(...but most people did feel a difference.) :)
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well yeah i felt a huge difference when goin vegan, but i dunno about goin sober cause i have never had a drink so i cant say. i'm just comparing here. my point is everyone who go vegan and sober will feel a psychological positive effect which is good, so they might not need to feel a physical effect on their body to keep on stayin sober...
Like I said I feel no different at all - that includes no psychological effect and none of the things normally associated with giving up drinking when you have been a regular drinker.
I was asking those who have given up drinking for their experiences Berta - you do not have any experiences in this area if you have not ever even had one alcoholic drink, so I'm not sure why you feel the need to deliver your opinions in such a spikey manner - "your point" seems not to be based on any facts or even anything you have heard or read. :confused:
uhm oh so I've no facts whats that about? you don't know that for all you know I could be an expert on alcoholism with a PHD.
I'm not tryin to be a besserweissser here or anything I was just trying to encourage you to keep on tryin to go sober - even tho you feel no different yet. and even tho you don't feel any better psychologically/psysically it is proven that its healthy to stay sober so surely your psysical health must be better (without you actually feeling it)
I drink alcohol very rarely. It hasn't always been the case. In my late teens and early twenties I just couldn't go to a party with out needing to feel a bit merrier than usual..Over the years I have gained in confidence and realized that alcohol has a really big and bad effect on me. I become quickly, very silly..and I don't really like that feeling. It's not really me! I want to experience life with my eyes wide open and my heart 100% in it. I will have an occasional glass but it really is occasional.
Hi Marrers,
Here's my take on it: my ex-wife stopped drinking the same time as I did. She didn't notice any difference to her life at all. She stopped just to give me a bit of support, which was decent of her.
I'm a recovering alcoholic. I've not had a drink since 2005 except for one this year at which point I realised I was on the top of a particularly slippery slope for me so I edged away from the precipice. My experience of stopping drinking was very different to my ex-wife's.
And that's because alcohol means entirely different things to us. But the big difference is in our heads, not our bodies.
How much were you drinking?
We're all different but you usually have to be putting away a lot of units a week to feel a physical difference. I've known alcoholics who come to meetings put away well over 100 units a week and not have any physical problems upon stopping.
Wishing you all the best in stopping anyhow.
Owen -- sober and happy
I think the biggest issue for me was adapting socially. it does feel a bit left out if your one of the few non drinkers, but eventually you get used to it.
My husband gave up alcohol and other drugs about 7 years ago and doesn't miss them not. I also gave up to support him and he gave up meat etc to support me. It's a small sacrifice really.
It's important to remember that alcohol is a poison which is why you get intoxicated. Another reason to leave it alone.
I just gave up drinking recently too.I wasn't overdoing it really, but I was drinking alot of beers because I think I have a really high tolerance. I bought a lot of high end beers because I thought it give me better outlook/mentallity about it. From what I can recall about trying to find information about the dangers of alchohol, there isn't near as much information as I would have thought for such a widely used substance. One big thing that I learned is that alchohol doesn't from what I read actually kill brains cells, but it does damage the ends of the nerve receptors or something like that because alchohol causes them them expand and they expand too much and get damaged. But apparently they can repair themselves. Anyways, this is probably the second worse I've heard about alchohol damage. The first is that I was in a lesson about drug abuse and they showed theses sort of xrays of brains of different people doing drugs but they showed the brain waves or something like that and some looked worse than others but the one that was supposed to be a long time alcholic looked like it was melting. It was really bad and I knew nomatter what anbody said that that was really messed up. If you know any long term alchoholics like I have seen they can have permanant impairments and they talk and act like they're drunk even when they're not. Maybe that's some motivation for you not to drink if you think you're drinking too much. There's also other damage like liver and other organ damage.
It sounds like though perhaps you just want to stop drinking for personal/spirital reasons or other reasons besides drinking too much. That is why I stopped drinking because although It did help calm my nerves somewhat, it also numbed me down and took away my heart to an extent. I think that life is much more enjoyable experience sober. But alchohol in moderation is enjoyable too. If you want some information I would just look up "reasons to not drink on the internet" or " harmful effects of alchohol" or something like that. Or just check out a book at the library I'm sure there's something there too.
My best advice for quitting anything is you have to discipline yourself to not want it. I've found that for myself when I quit cigarettes, nothing helped until I truly did not want it. I think for a lot of people, if they really want something they'll go for it sooner or later. It defenitely requires self control too. I really also think it's bad to get yourself into that " I'm a recovering addict, and I'll always be an addict mentallity". It's good to remind yourself that you 're not using that, but also it's time to move on with you're life. There's some people who are weighed down by drug/alchohol addiction and they don't even use drugs. I wrote this list down last week or maybe the week before I think just to give me a quick reminder why I shouldn't be drinking. I'm a Christian so some of this contains Christian reasons, but it's just to give you some ideas if you want.
Reasons not to drink
1. It costs to much, and I can't afford it. It takes away money I coulkd give to God and others.
2.I am extremely prone to becoming an alchoholic, and I drink more than I would like to.
3. It's a bad way of dealing with my problems.
4.It's really not that great anyway.
5.Drunkeness is sin.
6.Being sober is much better.
7.It's not a good example to others, and it gives me a bad image. ( how much I was drinking)
8. It's a burden, and it makes me act foolishly, and stimulates the flesh.
9.It keeps me from prayer as much, and studying Gods word.
One last thing is I think cooking as a hobby is a great way to get some stimuli without drinking. At least that works for me I think, and sleeping also. Sleeping can be a great way to get rid of that nervousness you might have.
Not trying to go off topic but from what I've studied this isn't true at all, and I think there is a lot of teetotallers who probably push this idea around, but I think it's bad information and it's wrong to push this around.Quote:
It's important to remember that alcohol is a poison which is why you get intoxicated.
From what I read it has to do with how you body digests it. If you drink more than your body can properly digest in a certain time, then toxins are released into your body. You can search for it and find more information on it, but here is just one page I quickly found.
here is a short page on "alchohol is a poison" ( http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/Controversies/1119724191.html)
A poison is any substance that is capable of causing injury, illness or death to an organism. 1 Salt, water and oxygen are all poisons because in high enough quantities they can harm people. Too much salt in a diet can cause serious health problems, hyper hydration can kill athletes, and too much oxygen given to a premature infant can cause permanent blindness.
Toxicologists emphasize that “the dosage makes the poison.” Although salt, water, oxygen, aspirin, alcohol beverages, and many other substances can cause poisoning in excessive amounts, it makes no sense to call them poisons.
(“ETHYL ALCOHOL IS A POISON. No intelligent person knowingly ingests poison unless they want to die prematurely.” 4 )
So why do so many groups and organizations insist on calling alcohol a poison? Apparently to stigmatize alcoholic beverages and frighten people into alcohol abstinence. The tactic was first used effectively by the Anti-Saloon League, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the KKK and other anti-alcohol groups. 2 The technique is still widely used today. 3
Honest communication doesn’t mislead or deceive. Calling alcohol a poison is misleading and deceptive.
References
1. Department of Environmental Health & Safety, University of Michigan. Poison. (http://www.dehs.umn.edu/homeiaq/glossary_frame.html#p); Natural Resources Defense Council. Poison (http://www.nrdc.org/reference/glossary/p.asp); Wikipedia. Poison (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison)
2. Hanson, David J. Preventing Alcohol Abuse: Alcohol, Culture, and Control. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995. See also “The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), Alcohol, and Prohibition” (http://www2.potsdam.edu/alcohol-info/Controversies/1107362364.html). The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) insisted that “Medical writers, without exception, class alcohol as a poison.” However, the scientists of the Committee of Fifty for the Investigation of the Liquor Problem reported that this was an erroneous assertion. Billings, John S., et al. (for the Committee of fifty for the Investigation of the Liquor Problem). Physiological Aspects of the Liquor Problem. Boston & NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1903. However, even today, the WCTU insists that “alcohol is a poison” (http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:Xwx2ymGV1eMJ:
www.wctu.org/hearing_alcoholhealthclaims.html
+%22Alcohol+is+a+poison%22&hl=en) as does the Prohibition National Committee of the Prohibition Party (http://www.prohibition.org/statesman_200406.PDF). It insists that “ETHYL ALCOHOL IS A POISON. No intelligent person knowingly ingests poison unless they want to die prematurely.”
3. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and SAMHSA’s National Clearinghouse for Alcohol & Drug Information. Black History Month. “Alcohol is a toxin or poison.“ (http://www.health.org/seasonal/blackhistory/diabetes.aspx); Students Against Destructive Decisions or SADD (formerly Students Against Drunk Driving) Silent Killer. “Alcohol is a poison.”(http://bhs.broo.k12.wv.us/BHS/Clubs/SADD/A-Poising.htm); Washington State Coalition to Reduce Underage Drinking. “alcohol is a poison” (http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:kUfisHHIXmoJ:clearinghouse.adhl.org/
campaigns/ruad/ed_art.html+%22Alcohol+is+a+poison%22&hl=en); Parent Resources and Information on Drug Education (PRIDE) Alcohol alert “Alcohol is a poison“(http://www.pride.org/alcohol.htm); the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. “Alcohol is a poison.” (http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:
L_JgRvexUuwJ:news.adventist.org/ data/2000/04/
0959715024/index.html.en+%22Alcohol+is+a+poison%22&hl=en)
4. Prohibition National Committee - Prohibition Party. The National Statesman, 2004, 70(4), 3 (http://www.prohibition.org/statesman_200406.PDF).
yes. its worked out well for both of us and our kids :)
That's what I find; I fit into sXe enough without having consciously gone into it. I quit drinking and drugs 18 years ago simply because I'd had enough; also, I couldn't tolerate them anymore and to continue would have been literally suicidal.
Quitting drinking laid the foundation for my eventually giving up--or I prefer to day "getting rid of" dairy and meat almost six years ago. I wish it had been sooner. Actually, when I first quit drinking, I started smoking and smoked (tobacco) for about five years before I put that down. We can always fine-tune our acts, and there are still things I find difficult about veganism; it's one day at a time, as they say. It's great to have the support here.
i'm avoiding alcohol almost completely at the moment, because every time i've had even just one drink recently it's made me feel quite depressed. it used to only affect me occasionally but i'm now finding i can't tolerate the depressive effects at all any more.
I'm the same Gorilla - I find drinking really does nothing for me any more, and here you need a car to get anywhere at night so I'm kind of forced to anyway :)
It feels good to have a clear head in the mornings too.
i drink way too much..periodically..intermittent binge drinking...i think i may have an addictive personality and am either an *all or nothing* type...but am on a no drinking thing atm. think all this stuff is hereditary..my dad died a particularly violent death through alcoholism and my grandad died with excessive alcohol use as a contributory factor. it scares me a little bit that it's so easy to get hold of and so socially acceptable. i love drinking, being drunk but don't like how it makes me get a little bit psycho in the noggin and how crappy i feel after drinking. soo..non for me for a bit.
i haven't though, found that i feel significantly better if i don't have any for a while..i just know that now im 35 yrs old, it just seems a lot harder to recover from loads of wine or whatever. :confused:
apologies if this doesn't help..just bunging in my thoughts :)
I don't touch the stuff - haven't for around 2 years now. The only thing I find is that I often get/feel excluded if and when there are social occasions, being vegan AND teetotal :rolleyes: .
Definately a wise idea, Gorilla :)
Speaking from personal experience, depression + alcohol = very, very bad news!! In particular, alcohol and antidepressants combined are a recipe for disaster :eek: Please just don't do it.
Maybe it works differently for everyone, but I made this mistake in the past and the result wasn't pretty :( I also know a person who went completely off the edge and ended up in hospital recently because he didn't realise how dangerous it was to drink when taking anti-depressants.
For most people alcohol can be enjoyed quite safely in moderation and I don't see a problem with that, although I personally choose not to drink at all. But remember alcohol is a depressant, and so those who already have depressive tendencies should certainly stay well clear. It might seem to block out your problems for a little while, but in reality it only makes things far worse.
i'm not taking anti-depressants at the moment, but i know from past experience it's definitely best not to drink at all while taking them. at the moment i feel depressed almost as soon as i've had a drink, the effect is immediate. so i haven't even been enjoying drinking and then feeling bad afterwards. still, it's healthier i suppose.
I haven't had a drink for 10 days now, partly for weight loss reasons but also as I had been drinking way too much :( I'm not very strong willed when I walk into Sainsburys and they have buy one get one free on boxes of 20 bottles of beer :eek: I was pretty disgusted at how quickly I was getting through them (aprox 4 bottles to my husbands' 1). I've always drunk too much, since I was a teenager. It has been lovely to go to bed with a clear head and wake up without a manky mouth :eek: . I have also noticed that my gums have stopped bleeding when I brush my teeth in the morning :) , it really worries me what damage I've been doing to myself. Don't know how long I'll keep it up for but at the moment I feel really good.
good for you, Ginger. I too had been drinking vast amounts of alcohol for a long time before I quit completely. I don't miss those hangovers! :) .
Hi Cobweb, do you mind me asking if you stopped suddenly or was it a gradual thing? Do you find it difficult to stay away from now?
Hi, i had cut down a bit from every single night to weekends only, then I got VERY drunk at a friend's house and made a decision not to put myself in that place ever again, so i stopped there and then. Since then I have had a glass of wine a couple of times and it was horrible (believe me! :eek: ) so for well over a year haven't had a drop.
Sometimes i get an urge so powerful, i can 'see' drink, smell it, taste it - but it soon passes. I make 'cocktails' now out of fruits such as mangoes and strawberries, or as a 'naughty' drink occasionally i have a 'Roy Rogers' - just coke with pomegranite juice and ice ;) .
I haven't made a fool of myself for a long time and it feels good, plus my liver thanks me for it daily :) .
That's great Cobweb, very inspiring to me. I can almost hear my liver thanking me right now :D I'm just worried that if I say I'm not going to drink anymore I will feel under a lot of pressure.
I know what you mean, I really do, Ginger. Why don't you just drink at the weekends and give your body time to clean out during the week? ;) . I'd probably still be doing that but my husband has a half-sister who is a recovering alcoholic and it has turned him very anti-drink so it just doesn't feel right in our home now anyway.
i have no experience of hard drinking, just the usual 'youthful' drinking when younger, now i don't drink at all and haven't for about 25yrs.
i have heard on the news etc that it can be just, if not more, dangerous for your body to binge at weekends and have nothing the rest of the time.
again, i have no experience of heavy drinking really, so these are just polite observations...:)
true, but any binge drinking is bad, moderation is key but if you 'depend' on alcohol then that is hard :o
Wow Frank Language, thanks for that :)
I've been away from vegan forum for a while. After about a year of veganism I maybe didn't feel I needed the forum for support so much as I had become quite settled with my new lifestyle. However, it's great to come back and see this thread still alive.
I didn't touch alcohol for about a year after starting this thread, but the past couple of months I have had a couple of drinks. It was an interesting experience. After not having alcohol in my system for so long I was very aware of its effects. Just the slightest drop made me feel drunk and tired. Wine brought on heyfever symptoms and when reading Skinny Bitch I discovered that the reason could be an additive in it. Just as cutting out dairy greatly reduced my allergies cutting out alcohol also helped.
So all in all, I'm quite happy with not drinking, and trying it again was reassuring because I didn't like it all that much anyway.
I didn't notice any benefits from cutting it out, but I did notice negative effects of consuming it again.
It's also nice not worring about if alcoholic drinks are vegetarian/vegan.
I'm still here, and I'm still supportive of any decision you or others might make to try to live more responsibly. I'm happy to hear you've had great success! That's wonderful. I wish you the best, and you know you can come to these forums for continued support.
Sounds great!
I stopped drinking when I was 19.
Alcohol has tons of bad effects. Listening to friends who are sober alcoholics have even strenghtened my opinion even more. Some have lived with alcohol abuse for 40 years or more. I'm really glad I took the decision to stop drinking.
I am still not drinking alcohol and have no desire to drink.
However, I see most social activities seem to focus on drinking either at parties or in pubs.
What do people do to socialise which does not involve drinking, when not with family and partners?
I do volunteeer work, go to the gym and spend time with teetotal friends. What else is there in the social sphere?
i've recently started a new job where there seems to be quite a culture of drinking, and i've been under a bit of pressure to go and get drunk with my colleagues. i haven't come right out and said i don't drink (partly because i haven't decided i won't ever drink again, i just choose not to for the time being) but they go to the pub quite a lot and it's important to me to socialise with them, so i've just been going along and drinking soft drinks. not so much fun being the only sober one in a large group, but better than getting drunk and maudlin anyway.
a couple of my friends are teetotal; we hang out at each others' houses, go out for food, go to the cinema, go for walks together... stuff like that.
a lot of VF meets seem to revolve around pubs but they're still fun if you're not drunk :D
I'm teetotal by choice (I don't like the smell of most alcoholic beverages anyway--and smell is one of my senses that I trust most :D ). However, if others choose to drink, I don't mind (to each their own). My choice on that has usually been respected.
Well, when I was a bit younger, as a Straight Edge kid, it was easy for me to socialize because our idea of socializing was local gigs. Underground punk music...that entire atmosphere was fun. Now that I'm a little older, most of the kids who were teetotal with me have moved on in their lives and most have moved away from abstinence. Now I am a gamer who plays video games socially at LAN parties and online, and I am involving myself with positive, goal oriented people such as Food Not Bombs, recycling efforts and the cuddle party culture where drinking is not part of the norm.
Hi everyone!
I made the descision last night that I was going to go straight edge for the following reasons:
1) I spent a whole week off my face on drugs and alcohol and it was the worst thing ever.....the come down yesterday that is.
2) I feel like an insensitive peace of shit when I wake up the next morning and the woman I love tells me I was a complete and toatl bitch to her, which of course I remember nothing about.
3) I want kids some day and I want to be alive long enough to see them grow up.
4) I was able to drink almost 20 cans of beer in a day by the end...which cannot be good. I usually drank at least four cans of beer a day anyway.
5) All the drugs, smoking and beer was fucking with my mental health.
So guys please help me out here...I'm kinda finding it okish but it is so tempting to go outside and smoke a fag and have a beer. I know I'm not gonna but encouragement is key.
You can do it Emzy, you're a strong woman who takes no shit. So, take no shit :)