‘I gave up alcohol and nothing happened … well, almost’

Amanda De George used alcohol to cope in 2021, so decided to give up booze for 2022 – but it didn’t quite turn out how she thought it would.

Confession time. I spent a good deal of 2021 somewhere between being tipsy and sloshed. Like many of us, I had been using alcohol as a way of coping with the uncertainty and anxiety of the last two years. By the time 2022 rolled around I was ready for a change and my liver was ready for a break.

Turns out, John Mayer was right, my body really is a wonderland and in an effort to treat it as such, I took the plunge and pledged to go sans the booze for three months from midnight on the January 1. I mean, giving up alcohol couldn’t actually hurt, could it?

This sort of self experimentation isn’t without precedent. As someone in their late 40s with an auto-immune disease I’ve tried all the remedies, traditional and non-traditional, to counter the constant pain and fatigue.

Keto? Pass me the double cream with a side of bacon. Plant based? Beans and rice here we come. Cannabis oil? Not nearly as fun as you might think. Despite these drastic changes, nothing seemed to give me any real pain relief and the ‘bounce out of bed’ energy I was looking for.

Lockdown meant wine o’clock became a very fluid time. Picture: iStock.

Late last year, I noticed an influx of articles singing the praises of an alcohol-free lifestyle. Now, this was something I hadn’t yet tried. ‘Ditch the demon drink,’ they said, and I’d be happily waking up at stupid o’clock, doing yoga on the beach, skipping through the day completely anxiety free, as well as being cured of anything that ailed me.

Better still, I’d feel a-maz-ing, darling. All that just from banning the booze? Sign me up!

I went into a frenzy reading all the books on how to launch into a booze-free lifestyle, joined stop drinking forums and replaced all my boozy favourites with expensive zero-alcohol dupes.

Friday nights were spent concocting a delicious, sticky brown sugar syrup with one hand while muddling limes with the other. No-jitos, anyone? I even bought a yoga mat. And you know what happened? Absolutely nothing. Nada. Zilch.

Giving up booze didn’t mean 5am yoga became a thing. Picture: iStock.

Well, not exactly nothing. I did lose three kilos effortlessly and by effortlessly I mean without counting calories and by instead sitting on the lounge eating dairy-free Magnums.

And sure, my face was no longer a splotchy, red, bloated mess and I also saved money. Oh Lord, how I saved money. In the three months prior, we had spent $732.99 on alcohol!

Despite all this, it felt like nothing had actually changed. I didn’t feel any real difference in myself. I still dragged myself out of bed every day, still couldn’t do a downward dog to save my life and the relentless pain and fatigue were still there.

Sobriety and Grey Area drinking coach Sarah Rusbatch, explains that this is quite common: “Most people get to the end of 90 days and they’re like, ‘Oh, what was all the fuss about? It really wasn’t that great’ and they go back to drinking but they will have actually noticed some benefits. They will be having better sleep, they will be feeling clearer in the head.”

Amanda didn’t feel significantly better despite ditching alcohol. Picture: Supplied.

As to why some of us return to alcohol even after experiencing such positive changes she says, “When you take alcohol out, you have to start adding other stuff in. We need to be going for that more effort-based dopamine. Many of my clients swap alcohol for sugar and that is awful in terms of what that does for the brain.”

Great, first they come for your alcohol, then they come for your dairy free-Magnums!

So, after three and a smidge months with nary a drop of the good stuff, I decided the alcohol-free life wasn’t for me. I asked the husband to grab a bottle of delicious pinot noir (he grabbed two, bless him) and we indulged. Like the good old days.

And you know what happened? Absolutely nothing. Nada. Zilch.

It was still just us, being us, watching B-grade horror, chatting about nothing and everything and laughing at my jokes. Adding alcohol back in didn’t miraculously make my life better, just as taking it out didn’t either.

In hindsight, all of those little changes had added up to something bigger and so I plan to keep leading a pretty much alcohol-free lifestyle for the foreseeable future, with the occasional tipple added in here and there.

As to when I should start to feel some of those life-changing benefits I’ve heard so much about, Sarah says that for most people, these aren’t felt for at least 90 days and for her it was around the six month mark.

So by my calculations you’ll be able to find me on the beach, at stupid o’clock, doing yoga come November.

Amanda De George is a freelance writer.