What happens when you stop drinking alcohol?

It’s a question I have been asking myself for quite a while.

Ever since my late teen years, I have been drinking alcohol, just a few beers every now and then, and then over the weekend a few more.

Later, when I was at business school and responsible for organizing the student parties with our student club, the intake increased drastically.

It sparked my confidence and helped to have fun (I thought).

In our group of friends, it wasn’t unusual to drink a lot when we got together.

Over the years, alcohol helped me to get inspiration, and to think out of the box, but very few of those ideas and projects you come up with during those moments ever get to see the light of day.

It helped me relax, to connect with friends and strangers and to have a good time and fuel my inspiration. So I thought.

My drinking was never a problem, and I never lost control or blacked out (which is a miracle given the quantities I swallowed during my student years)

And luckily I never got addicted.

I have always been a social drinker, so I hardly ever drank alone.

But the reality is also that since I was 16, I never had more than a few weeks without alcohol. I am 47 right now, and that is just a crazy thing.

The first time I had a pause of one month was at the time we were taking the decision to sell everything and move to Spain with our family. I wanted to make sure I would be as enthusiastic and thrilled about the idea without having a few glasses of wine as well.

It turned out I was, and we made the move, but that’s another story.

When I turned 40 I started running. Not to do a marathon (that’s not on my bucket list, and everyone seems to be running marathons, so I won’t), but just because running is freedom. You just need a pair of running shoes and off you go, you can do it anywhere, anytime. I tried to start running previously but I didn’t succeed at that and envied people that seemed to be having the discipline to regularly run and enjoy it.  But now I decided I was going to start running and I was going to do that for the rest of my life. It wasn’t more than a simple decision. And I have not stopped ever since. I now run between 1-3 times a week, wherever I am.

The result was, apart from getting in good shape and losing a few kilos, is I became much more conscious of how my energy levels were and how my body felt.

I noticed that on Mondays, I didn’t run as swiftly as on Wednesdays.

At the same time, I realized that my mood on a Monday sometimes was less positive (not a lot, but noticeably different).

I wondered if the drinks I had over the weekend had anything to do with that. Although during the last years, I mostly drink during the weekends and not even a lot (left aside for some exceptions), but it still did seem to have an effect.

That got me thinking…

Just as I quit smoking 20 years ago, which heavily improved my life (I used to smoke 35 cigarettes a day; when I do something I go all in :-) ), I got curious about what would happen if I’d give up drinking alcohol for a while.

How would that make me feel? And how would it improve my life and maybe even help me to create breakthroughs in other areas?

How would I deal with the many situations where you are supposed to drink? And how would people react?

This sounded like an interesting experiment to me, so over the last year and I half I have been pondering over the above questions and thinking about how to anticipate certain situations and became more conscious about the effects of drinking on my everyday life.

The summer, with all the barbecues, parties, spontaneous gatherings, holidays and hanging out on terraces would actually be a great place to do my experiment. On top of that I will be going on a mountain bike trip around the Mont Blanc with a few friends in September, and the extra energy will certainly come in handy.

I am now two months into my experiment and so far it has been a positive experience.

• I have had no negative thoughts

• More energy

• No worrying if I drank too much to drive

• A brighter mind/more clarity

• Fewer conflicts and I stay calmer when they arise

• Improved relationships

• My running is better

• My cycling is better

• My body feels stronger

• I probably lost a little body fat as well (usually the alcohol swelled me up a little over the weekend, which was gone by the next weekend, but that cycle is broken now)

I have become a bit of an expert on non-alcoholic drinks (still a lot to be learned there though)

The fantastic feeling of being in control

This motivates me to chase more of my dreams

It seems that other people drink a little less as well when someone isn’t drinking.

And I haven’t had a single negative reaction, but a lot of interesting conversations.

Did I experience any negative sides as well?

Well, honestly, there were a few moments when I was with my wife sitting in a great restaurant overlooking the sea in Ibiza, that I wouldn’t have minded a nice glass of wine. But that feeling didn’t last long. It didn’t spoil the evening either. We had a great time.

I also noticed that the offering of original and good non-alcoholic beverages in bars and restaurants is often very limited (some bars offer alcohol-free Heineken, which tastes like a dog peeing in your mouth, but then chilled, it’s a disgrace they even sell that stuff).

So, the positive largely outweighs the negative and it looks like it isn’t really necessary to drink to have a good time either.

Now, one of the things I always valued the most is my freedom, and freedom to me means being able to do what I want and need to do in this life, without being dominated by useless rules or restrained by things that do not serve me.

And this experiment seems to be giving me more freedom.

On top of that, as I am working hard to get established as a coach, I want to do this full-on with a bright mind and loads of energy for my clients. Skipping alcohol helps me a lot in this.

I have no idea how long I will be doing this as I haven’t set an end date or a specific goal other than just to see what would happen and how it would make me feel.

Achieving big things is all about creating powerful habits, one little step at a time.

Make it fun to experiment to find out what you like and what you don’t and see what moves you forward.

Have you ever done such an experiment, or any other that involved a radical change of habits?

What happened and how did it make you feel?

I’d love to hear about your experiences/thoughts on this.

Wishing you a great summer!

Love,

Bart

PS: I help aspiring and established entrepreneurs in creating a more meaningful life with more freedom. If you want to find out more about that, don’t hesitate to reach out.