Best reasons to stop drinking alcohol

I used to drink alcohol – I thought it helped me to relax, forget about stress, and loosen up a little.

Or so I thought.  Until that stress starts to increase in life, just like it always does, and it always will.  I started to notice that drinking alcohol every night wasn’t actually helping me to feel better.  In fact, the opposite was true and drinking too much alcohol seemed to make my stress worse, and no matter how hard I tried, it just kept coming back, worse than ever.

Then I realized that I just couldn’t keep drinking alcohol every night – something had to give!

So, I quit drinking alcohol completely. I don’t want to drink, I don’t need to drink, I don’t even think about drinking.

And I am sooooo happy with my decision; I barely have words to describe it.  Nothing to do with being a born again Christian, or a court order, or even Doctor’s orders.  I just decided to quit drinking by myself.

I am not a recovering alcoholic.  I needed a little help to make it happen, but with a little reading, I learnt to quit drinking at home by myself.  No need to attend classes, or an expensive rehabilitation center, or even let anyone else know that I wanted to quit alcohol.  I found a way to stop drinking alcohol without AA, and I found a way to quit drinking alcohol completely by myself.

And it only takes a few days.

I know exactly why I want to quit drinking.  Here are the best reasons to stop drinking alcohol:

1. Alcohol steals your time

Do you find that when things get a bit too much, that you slip into a bad habit of drinking too much alcohol, and this tends to become a worse habit of drinking alcohol every night?  That is the problem with alcohol, it sneaks up on you when you are not looking and steals your time, and even your freedom.

When you start to plan your day around when you can sit down with a glass of alcohol, then basically your day is finished, but worse than that, you never really had freedom at all if you spend the day just waiting till you can have that first drink.

2. Alcohol changes your intentions

I know that even though I was aware that drinking alcohol every night was bad, it just happened.  Even when I set the intention not to drink alcohol every night, it just happened.  I never planned to drink every day, but as we all know, it just happened.

But we all think we are still in control aren’t we?  I know I thought I was always in control of drinking, but maybe I didn’t have as much control as I thought I did.  This is the problem with alcohol, you never really know if you are in control.  If you are worried whether you have control over your daily drinking, then maybe you don’t actually have control.

Or maybe you don’t have the control that you would like to have, and if you want to quit drinking alcohol – could you do it?

Do you have as much control over drinking alcohol as you want?

3. It is hard to cut back on alcohol

No matter how hard I tried to drink in moderation, or cut back on alcohol, it never really worked.  The more I thought about reducing the amount of alcohol, all I found was that I was getting stressed about drinking too much alcohol, and the more stressed I became, the more alcohol I drank.

Trying to cutback on alcohol never really worked for me.  Whether I was trying to stay within the daily alcohol limit, or trying to avoid alcohol for 1 or 2 days out of the week.  I just couldn’t do it.  The thought of avoiding alcohol during the week made me even more stressed.  I just couldn’t do it.  Even when I made some progress and managed to cut back on alcohol, sooner or later, I found that alcohol just sneaked up on me and without realizing it, I would be drinking alcohol every night.

Trying to cut back on alcohol was harder than I thought it would be.  By comparison, quitting alcohol is easy!

4. Will power is not enough

This is the problem with alcohol, no matter how hard I tried or how much I thought about it, cutting back on alcohol used up just about all my will power, and left me feeling drained and stressed.  But hang on, I thought drinking was to make me feel better, but actually alcohol made me feel bad.

Whenever I felt drained of energy was when I was most likely to drink too much alcohol.  So if this is counter intuitive, you would be correct, because to fight against the urge to drink using will power alone means that at some stage you will be defeated.  A small chink in your defenses or a small moment of weakness, and before you know it, alcohol will come sneaking back into your life.  Just like it never went away.

Here’s the secret – quitting alcohol is easy, just don’t rely on will power alone!

5. Just want more alcohol

The problem with alcohol is that it takes gradual control over our lives. I know for me that I wasted a large proportion of my life planning my life around drinking alcohol.  When I could have that first drink, whether I could stay up late at night and have another drink, or even worse, whether I could be in trouble the next day if I had too much alcohol the night before.

Over a long period of time, the body tends to develop a tolerance towards alcohol so that you find that you need more and more alcohol to achieve the same desired feeling of relaxation.  This is not good.  This means that inevitably we find that we are constantly drinking too much alcohol, just for the same effect.  And the problem is that you don’t realise that there is a problem until you try to cut back on alcohol.

6. A bad habit that has taken years to develop is not that easy to change

Have you been drinking alcohol for a long time?  Do you think drinking is a bad habit for you?  Bad habits seem to be easy to develop but much harder to change, so if I had my time again, I would choose to avoid alcohol.  I drank alcohol for over 25 years, and only when I tried to cut back did I realize how hard it is to change a bad habit.

And the problem with alcohol is that it is an expert at changing your intentions and stealing your time, which means it is an expert at changing your habits.  But drinking alcohol every night is not a good habit.

7. Cravings for alcohol

And be wary of those cravings for more alcohol.  Why do alcohol cravings always happen around 5pm each day?  Believe it or not, there is a scientific reason that alcohol cravings occur around the end of each day.  And the problem with alcohol is caused by what you had to drink the day before.  Alcohol takes around 24 hours to eradicate from the body, and even though the alcohol itself is metabolised fairly quickly in the body, it is the by-products of the alcohol that stay in the liver and cause all sorts of problems.

One of those problems is the slight feeling of unease and maybe even slight shaking that we feel at the end of each day.  These feelings tend to make us want to drink alcohol, and when we do so, the feelings of unease are replaced with the high that we get from drinking.  So our brain is tricked into thinking that alcohol makes us feel better, when actually it was the alcohol cravings that made us feel bad in the first place.

Here is another secret – if we can break the 24 hour alcohol craving cycle, then quitting alcohol is easy!

8. Drinking is not good for you!

Despite how we have been tricked into thinking that there is some health benefit from drinking alcohol, there is now scientific proof that the researchers were mistaken.  There is no health benefit from drinking alcohol.  Alcohol is an addictive chemical that is a known carcinogen, and this is a very dangerous combination.

If you are concerned about the effects that alcohol might have on your body, then it is not worth the extra worry.  Why continue to suffer a hangover every morning?  By comparison, quitting alcohol is easy.

9. Quit alcohol and feel better!

Quitting alcohol is easy, and quitting alcohol is the easiest way to feel better.  You will feel healthier, you will feel happier, and you will gain control over your life.

Most people seem to think that need alcohol to enjoy themselves and to enjoy life.  But if this was true then why can’t we stop drinking when we are having fun, because that would be enough wouldn’t it?  But enough is not enough, and in my case I just could not stop and inevitably found that drinking too much alcohol makes me feel bad.

Seriously, I feel better without it.

10. Love Being Alcohol Free

Life is more fun without alcohol, and I enjoy every day without that constant worry about drinking.  I no longer think about drinking, and I no longer want to drink, nor need to drink.  At all.

I feel better every day, and that is why I can easily say that quitting alcohol is easy.

Do you want to quit drinking?

If you want to quit drinking – Why not give it a try!

 

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