I took my last drink of alcohol June 24, 2023. 

I had been a regular drinker for pretty much my adult life. I don’t remember consuming my first beer, but my one and only one experience with Mad Dog 2020, the first time I recall getting vomit-inducing drunk, was when I was 17, and therefore my relationship with alcohol lasted about 40 years. I never kept count of how much I drank beyond ensuring I wouldn’t pass the legal limit for driving. My guess is I averaged four pints, five times a week, though I’m sure I often exceeded that. 

While I had given up alcohol in the past for stretches (I believe the longest was six months), this time I knew it was likely permanent—at least to the extent of how I related to alcohol. I divorced the routine; the relationship had died. There were reasons, of course, for giving up the habit (and it was a habit; I may not have been physically addicted, but I certainly was using alcohol as a crutch). Those reasons, and their effects, fall in three buckets: body, mind, and spirit. In this three-part series, I will discuss my reasons for and associated effects of quitting alcohol for each of these buckets. 

This post focuses on the body. 

The Effects of Alcohol—The Body 

For most of my decades-long dance with alcohol, my ill effects were confined to hangovers and battling weight gain. It would be later when another, potentially more serious physical effect entered the equation, one that would serve as the ultimate trigger for giving alcohol up completely. 

Weight: Weight management has been a struggle for me my entire life. Early on, I took to running as a solution, and accelerated the activity when I began drinking regularly. I also took up smoking as a teenager, therefore running became a way to try to stay neutral. I would work out with weights and run a few miles just so that I could drink and smoke guilt-free. One would balance the other. It worked for years, but ultimately was not a sustainable strategy. I don’t recommend it. 

However, no amount of working out could effectively counter the extra calories from alcohol and, sometimes, the associated “death dogs” (those things posing as meat spinning on chrome rollers at 7-Eleven) and other late-night meals. As a college student though it was easy to cut out calories in other areas, as dining funds were limited. I learned to limit real food to make room for beer calories and carbs. 

Weight management gets more difficult as we age, though. My metabolism seemed to drop significantly at age 30, resulting in slow weight gain over the years. If I hadn’t been a regular runner, I believe I would have had a serious obesity problem. 

In the latter years of my drinking, I had whittled alcohol down to mainly Michelob Ultra as a strategy to maintain weight, with an occasional flirtation with Samuel Adams or Yingling—the latter because it was freely available on tap in our office suite. 

Hangovers: I could have the worst hangovers, manifested as a horrible headache right behind my eyes. Some of these became migraines, for which I was prescribed a drug that would, within a half-hour, almost completely eliminate the migraine. While the drug left me quite loopy, it did provide a license to continue to test the boundaries with drinking. 

Eventually I learned (by listening to my body) that the root cause of these hangover headaches was dehydration, with a mix of low electrolytes. This, I began to alternate water with my Michelob Ultras (which some beer drinkers consider only a small step above water anyway). 

PAC: I could live with the weight management challenges and occasional hangovers, both which I learned to manage. But it was the PACs—Pre-Atrial Contractions—that led me to stop cold turkey. A PAC is an extra, early heartbeat that originates outside the upper heart chambers, which then resets the sinus rhythm. PACs in themselves are benign, so long as the burden (percentage of beats) is low. However, they can lead to Atrial Fibrillation (AFib), a condition where the heart beats irregularly and can lead to a stroke, or worse. 

My first encounter with PACs was the night after my stepfather’s funeral in 2022. My heart would beat two or three times, then skip a beat (or so I thought), then repeat. Much internet research led to the PAC self-diagnosis, further confirmed by two doctors and a cardiologist. The latter reassured me it wasn’t anything to be concerned about, but I knew my body. Something had changed. 

I began experimenting with diet and supplement changes, a long process. The silver bullet, which literally was very effective overnight, was to add taurine and l-arginine supplements to my daily routine. I also increased sodium supplements (LMNT is great), and removed alcohol from my diet. While I’ve made other adjustments to supplements and diet, these were the most impactful. Adding the supplements helped make me less susceptible to PACs and removing the triggers (namely, alcohol) reduced the conditions that resulted in PACs. 

I had reached a point where I could control my condition. For several months, I knew that drinking could (and usually did) trigger PACs (yet not nearly as intense as before the taurine, l-arginine, and sodium strategy), but I was able to continue enjoying beer, so long as the PACs didn’t get worse or trigger AFib. 

I received my first, and only, AFib warning from my Apple Watch (a great piece of technology), on June 24, 2023. That was a line I would not cross, and that day any beer, including non-alcoholic, that I had at the house, I dumped down the drain. I have not had an AFib warning since, and I am very thankful that I had been given a chance to turn around. 

Physical Changes 

After over eleven months without alcohol, I can say the most significant, and most welcome, benefit is the quality of my sleep. I routinely have the best nights of sleep. I cannot overemphasize how important and impactful this has been for my overall well-being. This alone is a powerful motivator to not return to drinking. I don’t want to give up my awesome sleep. 

I’ve developed a sweet tooth and enjoy ice cream (keto usually) on a regular basis. I also changed from drinking black coffee to adding creamer and sweetener (usually stevia). Because of that, I didn’t experience much fluctuation in my weight either way. I replaced carbs with carbs. 

I saw no significant change in blood pressure or running (my slowdown is age and mileage related). 

My daily PAC burden was probably around 15-20% at its worst. While it’s been a while since I’ve tested (I bought a Holter monitor as part of my strategy to learn what changes work), I’d guess my burden is less than 1%. 

Finally, among the most noticeable changes, I no longer have hangovers, and headaches are infrequent.

All of these changes have greatly benefitted my quality of life. However, as I mentioned in the beginning of the post, the physical aspect was but one of three that factored into my decision to retire alcohol. In part two, I’ll discuss the mental reasons and benefits.