than for ever. For ever can be way too scary. After 2 months, reassess how you feel. If you are like anyone else who has ever gone clean, I think you’ll feel loads better.

I am going to go for the Mumsnet bingo full house and suggest that it might be worth looking into an adult ADHD diagnosis? Lots of people with ADHD self medicated with alcohol and the "laziness" could be being frozen by indecision which is an ADHD thing.

Name changed as my reply is potentially outing. Also not read all replies so apologies if repeating anything already said.

As a functioning alcohol dependent person myself, I would say your posts suggest you are almost certainly a functioning alcohol dependent person. You can have alcohol dependency without getting blotto every night or having a physical addiction to alcohol. Many people go days without drinking at all then binge massively or, like me and you, drink 2/3/4 drinks most days and feel that we NEED that (for whatever reason we use to justify it - same reason a smoker NEEDS a cigarette).

Believe it or not, alcohol buggers up your sleep - you might drop off and stay asleep for 6-8 hours but it's not restful sleep after a few drinks and your body doesn't go through all the sleep stages needed to recover. If you stopped drinking, it takes about a week to 10 days but your sleep pattern would regulate. (I am on day 9 and last night was my first restful nights sleep in a long time & I feel better for it today).

Poor quality sleep impacts weight - once your sleep is more regular and better quality your weight will be easier to manage. I would also suggest you get some therapeutic input into your relationship with food & your weight as its clear there is some difficulties there. There are a variety of therapeutic methods to try - CBT, EMDR, ACT (the latter is what I am working with at the moment) - that can help. You may have tried things in the past which didn't work - try something else. Or revisit it as your situation may be different now.

Alcohol also is a contraindication for antidepressants. Alcohol is a depressant because of the impact it has on the body and brain (even if a few drinks turns you into the life & soul of the party) so effectively cancels out the benefits of an antidepressant. You will continue to have difficulties with low mood,anxiety etc if you drink frequently and/or excessively whilst taking antidepressants.

Ultimately it's your choice. You have stated your reasons, I hear and understand them. However, you appear to be taking a very short term approach and haven't considered the impact of malnutrition and long term alcohol use. Youre unfortunately a prime candidate for ulcers (painful, and life threatening if they rupture and bleed), kidney disease, heart disease, osteoporosis, alcohol-related dementia as well as the more obvious liver issues. Your choice where you go from here.

I wish you luck.

OP your dad normalised drinking 4 pints a night to you and now look what you do. You will have normalised drinking 4 pints a night to your children too and while they might not drink yet what about when they hit times of stress - their mum and their grandad turned to alcohol and they were fine, right?

If you don't like the taste and are only drinking it to fill you up then why not drink something non alcoholic? Drink non alcoholic beer or something else - 4 pints of anything is going to leave you feeling pretty full!

I think you will find any excuse under the sun though as to why you can't change to drinking something else - and at the end of the day the reason for that is that you are an alcoholic.

Surely if you’re drinking your house is more likely to go to shit? We all need a break from the booze during the week at least. How do you function? Hold down a job etc? You must feel so knackered

I’m so sorry about your brother and sadly this is what I’ve seen with people at work. Functioning alcoholics who know that their bottle of wine a night isn’t the best idea but assure themselves they could stop if they had to. Assume they will have time to stop and reverse any issues. They assume there will be early warning signs. But actually you can go from not feeling well and seeing the GP to being dead in a few weeks and stopping drinking in those few weeks won’t stop you dying.

You are listening to your addiction speaking.

This is a first for me. I have never heard of anyone using beer as a meal replacement before. It actually sounds as though you also use alcohol as an antidepressant, which explains why it keeps you thin - when you give it up you probably have lots of feeling rise to the surface and food may be what you use to suppress them in the absence of alcohol. So, yes it sounds as though you are dependent on alcohol and should seek help as your dependence may become more serious and obvious as time passes. The body - especially a woman's body - just can't tolerate that level of alcohol.

When you say that you would rather enjoy yourself and die young. Well, what comes before dying is really unpleasant if you get some kind of alcohol related disease. I used to work for the NHS and saw at first hand the difference in health of older people between those who drank and smoked and those who didn't.

Edited to add that increasingly much younger people are also developing these alcohol-related conditions.

The inability to see that you described addiction while trying to 'logically outsmart' why thats not addiction shows you are an addict and have not yet discovered an awareness of your issue.

One's body needs nutrition to process the alcohol, all routes lead to the liver (97% via the liver, 3% via urine and sweating), eating a spud is useless, essentially you are consuming empty calories via 4 pints and a potato a day. You will be slim/ thin but malnourished. Take vitamin B complex tablets daily, it's the alcoholics choice of vitamin. Not many people are aware that whilst alcohol is in the body, waiting to be processed, one of the bodies favourite places to store alcohol is in the brain.

Even though cans and bottles of beer nearly always state the unit content it can be useful to work out how many units of alcohol you have drunk using the following calculation, esp. when necking pints in a pub...

abv x volume ÷ 1000

A pint (568ml) of 5% abv lager....

5.0 x 568ml ÷ 1,000 = 2.84 units.

Weekly recommended units are 14 for men and women, used to be 28 units for men, based on the fact that men's body contain more water than women's, personally I think it's a figure plucked out of thin air.

The most important thing to do when drinking is to eat well, and eat before drinking.

I'm a pisshead, I was in rehab, decades back, I learnt loads, but I still drink to excess, I do though take days off, my aim is 5 dry days a week. The struggle is real, alcohol has always been my drug of choice.

Do you think you may have undiagnosed adhd?

Alcohol is a strong diuretic. Without it, you would have gained a couple of lbs of water weight. That is to be expected. It will take some time for the body to balance out and get rid of the excess water. This is no reason to go back to acohol.

I will answer the specific question you asked about your recent small weight gain . Alcohol dehydrates you . When you stop drinking your body will rehydrate and you will be weighing the fluid . You have not gained fat .
You can safely eat the calories you were drinking as food and not gain fat . Everything else has been said by other posters, but to summarise :-
You know this isn't healthy, you are drinking around 56 units per week and will be malnourished. You may feel you have been a great parent but your young adult children must be worried sick seeing you manage yourself like this . Talk to your GP about your disordered eating and psychological alcohol addition .

It's really clear from your posts that you are using alcohol as a coping mechanism - self-medicating to cope with anxiety. As someone with ADHD/anxiety, I am really familiar with this. That glass of wine (or two) at the end of the day is what feels like it keeps me going - but the reality is that it actually makes the anxiety worse. I am doing Dry January, which I've done several times before, and I know it makes me feel and look better, and I feel calmer and more in control of my emotions and my life.

Four pints of beer is actually a lot, especially for a slim woman. If I drank that, I'd be drunk. Drinking instead of eating is not a healthy way to live. I can't say I've got things perfect either, but I am aware that I've had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol in the past, and am trying to reframe that so that I don't use it as a crutch. My kids say they prefer me when I don't drink so that's a big incentive not to, tbh! You should probably talk to your doctor and/or a counsellor about this and see if you can get some proper support for the anxiety. Anti-depressants might help (Sertraline has made a big difference for me) but they don't work effectively with alcohol.

@Gem2J So much good advice on this thread. I am on another long running thread with people who have given up alcohol entirely and are supporting each other in their desire to remain sober. It is so helpful and enlightening.

Like you, I haven't lost any weight by remaining sober for almost 3 months now. I was a daily drinker but wine was my drink of choice not beer. When I look back, for almost 20 years, I would often replace an evening meal with 3 large glasses of Sauvignon and some crisps. I love cooking but would cook really nice food for the kids when they were younger and not eat myself or eat tiny portions. I would low carb to keep my weight down (yes, dry white wine is low carb as most of the sugar is processed into alcohol), definitely had still have disordered eating and my weight was super important. Being thin was just another form of trying to maintain control when so many other things in my life were going wrong.

Since stopping drinking I've had to do a huge rethink and change of mind set about what is more important, a few extra pounds or being here for my adult kids and grandchildren. My ex-husband was alcoholic and died several years ago, not from cirrhosis but from cancer but his lifestyle and general health probably contributed greatly to his death. His was mid-fifties.

I would approach your GP in the first instance. It sounds like there is lots of trauma and issues in your life and please believe me that although you say your kids are great, don't drink or smoke, they will have picked up on a lot more than you think. I wish you well OP, life isn't easy but I promise you that if you stick with it, it will become easier when alcohol isn't in the mix. It doesn't solve any problems, just covers them up short term.

You are thin because you are malnourished. Eating healthily may have caused your body ie your organs and muscles to absorb water after effectively fasting. 2 lbs is nothing and not an amount that is visible to anybody.
If you think it is better to die young and thin than be healthy then that is a fairly clear sign that you may have an eating disorder. You need to see a doctor to discuss this. Unless you want your kids to be without a mum in their 20s?

A potato.

Just have a bag of fucking crisps or two. I mean, there's no benefits to you from having a potato rather than crisps.

Alcohol= empty calories. Calories that make you feel full but which have no nutritional value.
The effects of drinking beer daily and eating very little on my ex husband were:
Scurvy
A damaged stomach lining causing diarrhoea attacks.
A damaged liver turning his skin and eyes a shade of yellow.
Damaged teeth ( lack of calcium and sugars in said beer)
His brain function deteriorated, unable to multi function, unable to make rational decisions.
Dead at 49.

But you do you. I feel very, very sorry for your children having you as a parent.

You clearly have an alcohol addiction. For the sake of your health and the example you are setting to your children - go and get some help from your GP. They will be able to give you support and there are organisations who can provide ongoing support. Well done for doing something about it - but you need to be honest about the behaviour before you can make changes.

You are living in lala land mate.

But don't really know why you had to come tell us on here?

You do you.