To quit alcohol or not to quit? This is my experience after a year as a teetotaler

Today is Friday and many will have a drink.

This article is directed to all of them, which gives an account of my experience as a recent abstainer.

If I decide to tell something so common as if it were a singular case, it is because sobriety is a subject on which boring stories do not abound - and normalizing - but it is usually narrated as an adventure, with an abundance of twists, mutations and epiphanies .

Stopping drinking in a pandemic may not have much credit.

Let it be something like a surfer who boasts of not having jumped into the sea in Austria.

After all, with bars and clubs closed permanently or at night, and parties prohibited or discouraged, the occasions to meet strangers have been reduced and the shy ones no longer need that help that the Londoner Kingsley described so well Amis: “In the era of merrymaking of all kinds, strangers do not stop peering over your horizon.

The reason I usually end up enjoying these creatures is drinking.

The human race has not discovered a better system to remove barriers, quickly meet the other and break the ice. "

But alcohol is not only a lubricant for social gatherings, but also a way to relieve tension or take your mind, at least for a while, from an unpleasant reality.

To use the words of the also British Aldous Huxley, now more than ever it seems necessary to take "a circumstantial vacation from reality."

Despite this, and perhaps because I knew that, with the abuse, it is the substance itself that generates undesirable situations, I stopped drinking more than a year ago.

Perhaps two recent books influenced me:

by Sarah Hepola, and

by Daniel Schreiber.

Both are examples of a possible "anti-alcoholic fad" supported by the statistics:

drink less than previous generations.

The authors and protagonists of these memoirs - coincidentally two cultural journalists in New York - agree on the unpleasant sensations that the drink caused them and also on the relief and pleasure they achieved when they were able to get rid of it.

For example, Sarah Hepola writes of a destructive drunkenness: “I don't know how to describe the sadness I felt.

It was not a wish for suicide.

It was the suffocating feeling that she was already dead.

That life had abandoned me ”.

And he ends his book with these words: “When I cut off alcohol, my life improved.

When I cut off the alcohol, I regained my energy.

An evolved life needs balance.

Sometimes you have to cut something to find balance in everything else. "

I'll be honest: in front of those who stop drinking and, like Sarah, say they feel more awake, more agile, happier or, at least, slimmer, I have not noticed any of that.

My attention, my clumsiness, my spirits or my belly have not improved significantly.

Nor do I feel more gloomy or suffer when, in the supermarket, I walk past the beer shelf.

If I have noticed something positive, it is that I have much more time and I save some money.

Perhaps I drank to devalue time, that is, to avoid feeling guilty while spending it on talking more than anyone else, getting to the bar first, or losing my jacket;

instead of studying, working or reading.

However, I have not gained that much, since now I fill those moments with new anxieties and hobbies.

For example, I eat more buns than ever, I run the washing machine continuously, and I buy many more books than I can read.

I am skeptical even of one indisputable advantage: hangover afternoons, often hellish, but also a timeless, nebulous and useless time, whose morbid placidity it was possible to enjoy.

This small disappointment saves me, I hope, from becoming a convert, one of those apostles of anti-alcoholism that the editor Carlos Barral, great apologist for all spirits, said are “frustrated cynics who shout that the world without alcohol is more beautiful, the goodness easier to practice, the lyrics easier to understand, the beauty and the truth more accessible ”.

Besides, I'm not even sure that I will be able to resist when the nights return to what they were, with their promiscuous and indiscreet conversations, and questions arise that I will not be very clear about how to answer.

About this social pressure against abstainers, the writer and critic Marta Bassols recalls with grace: “The most difficult thing was resisting people's stakes by denying me their invites.

They came to me with drinks, shots, beers and wines every time I walked into a joint and they would be very offended if I did not skip my penance with them, for them.

Society is alcoholic, punks already knew this in the eighties. "

Beyond literature and its effects on our spirit and our customs, alcohol is a psychoactive substance, a depressant of the central nervous system, which reaches all the organs of our body through the blood.

And those who really know what happens in our bodies are the doctors.

BR, a neurologist who prefers to be cited by initials, has prepared the following text in an attempt to answer the most frequent question and its reverse: how much alcohol is too much? And then, how much is too little?

“An average consumption above 200 milliliters of beer a day is discouraged in women.

This consumption would be equivalent to a standard drink unit (UBE), about 10 grams of alcohol.

The limit for men will be double.

Regarding intensive consumption, it should not exceed 2 EBU in a single day for women, or 4 EBU for men.

An intake above these limits will increase the risk of mortality and suffering from various pathologies.

With consumption below these limits, in the absence of illness, pregnancy or a family history of alcoholism;

there is no strong scientific evidence that advises against its intake.

Even so, some specialists recommend abstaining completely.

Even with moderate consumption, a loss of brain volume can be observed over the years.

Furthermore, alcohol intake worsens the quality of sleep ”.

That said, it is reasonable to think that since it is toxic, if you stop drinking alcohol you will feel better.

However, there are multiple studies of alcohol consumption and quality of life that observe worse scores at the extremes, including abstainers.

“There are also some publications for which moderate consumption would reduce cardiovascular risk.

All these publications have great limitations, so in the absence of randomized clinical trials with long-term follow-up, we cannot assume that drinking low doses of alcohol is a healthy habit.

Not to mention the placebo effect: if one is fully convinced that a habit will be beneficial, it will surely be so ", the expert notes.

It seems clear that, if moderate alcohol consumption is always recommended, there are no compelling reasons, being healthy, to give it up completely.

That the same substance can provide us with flashes of almost mystical happiness, blurring the edges of lucidity, and, at the same time, has led so many to unfathomable abysses is part of the mystery (or tragedy) of life.

For this reason, perhaps the most practical thing is to toast responsibility or, as the specialist in disorders of the nervous system Agustín Querejeta concludes: “Anything that means that one can make free decisions about how long they want the machine to last and what is willing to do to ensure its durability (or the opposite) seems legitimate to me. "

Neurologist (informal) word.

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