I decided to quit drinking alcohol today. I had been going through extreme hardships in life, so I consumed all sorts of drinks that made me inebriated: Wine, beer, whiskey, and occasionally a small bottle of Japanese saké for something different. The buzz from alcohol made me happy, mellow, and somewhat childlike. It didn’t make my problems go away, but it sure took my mind off the misery.
For the past month and a half I had been consuming four to six drinks a day, and I didn’t take any days off. When I mention drink here, I mean like a glass of wine, a 12 oz can of beer, and a single shot of whiskey (which equals 50 ml); and as for the saké, which I had only here and there to try something different, it was 180 ml per bottle. To give you a comparison, a typical glass of wine is 8 oz, which is equals nearly 240 ml. My saké of choice had 14.5% ABV, and my wine of choice had 10% ABV. The glass of wine has more liquid and the saké less, but the buzz felt about the same because of the ABV difference.
Mind you, I wasn’t one of those absolutely insane alcoholics who drink themselves to the point of blacking out. These people come home from work and then immediately begin drinking hard vodka. They drink and drink, then drink some more. Then they continue drinking until they pass out. Altogether, they end up drinking a liter of hard vodka (which can be 50% ABV). How much is a liter? 1 liter equals 1,000 ml, and a standard bottle of wine has 750 ml. The alcoholic content of white zinfandel wine is about 12.5% ABV. To drink the equivalent amount white zinfandel and 1 liter of vodka, you would have to consume over 4 standard-size bottles of wine.
Sounds absolutely crazy. While doing research on the internet the other day, I found out that the average alcohol male lives only to age 57. When you consider heavy smokers live a decade or longer than that, well, that is just truly astonishing.
So yeah, I was by no means an extreme drinker, as described above. But still, four to six drinks a day every day does indeed sound like a lot to any lay drinker who drinks lightly, on occasion, and will stop at one drink. I suppose you could say I was a moderately high drinker, but really, I don’t know how to class myself here.
Today is day one of not drinking. My doctor gave me some anti-anxiety medicine to help me not feel so anxious, and yes, it is working very well: The anxiety is gone. But there are other side effects from the withdrawal…
I feel like something is missing. Let’s say someone joined the US Army and served a 6-year tour, then he returns home to civilian life. All is well, but something feels “missing.” He was so accustomed to life in the forces that his new civilian life feels dramatically different. “Missing,” as in he is missing his routine, his friends, his very way of life in the military. So it is with me: I have this odd feeling like something is missing, and I’m thinking it’s the alcohol. Is there a name for this? I think they call it cognitive difference, but maybe it’s called something else.
My libido is very low. When you have a chemical like alcohol in your body for a month every day and then take it away, I presume that would have ensuing chemical effects on the body, one of them being sexual feelings and drive. Mind you, I’m not impotent: I can get it up with lots of manual stimulation. But still, the desire just isn’t there. It’s probably not permanent, hopefully. The supplement shop is open for another hour and a half, so maybe after I finish writing this post I will go there and buy some ginkgo biloba, which has helped raise my male desire in the past by quite a bit. I guess it needs to heal.
I sort of feel unhappy, like I’m not quite myself. Again, this is probably related to not having alcohol. And again, I guess it needs to heal.
The good news is that I don’t want to drink. After drinking all that alcohol for so long over so many weeks, I’m glad to be off it. However, I really want to return to feeling better, so I decided to make this thread and ask Christians who are former drinkers how long it took to “feel like yourself” again? In my case specifically, with the amount I drank over the course of 4 to 6 weeks, how long will it take to feel like myself again?
I did some browsing on Reddit with this question. Many of the threads were created by extreme drinkers (as described above in paragraph 3). They also wanted to know when their misery would end with alcohol withdrawal. Naturally their withdrawal time table and recovery would be much different from mine. I tried looking for a thread about a drinker who drank about the same as I did who had the same question, but couldn’t find anything useful.
For the past month and a half I had been consuming four to six drinks a day, and I didn’t take any days off. When I mention drink here, I mean like a glass of wine, a 12 oz can of beer, and a single shot of whiskey (which equals 50 ml); and as for the saké, which I had only here and there to try something different, it was 180 ml per bottle. To give you a comparison, a typical glass of wine is 8 oz, which is equals nearly 240 ml. My saké of choice had 14.5% ABV, and my wine of choice had 10% ABV. The glass of wine has more liquid and the saké less, but the buzz felt about the same because of the ABV difference.
Mind you, I wasn’t one of those absolutely insane alcoholics who drink themselves to the point of blacking out. These people come home from work and then immediately begin drinking hard vodka. They drink and drink, then drink some more. Then they continue drinking until they pass out. Altogether, they end up drinking a liter of hard vodka (which can be 50% ABV). How much is a liter? 1 liter equals 1,000 ml, and a standard bottle of wine has 750 ml. The alcoholic content of white zinfandel wine is about 12.5% ABV. To drink the equivalent amount white zinfandel and 1 liter of vodka, you would have to consume over 4 standard-size bottles of wine.
Sounds absolutely crazy. While doing research on the internet the other day, I found out that the average alcohol male lives only to age 57. When you consider heavy smokers live a decade or longer than that, well, that is just truly astonishing.
So yeah, I was by no means an extreme drinker, as described above. But still, four to six drinks a day every day does indeed sound like a lot to any lay drinker who drinks lightly, on occasion, and will stop at one drink. I suppose you could say I was a moderately high drinker, but really, I don’t know how to class myself here.
Today is day one of not drinking. My doctor gave me some anti-anxiety medicine to help me not feel so anxious, and yes, it is working very well: The anxiety is gone. But there are other side effects from the withdrawal…
I feel like something is missing. Let’s say someone joined the US Army and served a 6-year tour, then he returns home to civilian life. All is well, but something feels “missing.” He was so accustomed to life in the forces that his new civilian life feels dramatically different. “Missing,” as in he is missing his routine, his friends, his very way of life in the military. So it is with me: I have this odd feeling like something is missing, and I’m thinking it’s the alcohol. Is there a name for this? I think they call it cognitive difference, but maybe it’s called something else.
My libido is very low. When you have a chemical like alcohol in your body for a month every day and then take it away, I presume that would have ensuing chemical effects on the body, one of them being sexual feelings and drive. Mind you, I’m not impotent: I can get it up with lots of manual stimulation. But still, the desire just isn’t there. It’s probably not permanent, hopefully. The supplement shop is open for another hour and a half, so maybe after I finish writing this post I will go there and buy some ginkgo biloba, which has helped raise my male desire in the past by quite a bit. I guess it needs to heal.
I sort of feel unhappy, like I’m not quite myself. Again, this is probably related to not having alcohol. And again, I guess it needs to heal.
The good news is that I don’t want to drink. After drinking all that alcohol for so long over so many weeks, I’m glad to be off it. However, I really want to return to feeling better, so I decided to make this thread and ask Christians who are former drinkers how long it took to “feel like yourself” again? In my case specifically, with the amount I drank over the course of 4 to 6 weeks, how long will it take to feel like myself again?
I did some browsing on Reddit with this question. Many of the threads were created by extreme drinkers (as described above in paragraph 3). They also wanted to know when their misery would end with alcohol withdrawal. Naturally their withdrawal time table and recovery would be much different from mine. I tried looking for a thread about a drinker who drank about the same as I did who had the same question, but couldn’t find anything useful.
