Here we are again, friends. Let me take this opportunity to thank you for being here and reading my blog, but also to say that I hope the blog is inspiring you and helping you.
But also, there are new readers and this post very well may be for you. Today we’re going to get right back to basics and discuss, perhaps the most important issue that exists: why you should stop drinking alcohol.
Damage to your body
A lot of people joke around about damaging their bodies, like “ha ha, I’m so bad,” as if you can just show disrespect for yourself and it’s OK. But sooner or later, everyone comes around to see the problems with being cruel to your own body. It’s just that too often, they see it too late. In my case, it was around the time I quit, with a lot of damage done.
Liver- Obviously, you’re really attacking your liver with booze. Specifically, you run the risk of major liver damage in the form of cirrohis, fibrosis, and fatty liver.
Heart- Drinking increases your risk of high blood pressure and having a stroke, plus an irregular heartbeat.
Immune System- Boy, do I have first-hand experience with this, having suffered from pneumonia at one point. If you’ve noticed a pattern that alcoholics are sickly, this the reason for it. I’ve never known a big drinker who had a good immune system.
I can tell you this: I’m going to cost myself money, freedom, and comfort in my elderly years. But not nearly as much as I would have if I wouldn’t have stopped when I did. Stop now, brothers and sisters.
Finding your true self
Here’s something else I know about. It isn’t extremely easy to describe, but there’s a way that drinking covers your self up. I guess most of it is your future plans and your sense of what you need to be stronger, more together, happier. Alcohol does what I guess it’s intended to do, it covers those things up. But how do you feel the next morning?
That basically means that the drinker has no real choice but to just keep drinking—he or she isn’t building any real foundation but just delaying one’s life.
Finding who you really are is definitely a relief.
Sleeping at Night
Literally, I mean sleeping at night. I’m not talking about being free of guilt or having a clear conscience. I’m talking about ridding yourself of the kind of very real insomnia caused by chemical imbalances in your brain that come from drinking too much.
You probably know what REM sleep is—or you’ve heard of it. That’s the type of sleep that involves dreams. So, basically, when you’ve been drinking, or do drugs, yeah, you’re going to nod off pretty easily. But the alcohol in your system interferes with the REM sleep. You then wake up and you proceed to either not be able to get back to sleep or you fall into fitful sleep that isn’t the least restless.
You then end up not only tired and cranky, but you can screw up some of your major body rhythms and that’s the last thing you need when you’re already abusing a substance.
Control
For me, the biggest benefit to kicking the bottle was regaining some control. I had problems with not showing up to calls on the job (heating and cooling repair), and being erratic and unpredictable and moody with my girlfriend. Basically, I felt out of control.
In fact, I was out of control enough to not even realize how out of control I was. One gets used to it. But one still has to feel the consequences of it, in the form of a life that is confused. You may say things you don’t mean, and not always remember. That means not always knowing why people are mad at you, or at the very least wishing you wouldn’t have done the thing. It also means repeating mistakes while drunk. My life, when I was drinking, was full of having to chase down the things I’d done wrong. It was confusing. And that brings me to my next point about why you should stop drinking.
Simplicity
I think we’re all in favor of simplicity. Not having to figure out how to smuggle booze into certain places; not having to plan ahead and get drunk before going certain places; not having to rush to the liquor store before 2 a.m. Not having to keep track of lies you’ve told. You don’t have to ride a roller coaster. You don’t have to spend time trying to repair relationships with old friends and exes, etc.
It’s hard to explain and yet impossible to overstate: the amazing sense of relief you feel is like nothing else on Earth. I mean, I’ve had times when I could feel the lack of nonsense I was dealing with, now that I was sober, and that’s just an amazing feeling.
There you have a top five, friends. It’s important for you (in my humble opinion) to grab hold of these simple yet large concepts and look back at them as needed. They’ll be part of a path to sobriety that will be a lot easier if you have a roadmap.
Photo by Francesca on Flickr
