For many, an alcoholic beverage at the end of the day is just what is needed to wind down. This has been such a fabric of our society that it is expected and certainly accepted as good behaviour. Something goes wrong and “I need a drink” is the automatic response. It is considered funny and the subject of many memes which, I found hilarious and would have been the first one to share them.
That was until, from personal experience and my journey through anxiety, lead me to realise that alcohol does nothing to decrease your anxiety. Maybe it did 20 years ago when I had a hard day at work. If I came via the bottle shop and had one glass of wine, it probably did relax me, but when you are consuming over a bottle of wine every night, it does NOT help with anxiety and it is in fact the cause. That 3am wake up, mind racing I believed was due to work stress, but I now know that anxiety was due to the start of alcohol withdrawal.
In his book, “Alcohol Explained”, William Porter shows that it is the need for more alcohol that leads to the 3, 4, or 5am wake up. Then throughout the day, the anxiety continues due to the body craving more alcohol. Alcohol is a depressant and the body responds to this by releasing cortisol. Studies have shown that cortisol (also known as the stress hormone) stays at a high level in your body not only when you are intoxicated but when you are withdrawing from the effects of intoxication (hung over) or waiting for your next drink, thus, your anxiety is elevated because of the presence of cortisol in your system, and when this remains high over a period of time, you are in a constant state of heightened anxiety. If you have heard the term anxiety, yes it is real and this is why it happens. It can be quite confronting to learn but once you do your own experimentation (especially if you are a regular drinker), you will see that the evidence is hard to refute and impossible to forget.
To prove this to yourself, you need to take at least 1 week break from alcohol and really reflect about what is causing your anxiety. During this time, I encourage you to use a fitness watch and look at your heart rate. For many, the results are dramatic. My resting heart rate reduced by 20 beats per minute in the week after going alcohol free. That is obviously a different measure to anxiety but when you see this evidence on the fitness app, you can start to consider a little more critically the effect that alcohol is having on your anxiety. Journaling and paying attention to your anxiety during the first week or so of being alcohol free will provide additional data points that may cause you to question if your relationship with alcohol is causing more damage than you thought it was.
If taking a week break from alcohol fills you with dread, this in itself is another piece of evidence that it is high time you reflected on your relationship with alcohol.
If you would like to learn more about the sober curious movement and are considering a break from the bottle, I am running a webinar in conjunction with Mindfulness Works next week. I would love to see you there.
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