I am certainly in a group of friends that is always accompanied by alcohol, but my family mostly behaves with moderate drinking, at least during gatherings. My observation since quitting is that pretty much everything is just as (or more) enjoyable without drinking, except for drunk people.
It still takes a little bit to get beyond of that feeling of missing out when you join up with other drinkers, but after that, no regrets at all.
One thing Iâve noticed because I cut drinking WAY down is I have crazy amounts of energy - like the energy I had 10 years ago when I was doing triathlons and marathons. MiniT-2 even says that I need to sit down and breath (relax) daily. My brain is almost working on overload.
My guess is that your brain hasnât ârecalibratedâ to operating w/o the influence that alcohol has had in the past.
My energy went up significantly when I cut back and was a big reason to fully cut it out as the impact of having of just a few drinks was much more noticeable.
I donât think my brain has recalibrated - I still feel like have more energy now than I did 20 years agoâŚand this is about a year after quitting.
Note: I also lost a bunch of weight and exercise a lot more now, so it is not a well controlled experiment, but I also ran daily and lost 20 pounds at the start of COVID and donât recall a similar result.
I do the Wednesday Weekly Weigh-in thread and have just hit the 30#s down mark as well. It took over 2 years to actually reduce my beer consumption. I got serious at the beginning of 2024 and that is where my weight started to shift.
i get that as Iâve aged. one, fine. two, ok. three depends on what time of day the last one was had. more and/or later is terrible for me in ways it wasnât when i was younger. starting days at so much less than 100% is no fun.
@Vorian_Atreides i suspect that @T-roy 's energy is not so much brain adjusting but that he was reverting back to the hyper-kinetic person Iâve met before
Yup, and feeling lethargic the next day was always something I could fight through, but the hangxiety really ramped up on top of it which is a constant unpleasant to deal with the next day.
Came across a slightly liqour flavoured cake at a kidâs christmas thing. Was rushing to eat something while partner watched kiddo, bite one, ah crap, might have alcohol, but probably not much, bite 5, no, more than I want to deal with, gave rest to partner.
Apparently some wine, not like rum cake, but wouldâve been happier with none, and, wtf at a kidâs party?
Thatâs a weird one for a kids party, but good for you for maintaining your boundaries.
New favorite NA/low alc brewery, and ownerâs journey to NA sounds very familiar - a drinking habit that escalated during COVID into something unsustainable, in particular keeping booze around the house. Their beer is very goodâŚI am sure it is a bit watery compared to a real beer just like the other NAs that exist, but almost a year out since I have had a real beer, I no longer notice. The flavor profile is top notch.
Had another couple of Deschutes black butte NAs last night. Rate highly, full of flavor and not watery at all.
I have that in the fridge as well. Best darker NA beer i have found. Guinness 0 is good, but as a craft beer drinker, thatâs far from the world of stouts.
Also, shame on me for conflating porters and stouts. They are technically different styles based on the ingredients but can overlap a lot on flavor.
Seriously, thatâs a place you donât expect to find alcohol laced desserts. Especially without a very clear warning. Most kids wonât like a cake with wine in it, but they wonât understand that they wonât like it because it will still look delicious to them.
Sounds like a sure fire way to have a lot of cake in the trash after unsuspecting guests take a bite and discover that they donât want it after all.
I would feel zero guilt about throwing said cake away in your shoes, FWIW. I mean you found a solution, but thatâs just rude on the part of the host.
I love cake and I love red wine but I generally prefer to enjoy them separately. Iâd be annoyed and Iâm not even trying to avoid alcohol.
BTW, this reminds me of an incident from my childhood. I was probably about 7.
My grandparents took the extended family out to a very fancy restaurant when we visited, which was a thing they liked to do. I was excited because it meant I got shrimp cocktail and restaurant cake, and thereâs nothing better than restaurant cake.
The dessert tray looked amazing but there was an especially delicious-looking chocolate cake. I ordered that and eagerly awaited its arrival. The grown ups were busy talking when it arrived, pausing only long enough to comment on what an impressive-looking piece of cake it was. I took a giant bite and⌠
. It was AWFUL. Tried just the frosting: Just the cake: I could hear, in my head, any one of the grown ups saying âwell twig if you didnât want the cake you shouldnât have ordered it.â I knew I was stuck eating it but⌠YUCKY!!!
Eventually a grown-up noticed that I was eating the cake VERY slowly and asked if there was something wrong with it. I hung my head and quietly admitted that I didnât like it, bracing for the admonition that I knew was coming. My uncle tried a bit and declared that it was dripping with red wine. The grown ups predictably got angry ⌠but to my utter amazement not at me! They were angry at the waiter for not warning them about the wine! And even more astonishing they declared that I could order a different dessert!!! (One which they pre-verified definitely did NOT contain any alcohol.)
The restaurant did not charge my grandparents for the first dessert (which my uncle ate).
All of this completely blew my mind at the time, but that was my introduction to alcohol-laced desserts.
I saw the 12 pack of SN-NAs and bought it. The Trail Pass Brewvez was really good. 95 calories though. But it does give more flavor than the lower calorie NA beers.
Sam Adams âJust the Hazeâ is a nice fuller tasting NA. Bravus has a nice lineup as well. I actually found their West Coast IPA on tap once!
Recently started buying HOP WTR over the Laguitas Hoppy Refresher. HOP WTR is at about the price we can get Lagunitas when Lagunitas is on sale.
Itâs really good! The consensus seems to be better than Lagunitas.
Very seltzery with a nice hop flavor - I donât see these, otherwise I would buy them (I am a fan of seltzer H2O)
I prefer the Hop Splash from Sierra Nevada over Lagunitas.