Alcohol really isn’t all it’s made out to be. Despite the glamorous image that is often portrayed, the reality couldn’t be further from the truth.
All alcohol is, is poison.
Nothing more, nothing less.
When you can see that clearly, and you remove all of the conditioning, stopping becomes a logical and simple decision.
And today, I’m going to share 7 reasons why I stopped drinking alcohol and have made the solemn decision to stay on that path forever.
1) Hangovers Were Getting Worse
The first reason I stopped drinking was because the hangovers were getting worse and worse.
During our early drinking years, hangovers are almost non-existent.
However, as you may well have already experienced, that honeymoon period doesn’t last very long.
As my intake increased, the hangovers were slowly getting worse and worse.
They went from a bit of an upset stomach, to feeling like my whole world was collapsing.
I honestly felt like absolute death when I was hungover. I felt like I was double my age. I felt sleepy, slow and anxious.
And, because my drinking kept increasing, the severity and frequency of the hangovers kept increasing too.
Honestly, it’s great to wake up these days and have no hangover whatsoever. I just wake up, bounce out of bed and get on with my day.
It’s been 2 years since I drank, so I do take this for granted.
But if I rack my memory and remember just how bad hangovers used to be, I’m extremely grateful to no longer have them.
No more worrying about alcohol on my breath, no more worrying about not performing in my business, just wake up and get on with it!
That’s the first big reason I stopped drinking.
2) Making My Family Feel Worried
The second reason I stopped drinking was because I was making my family feel worried.
I’m just going to be really honest with you guys – but when I drank, I used to scare my family.
I’d go radio silent on them for days, if not weeks at a time. If they called, I’d ignore their call – especially if I had been drinking.
They knew I drank pretty heavily, so if I answered the call, I knew they’d be worried. So, I just ignored it.
It was almost as though I had to live a double life. I’m not sure if you guys can relate to that, but it was embarrassing. I was ashamed.
My family used to worry sick about me. Imagine having to put your family through that torture. It’s ridiculous, selfish and stupid behavior.
That’s not the man I wanted to be.
If I kept going that way, I’d slowly lose the respect not only from my family, but from myself as well.
These days, my relationship with my family is totally different.
They respect me, and they respect the work I’m doing now with Soberclear – helping other business-owners and professionals go through the same transformation I did.
No longer having to make my family worry is great.
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3) Packing on Some Extra Pounds
The third reason I stopped drinking is because I was packing on some pounds and getting out of shape.
I’ve always considered myself someone that maintains some good shape.
However, as we all know, alcohol has a bit of a three-pronged attack.
Firstly, you have all the extra calories from actually drinking alcohol. 7 calories per gram to be precise. And then, you have all the sugars and extra calories in those drinks.
Then, your food choices become worse. Your inhibitions go out the window, so there are additional calories from that.
Workouts also become a lot less frequent. It’s easy to justify skipping a workout when you’re hungover and feeling terrible.
And, it’s easy to go into a workout half-hearted when you’re hungover.
All of these things combined goes in one direction – increased body-fat and muscular atrophy.
And, this happened to me in a big way.
A few weeks before I stopped drinking for good, I was in the worst shape I had ever been. I was soft, puffy and wasn’t looking the way I wanted to look.
My strength had deteriorated and I was losing muscle.
As soon as I stopped drinking, I launched myself into a better life and hit the gym – HARD.
I got back into strength training and started taking good care of myself again.
That, was a great thing.
4) My Self-Esteem Was Crushed
The fourth reason I stopped drinking was because my self-esteem was crushed.
It’s quite hard to admit this – but when I drank alcohol, I felt really bad about who I was.
My self-esteem was low. Really low. I had some major issues in this department.
A combination of continually poisoning myself, not performing at 100% and breaking promises to myself is a terrible recipe for good mental health.
And, that was me – for a long time.
I just didn’t feel particularly confident.
I had actually tried to start this YouTube channel a number of times. I’d have periods in my life where I didn’t drink and I’d be confident, making videos and sharing my message with the world.
You can actually look back at some of my older videos. I’ve removed a lot of them, but there are a few. All those videos are from when I was having periods of sobriety.
However, when I started drinking again, that would be followed by doing absolutely nothing.
Because I was drinking, I felt bad about myself. Because I felt bad about myself, I didn’t put myself out there. Because I didn’t put myself out there, I felt worse about myself.
This cycle went on, and on, and on.
Now I’m sober, my self-confidence is totally different. I feel good about who I am and who I am becoming. It feels great.
I had the confidence to move to Thailand, start an online business helping people stop drinking and get into a relationship again.
The contrast in how I feel about myself is immense.
5) Anxiety and Depression Were Getting Worse
The fifth reason I stopped was the increase in anxiety and depression.
This leads on from the previous point. Whilst my self-esteem was slowly going downhill, this ended up leading to more depression.
Not feeling good about myself and who I was led to a cloud of negativity and bad emotions.
I’m not going to say I was clinically depressed – but my emotional health often took a beating.
In addition to this, because I wasn’t performing particularly well at anything, this led to an increase in anxiety.
I was always afraid and worried about the future. I never looked at the future with optimism. I always looked at it with fear.
I was afraid who I might have upset, whether I’d keep my job, how I’d keep going on drinking the way I am.
Combine a hangover with these emotions, and you’ve got a pretty strong recipe for disaster.
My emotional health was pretty bad.
This area has improved in such a dramatic way these days.
Anxiety and depression have decreased to a point where they are almost non-existent.
I’m still human – and I’m not going to say I’m 100% perfect in this area – but the contrast is night and day compared to a few years ago.
6) I Knew I’d Never Reach My Potential
The sixth reason I stopped drinking was fear of not reaching my potential in life.
I knew that I was put on this earth to do something epic. I wasn’t put here to give life a half-hearted attempt. I truly want to give it my all.
I want to travel, build a business, have a great a relationship, have a family and just build a great life.
However, the amount of times I had written or journaled about alcohol being the one thing stopping me from reaching that was crazy.
I knew it was the one obstacle I had to overcome to reach any kind of potential in life.
Alcohol was like a barrier that needed blasting with a damn shotgun or something. It had to go.
Now I’ve gotten rid of alcohol – my potential is 100% possible again. I can set bigger goals and I actually have a chance of achieving them – instead of self-destructing after a few weeks.
This is a big thing for me – and a huge benefit of not drinking alcohol.
7) Alcohol Stopped Providing Any Benefits
The seventh reason I stopped drinking is because alcohol stopped providing any benefits…
Whilst this isn’t really a reason I stopped drinking, I wanted to put it in here so you can understand the mindset shift that occurred in my life.
I used to look at alcohol as something that provided value in my life.
I was convinced that it gave me some kind of benefit.
I thought it made me more confident, more courageous and it helped me have a good time.
I thought it made me more sociable and helped me to relax.
This was all part of the conditioning, and all of the reasons are 100% false. None of them, at all, are true.
When I started to understand that there are, in fact, zero benefits to drinking poison AT ALL – everything started changing.
So, maybe I should rephrase what I said earlier. It wasn’t really that alcohol stopped providing benefits.
It was understanding that all the so called “benefits” weren’t benefits at all. It was all fabricated in my own mind.
Being able to see that there are no benefits to drinking poison was a huge part of the journey – so I had to throw it in here!
This was arguably the catalyst that got me on the path that I’m on today – which is creating Soberclear.com and building this YouTube channel!