a month's sabbatical from alcohol.

{Photo via Flickr user Xipe Totec39.}

I mentioned at the beginning of January that I wasn't going to drink that month. Well, six weeks later, I thought I would let you know how it went. I decided to quit because late last year I read a couple of articles that encouraged me to try not drinking for a month (one of which you can read here). I also had my own reasons. I few too many times last fall, I'd wake up hungover after a night of having a couple of drinks, something that didn't used to make me hungover. I certainly have never thought that I was in trouble with alcohol, but I did look forward to a drink more than I wanted to. (Especially on Friday after work.) So I decided it was time to re-calibrate myself, so to speak.



Once I really committed to it, it wasn't too hard not to drink all month. There were challenging points though: when I first arrived at a party and everyone else was opening a beer or pouring a glass of wine, I really wanted to join them. I would fill a glass of water though, so that I had something in my hands, and by the time they were having their second drink, I was fine. It helped that I told most of my close friends and family what was going on so that they didn't offer to pour me a drink during the month.

In the end, giving up alcohol for a month wasn't some sort of epiphany or life changing experience for me. I did notice some interesting things during my month off from alcohol though. For the most part, my mood was more even and after a few weeks of not drinking, I noticed that I felt much more well-rested in the mornings. But I didn't really find anything that could melt away the end-of-week stress like a glass of Malbec.

Lots of good has come out of it though. I'm back to where I was when I started drinking at 18, which is a total light-weight (I was one of those nerdy people who was the designated driver all through high school, something I definitely don't regret). One drink now makes me very cheerful and I now probably won't have more than two (I tried three last Saturday and it made me much more tipsy than I'd like). I feel like I'm in control of what I drink and feel a lot more confident about saying no to drink offers at gatherings and dinners.

All in all, I'm really glad that I gave up drinking for a month. It gave me lots of time to think about it, saved me a little cash and re-calibrated my body a little bit. It's something that I think I'd like to do once a year or so.

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If you're interested in taking a break from drinking, here are a few things that helped me:
• Tell the people around you what you're up to because they'll be less likely to rib you about not drinking and won't offer to pour you a glass of wine on your arrival to their house.
• When everyone around you is drinking, get a glass of water, a cup of tea or anything non-alcoholic in your hand to sip on. It gives you something to do with your hands and helps prevent ever-so-kind party-goers from saying: 'Oh, do you need a drink? I'm up, I'll get you one.'
• Hold yourself accountable by being accountable to someone else. It really helped me that Nick was in support of what I was doing. I think it meant that he drank less in January too, but I knew that if I did drink in January, I wouldn't be the only one who knew about it! Also, though I'm sure very few of you noticed the note on my blog about my intentions, having it out there really helped hold me accountable.