The Benefits of Quitting Drinking Didn’t Make All My Dreams Come True
I’m now six months into my alcohol-free life…and I'm not exactly the poster child of wellness I’d expected to turn into in one gleaming sober Cinderella moment. The reality is, cutting out alcohol was less of a magical fix and more of an incremental lifestyle change. (Ugh, what a buzzkill.)
To my dismay, I did not turn into Alex Morgan’s ultrafit body double overnight. In spite of my impatience to see immediate body-changing results, my excessive research had offered up some very good advice: When you first quit drinking, focus only on cutting out the alcohol. After all, I couldn’t expect to suddenly quit drinking, transform my diet, and workout six days a week too. I’ve never been someone with a sweet tooth, but suddenly all I wanted to do was eat ice cream. I was still going to happy hour—it just now took place on my sofa with my buddies Ben and Jerry. Eventually I made exercise a regular part of my routine and have started making better food choices to support my workouts, but I’m still working on cutting back the sugar intake.
And as for the eternally youthful skin I was so hoping for? Even though I couldn’t use being buzzed as an excuse to collapse into bed with a full face of makeup anymore, I often barely managed to wash my face before calling it a night. Whether it was the brutal dry winter or the fresh panic of entering my thirties, I eventually started taking my skin care routine more seriously—after washing my face, I might as well put on a retinoid serum, right? Rose hip seed oil apparently brightens, plumps, and moisturizes skin? Yeah, add a bit of that too. Oh, hyaluronic acid is the holy grail of moisturizers? Sign me up. Eventually when I started looking in the mirror in the morning, dewy, glowy skin was reflected back at me. But if I get lazy, my skin goes back to looking dry, blotchy, and dull—even when I haven’t had a drink.
Just as with my fitness and skin, the improvement in my mental health was gradual. Making the commitment to quit drinking forced me to navigate a lot of social situations that I’d used alcohol to cushion in the past. I worried that I’d struggle to clearly and concisely answer the question: “Why aren’t you drinking?”
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually been asked this over the last six months, but I realized I do have a succinct answer: “I just needed a break.” I thought nosy people would expect a juicy answer that I couldn’t give. But nobody did. In fact, a lot of people would turn to me and say that they were thinking of cutting down too.
Realizing my social life wouldn’t suffer and that I had surrounded myself with supportive people helped me feel confident that this was a sustainable lifestyle. I started achieving goals that drinking had made impossible, like hitting the treadmill to catch up on episodes of Vanderpump Rules in the morning. All of these things working together have put me in a better place.
The wellness benefits that I've experienced since cutting out alcohol did not happen as quickly or as easily as I'd originally expected them to, but abstaining has set the wheels in motion for me to make incremental improvements to my overall health and well-being. If I had kept drinking, I’d still mentally and physically feel like unproductive garbage. I may not be performing a dance sequence in the street on a sunny day with all of the townspeople, but I am a healthier, more “well” version of me.
Laura Anderson is an essay and humor writer based in Brooklyn. Follow her @mslauraanderson.
