1000 Days Sober
On November 10 I missed a major milestone in my life. A couple of friends had birthdays but I wasn’t really looking for anything else of significance on that particular day. It was only last night that I realized that it may have been more than 1000 days since I have put any alcohol onto my body. I pulled out one of those “how many days between” calculators, put in February 14, 2019 and discovered that my gut feeling was correct. I was over my first 1000 days of abstinence.
What has happened in those 1000 days? What is different about life now? Do I feel better? Am I healthier?
The 2 most obvious manifestations are 1) I have lost more than 25 kgs in weight. Sure, there are many others factors and components that have contributed to losing the weight but cutting alcohol from my daily regimen played a big role and B) I don’t wake up in the morning with a debilitating hangover that makes me want to close my eyes again and feign death. Another significant factor is that I am saving a fortune and my cost of living has gone down significantly. And as an “appendix” to this list I no longer have to hide the fact that I am a drinker from the people who I love who tolerated me throughout my years of indiscretion.
Before I go on I have to admit to those of you who don’t know me that I was a big drinker. I could knock back a 750ml bottle of Vodka or Whiskey in a couple of hours.
The other markers that stand out like the proverbial “dog’s balls” after 1000 days of abstaining are that my blood pressure is now ridiculously normal and that is without any form of medication. It is always 120/80 or lower. Very occasionally it might get up to 128. My resting heart rate sits at between 60-65 and goes down to about 42 when I sleep. My liver has repaired itself and is no longer compromised with layers of fat, my pre-diabetic condition has been totally reversed and my blood sugar virtually never goes over 5, it is normally in the low 4s. My brain feels like it was sent of to a detox clinic and cleaned out.It now seems to be pretty much rejuvenated. The mental clarity that I feel most of the time is something that I would have not thought possible. I have my emotions under control by which I mean that I respond with what I believe is the appropriate emotion to situations around me but I don’t get stuck in them and I don’t let them control me, I bounce back quickly from negative emotions and can sustain positive ones. I have become fit over those 1000 days or should I say fit for a person who is fast approaching 70. I walk almost every day between 1-2 hours and slip in other exercises when I can. I never seem to get sick, touch wood or should I say that if I do get sick (unknown to myself) I am asymptomatic. I feel that I am in a safe place when it comes to Covid, my body will know what to do to combat it. I sleep well almost every night for an average of 8 hours, I have lucid dreams for an average of 2 hours a night and I get a fair amount of deep sleep. I generally wake up feeling refreshed and ready to go. I am dressing better and taking more care of my appearance than I have in decades. I make an effort to dress well and in a varied manner every day. My communication skills and my willingness to communicate have improved significantly. I have a far greater level of curiosity and my urge to learn new things has gone out the roof. I have developed a profound interest in how bodies function on a cellular and metabolic level and use what I learn to improve the condition that my body is in. Most of the aches and pains that I experienced have gone. There are a few parts of my body that I took too far during my drinking years. nerves for example. I developed peripheral neuropathy in my feet over the past 10 years. This has improved slightly but nerve damage is a beast that lurks independently and the rate of improvement and regeneration is very slow.
I’m pretty certain that I have a greater capacity for compassion toward others but at the same time some of the naivety that I had about helping people has changed. I can see objective factors in my “universe” more clearly and as such seem to have the capacity to apply reason and logic a lot more effectively. On top of this (I know it sounds mushy) I feel more genuine love for my fellow man/woman and thems.
My understanding of my relationship to the universe around me has increased and in some ways become more simple which in itself has given me more strength and potential wisdom. My acceptance and tolerance of factors that I cannot control has increased in manifold ways. In other words I have stopped fighting against and resisting those things that I have no control over. I have learned to observe them objectively which gives me a clarity that I did not have in the past.
I no longer believe I am being glib when I say “I am me. I am not my body. I am not my mind. I am not my emotions. I am not my pain, my loss, my wins, my pleasure. I am simply me. I have to admit that I haven’t got to the bottom of what me is yet though. Maybe it’s just that (me) and I should stop trying to over complicate it.
I am not naive enough to attribute all of these improvements to the simple act of stopping drinking but I must point out that it was the catalyst that got the ball rolling and if I had not taken that step 1000 days ago I would not be where I am now.
I am writing this in the hope that somebody, somewhere who is in a similar situation to me may read it and gain some inspiration to turn their life around from moving toward an early death or prolonged illness to slowly digging themselves out of the hole that they have dug for themselves.
I was at the end of my 66th year when I went cold turkey and I am about to turn 70 on February 5, 2022. So if I can achieve all of this at this late stage of my life then so can anyone.
As an addendum I feel I need to throw in a few caveats. In November 2020 I was diagnosed with a mysterious cancer called an SCC or squamous cell carcinoma. The oncologists couldn’t find the primary tumour, even after 2 operations but the cancer had metastasised to a lymph node in the left side of my neck. It would appear that by some sort of luck that the condition was discovered in relatively early stages but nonetheless it was cancer and it did have a good chance of killing me. After a huge amount of study and hard work I have overcome this situation. I have been given the all clear and looking back I find it interesting that I never felt sick, never had any symptoms of a dying person and never even felt compromised when I had my radiation treatment. There were many, many things that I did to combat the cancer but it is needless to say that if I had still have been a heavy drinker then my chances of recovery would have greatly diminished. I’ve come out of the experience in better shape than I was when I went into it.
My peripheral neuropathy is still an issue but this doesn’t stop me from going for a 2-3 hour walk whenever I feel like it. Sure, my feet hurt and burn after a big walk and if I put my attention on them at any point in time they feel weird but I feel confident that the nerves are improving albeit very slowly.
