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Comment by trts | Hacker News Reader

I decided to give up alcohol for a year. That was three years ago and doubt I will ever go back.

Aside from having better sleep than at any other point as an adult, I truly enjoy the activities I partake in just as much, if not more, than when I still paired them with alcohol. It took about 6 months to stop feeling like I was missing out, and now I feel like everyone else is.

Anxiety in general is noticeably lower (this was a huge windfall for me when the pandemic started).

Enjoyment of conversation, food, setting, all seem richer and doesn't flag as quickly once the alcohol is metabolized.

The end of the drinking activities don't leave me sleepy or craving bad food. I can go home and read a book or get some work done.

General reduction in workout recovery time and aches and pains.

Holidays are way easier to get through.

The only drawbacks have been the situations you discover are entirely dedicated to consumption, e.g. dive bars, beer gardens, work holiday parties and happy hours. Without having dulled your senses adequately, some of these things tend to be only loud, smelly, or without much to offer besides booze and banter.

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> Anxiety in general is noticeably lower

you were more anxious when you were drinking ? that's a first

not to look naive, but there was a period of my life having a beer [0] was really the only way for me to exist outside my bedroom walls, i wasn't even tipsy.. I was just able to sit in a room without crippling dread.

[0] I didn't drink, but the few times I did at parties I realized how drinking a bit was lifting me up to ~people's normal

> you were more anxious when you were drinking ? that's a first

drinking habit increases baseline anxiety. it's not that having a drink will make you more anxious in next few hours.

Conditions like GERD where stomach acids come up into the esophagus can be mistaken for anxiety or panic attacks. Alcohol can make GERD type symptoms a lot worse.

it isn't necessary mistaken. The issues like GERD and some other around stomach/digestion affect how your muscles handle the diaphragm and that may strangle the breathing in various ways and also obstruct heart beating movements - that all limits the oxygen supply, and while sitting relaxed doing nothing the oxygenation may be sufficient it struggles to cover any additional increased requirements which spike due to increased body and/or brain activity, and that insufficient oxygen delivery naturally makes one feel anxious.

Interesting. If I get drunk two nights in a row, there are high chances that I’ll wake up the night with a panic attack.

I grew up with panic attacks, and they were random and I had no clue what was happening to me until college when I first learned of the phrase (prior to that I just referred to it as “the chaos”).

I can control and fight them off them now. But if I drink too much, then my mind and body are weakened and I can’t fight them off (while sleeping!).

Anyway, I’ll look up this GERD thing.

This is actually quite common because alcohol consumption effects GABA and serotonin levels in the brain, as well as the sensitization of GABAergic and serotonergic neurons, and both neurotransmitters are involved in anxiety and panic. It can also be the result of a very light kindling[1] effect.

The colloquial term seems to be "hangxiety" if you want a term to search for.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindling_(sedative%E2%80%93hyp...

I'm glad someone has mentioned this. After a night of drinking I always feel nauseous to the point that it ruins my whole day. Even after a moderate amount of alcohol or any kind of mixing.

I'm not certain I have GERD, but it's been my hypothesis. Anyone else have similar experiences? I can never go to a brunch/lunch after drinking in fear that my nausea will turn into something worse.

Just for another perspective I have GERD spurred on by a hiatal hernia and don’t experience nausea this way after drinking. I only really get nauseous if I drink to excess.

GERD made me quit Scotch (other spirits are probably forbidden but I love undiluted scotch) , red wine, dark beer, black and white tea and dark chocolate.

I used to have a glass (2oz) of undiluted high proof scotch a few times a week after a good workday but around 37y I had to stop.

I wish something could replicate the taste and the warmth of the Aberlour A'bunadh but alas I fear that replicating the feeling of +60% ABV without using something even more deleterious than ethanol is impossible.

There's a bit of a rebound effect. Alcohol can decrease anxiety while drunk, while increasing baseline sober anxiety.

This is, of course, in the absence of other factors that may influence an individual's anxiety

Alcohol can reduce anxiety in the short term, but it can bite you in the ass in the mid-to-long term by making you even more anxious the next day.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jan/27/hangxie...

aight, i see my shortcomings, indeed it's pretty unsurprising that it messes with your emotions long term.. i only saw the usual removal of inhibition on occasional drinking.

My anecdote here is, I quit drinking temporarily three years ago to lose weight. My blood pressure went through the roof (Hypertension II) and I had extreme general anxiety. My physiological response was so intense I started thinking I might be in danger level of addiction. As I researched this more, it turns out high blood pressure and anxiety are normal responses.

Most people I know would not think I had a problem because I was functional and I didn't day drink. I might have two or three strong (> 7%) IPAs in the evening daily before bed. I would also on occasion binge pretty hard on weekends with friends.

After some time of not drinking my anxiety actually got better and I decided to keep it that way. I'm not a teetotaler but I have completely stopped bringing alcohol home and binge drinking in general. I still find that 2 drinks is harder than none, however.

My own take away (which may be different for everyone) is that alcohol is a reasonable way to make uncomfortable social situations tolerable but when used to treat a more general anxiety, it will likely make it worse.

I'm in a similar boat. I stopped, but without a timeframe for how long. I just knew I had to cut back, but that wasn't working well, so I just stopped, and when I was offered a drink, I'd say "I don't drink", because here in Australia, I find if you say no to a drink, it's mostly forced on you. The statement put an end to that.

However, I also internalized being an non-drinker. It became part of my identity.

I don't notice a measurable difference in my life, which is also part of the reason I didn't pick it up again. It wasn't enriching my life, but I'm also not a better person without it.

Having said all that, I am still looking for a replacement for what to drink when I do go to a bar. So far nobody has hit the right mixture of a drink that isn't defined by being non-alcoholic, but replaces the "I deserve this" attitude of having a drink .

My favorite non-alcoholic beverage is equal parts soda water and tonic water, a couple of splashes of orange juice and a few dashes of bitters. Tweak as necessary.

At the holidays I like non-alcoholic sparkling apple juice.

I also find soda water out of a can to be a good beer replacement on hot days. I think part of this is the sound of opening the can and the carbonation.

No idea if any of those will fit your needs.

Having tried many drinks, I try to trend away from acidic ones for the sake of my teeth.

Doesn't leave much though. Peppermint tea.

Yeah, it still feels like "soda", which is what I'm trying to get away from. I've been speaking to a friend about creating something new.

My requirements are: - not trying to be alcohol/imitation alcohol - not soda/juice/kombucha - has the "occasion" attitude of alcohol

I admit this is probably 90% branding and 10% the drink itself. As I was mentioning to my friend, you probably wouldn't feel strange ordering a redbull at a bar without the vodka, because of the marketing and how it isn't considered a soft-drink. I don't know anybody that drinks redbull every day (though I'm sure there are people that do).

Something more mature than a soft drink in flavor profile, something that I hopefully don't chug, so it lasts like a cocktail or beer.

Keen to hear others thoughts on that.

There's Lyres https://lyres.com/ - which pretends to be gin/wisky/etc And Non (https://non.world) - which is very juice, but at the price of wine.

I'm a regular drinker, but I do a dry month every year. I make it a point to not let it change my social life at all — which means still spending plenty of time at bars and socializing with people drinking. I typically drink non-alcoholic beers (there are good ones that taste like beer) or ciders when available. When not, I go for soda-bitters, sometimes with a splash of lime juice.

Lyres, Seedlip, and other non-alcoholic spirits just don't do it for me. They taste like water.

I drink a prodigious amount of decaf coffee. I buy quality, whole bean, Swiss Water Process stuff and make it in a French press. I drink it black, and the combination of good beans and a lot of effort in tuning my brew process makes for a palatable, sophisticated taste. The routine of making it in the morning makes drinking it through the day feel earned. As far as I can tell, it's a pretty healthy drink.

Another suggestion would be to get into quality teas. I particularly like Tie Guan Yin.

I drink coffee every day, unfortunately I can't stand tea, I can't stomach it at all!

I'm thinking more along the lines of how we "use" alcoholic drinks, and something to replace that. It doesn't need to be healthy. More about getting the right mood and taste, and likely not the typical every day drink.

I'm also in Australia, and though I do drink alcohol, I have wondered recently if it couldn't be a federal or state mandate that restaurants/bars/etc serving beer/wine/spirits must also have alcohol free equivalents - 0% beer, alcohol free wine, etc. If not a directive, maybe something strongly encouraged.

> when I was offered a drink, I'd say "I don't drink", because here in Australia, I find if you say no to a drink, it's mostly forced on you

I just avoid it as much as I can, but for me saying I don’t drink wouldn’t always work. People would just insist “just one drink”.

Friend of mine said, as joke, I should start telling people that I am an alcoholic (which I am not) so they leave me alone. I actually tried this and it works every time.

I got a drone pilot's license. 8 hour limitation after drinking basically obliterated my drinking over night because the nieces can immediately be like "Can we fly the drone?".

Not for everyone, because 13 year old nieces can be dangerous with drones.

> The end of the drinking activities don't leave me sleepy or craving bad food. I can go home and read a book or get some work done.

This is one of my biggest motivations for reducing my drinking during the week. Even having just one or two beers after work, the probability that I read or work on a side project drops close to 0.

This is also why I very rarely day-drink. Couple beers in afternoon and if I even stop nothing productive happens for the rest of the day. Even if something productive did happen I would get tired and have to take a nap. Now my sleep schedule is even more wrecked.

Strictly a night drinker.

Same here. A drink at lunch and the rest of my day is pretty much shot, so it's only happening if I'm on vacation or my plan was to lie on the beach all day anyway.

> the probability that I read or work on a side project drops close to 0.

As someone who has done quite a few major projects on personal time and reads quite a lot as well: I personally have found the attitude that I must always be working on something or "improving myself" far more dangerous than excessive drinking.

Certainly there is balance, and I obviously don't advocate giving up all personal projects in order to drink. But the fact that many people on HN, myself included, feel bad if they're not working on some side project or improving some skill is its own kind of escapism.

I drink and smoke weed a lot more now then when I was younger. I still get many projects done, and read a ton, but there is a certain value to an evening spent stoned just getting lost in a video game or listening to music. Reflecting on it now, I also find that by any objective measure the output from my personal projects is always probably a bit higher now, though I have a lot more fun.

Oh yeah don't get me wrong, I have had my fair share of drunken/high video game time :)

FWIW this is a side project I _want_ to work on, I'm not trying to make money on it, purely a passion project. So I'm not feeling pressured to work on it, I'm just trying to keep the momentum going and I found that drinking will stop that momentum.

I go through waves of video games -> projects -> reading, it's always fluctuating.

When I'm drinking, the probability that I work on a side project is also much lower than when I'm sober. However when I do work on one, as long as I don't pass my Ballmer Peak, I work very hard on it. Sometimes I even do good work. Sometimes it's even good the next day.

I have been working on lowering my alcohol consumption, though. It's been working, slowly, over time.

The last time I had a drink was a beer festival. I used to drink beer a lot in my early 20s and beer festivals were something I looked forward to. I slept terribly that night and felt awful the next day. It suddenly dawned on me that this happened every time and I realised alcohol does nothing good for me at all. It's expensive, unhealthy, slows my senses, makes me less funny, makes me worse at sex, makes me sleep worse and often ruins the next day.

I don't plan to ever drink again. It is necessary to have the confidence to order something non-alcoholic and be straight with people if they question it. I don't drink. If they ask why (which is exceedingly rare), I ask why they don't smoke. That usually gets the message across.

A eureka moment was required for you to realize that... alcohol induces hangovers?

I used to think there was some kind of intake threshold and hangovers were the result of surpassing that threshold. The "eureka" moment was realising that any amount alcohol made me feel worse.

I stopped drinking because I wasn't going out due to the pandemic. I've come to a similar conclusion, and intend to make this a long-term decision.

Genuine question: what do you drink instead? Do you stick to water or do you order any kind of soda/lemonade (or something I’m not thinking about)

Club soda (or flavored seltzer) + bitters. There's alcohol there still but less than half a percent ABV. Not enough that it tastes boozy or impairs my judgement. Drinking one relatively low ABV beer impairs my judgement enough that a second drink sounds like a good idea, the soda and bitters never does that for me.

This (or similar) is my go-to. In a rocks glass, it also looks enough like a cocktail that no one makes a point of asking (if that matters to you).

>no one makes a point of asking (if that matters to you).

Actually it does kind of annoy me when I just drink water that people will ask all the time. My go to has been seltzer + lime + wedge because I do like to have some taste, and it does look cocktail-ish.

I've loved club soda - and dislike alcohol; however, never thought of adding bitters. I like this idea a lot.

How are bitters with plain seltzer? I have a sodastream and am looking for some good flavors. Can't figure out anything that tastes as good as flavored bubly or lacroix and that doesn't have lots of sugar.

I personally like it a lot. It's my go-to at a bar when I don't feel like drinking

That said I also like plain seltzer and bitter flavors generally (dark chocolate, black coffee, IPAs), so YMMV.

I love pairing bitters with my sodastream! A few of my favorite recipes are: 1) Grapefruit & Cherry, 2) Cardamom, and 3) Orange & Cranberry. Clearly it's all to taste, but a 3-4 dashes of each bitter is a good starting point for a ~16oz glass of seltzer.

Fee Brothers sells a 12 piece variety pack which is a great way to experiment. After that you have quite a rabbit hole of bitters brands and flavors to explore!

If you haven't tried them yet, Bubly makes drops for Sodastream.

Whoa, game-changing. When I got my sodastream they just had lousy syrups. If these are like the canned bubly drinks then that will be amazing.

I also gave up most drinking where I drink probably 5-6 times a year, usually with a dinner where I want a nice mixed cocktail or at a large holiday party/wedding, where again I can enjoy mixed cocktails. I personally drink soda as a replacement since I drink almost strictly water otherwise.

Tangentially related anecdote:

I went from always ordering a soft drink at restaurants to only drinking water. The swich occurred almost overnight, and I ended up losing about 25 lbs.

The reason I did this was entirely social, and it happened by accident. My parents didn't have soft drinks at home, except occasional leftovers after a party, so ordering a soft drink at a restaurant was sort of a "special treat," even if it was an infinitely refillable fountain drink. It turns out 3 glasses of soda have a metric fuckton of sugar.

Anyway, when I went to college, literally none of my friends would order soft drinks when we'd go out to eat. I'm not sure if it was because people were being thrifty, or for ease of splitting the bill, or maybe they just knew more about sugar than I did, but being the one person to order a soda felt so awkward that I just stopped and eventually never went back.

I lost five pounds or so switching from Coke to Diet Coke.

There is more weight loss to be had switching from Diet Coke to water. It's obviously not the calorie content, but the insulin response from sweet tasting things that will occur even with artificial sweeteners.

Does that apply to all artificial sweeteners such as sucralose or is it specific to aspartame?

I have yet to find a single study confirming any rumored ill effects of artificial sweeteners, including aspartame. At least in any reasonable consumption amounts since you need so little of the sweetener.

People (probably those with controlling interests in sugar cane/beet industry) have been trying unsuccessfully to find/prove any sort of real deleterious effect from aspartame specifically, and lower-calory sweeteners in general for about 50 years now, so I think we can say they're fine.

I don't think there is scientific evidence to back that up from what I could find: https://www.oatext.com/Blood-glucose-and-insulin-response-to...

Thanks! While that is a very small study, it seems pretty convincing.

I haven't read that it affects insulin response. But I have heard that it can cause you to crave more calories because it gives you the perception of consuming something but without the calories. I'm not sure what the mechanism is here or if maybe it is just psychological.

Do you have a link to a reputable source? I've heard this a lot, and have a company in the nutrition space, but I haven't seen anything conclusive

I'm not sure about insulin resistance, but sweet-craving builds a tolerance kind of like spicy foods. That is, the more you eat sweet things, the more sweetness your body craves.

I've been using erythritol and stevia as sweeteners for years, and even with those, I find myself craving sweet things after consuming them more than when I go relatively long periods of time without eating sugary things or using sweetener.

The end result, at least for me, is that I crave sweet food more even when I use artificial sweeteners, making it harder to say no to eating shitty food later on.

Similar: one day in 2012 I quit soda cold turkey. It was supposed to be for 4 days as a challenge (I was drinking probably 2L+ a day of full-sugar cola / red bull at that point). I just didn't restart, and haven't had a glass of cola since. Now if I have a sip of Coca-cola it tastes so nasty I'll feel like spitting it out. Originally started drinking it because family didn't, so it was a way of showing my independence (and of doing what schoolmates could).

I prefer to eat my calories rather than eat them. So I drink water and soda water 95% of the time.

If available, sparkling water with lemon. Another commenter mentioned bitters, I plan to add that. They’re fine as long as the incredibly tiny alcohol amount won’t cause any issues.

If that isn’t available, some sort of soda or tea or coffee. Or, just water. No one really cares, though to be polite to the bar you’re at it’s good to try to buy something.

I've also discovered that my favorite gin and tonic doesn't actually contain any gin. Tonic water and lime suits me just fine.

a lot of beer places near me carry lagunitas hop water. It's zero calorie sparking water with a hoppy flavor.

Dry kombucha is a really nice alternative at 50 - 100 calories a can. My go to this summer https://www.lionheartkombucha.com/flavors/

I'm also a fan of kombucha (and make it at home), but it's not quite a non-alcoholic beverage.

Commercial kombucha is generally < .5%, homebrew can be up to 10x that. It's a two step process - yeast ferments the sugar into alcohol, then bacteria digest the alcohol into acid. If the bacteria fall behind, the ABV goes up.

The yeast can work anaerobic, the bacteria need O2 to get the job done. Anything not pasteurized is likely going to increase in ABV some in the bottle, since the yeast are active and the bacteria aren't. This is also why I force carbonate my home-brew - when you build CO2 with a secondary ferment you're also building alcohol.

yup. I ferment craft soda in my cellar. root beer, ginger beer, cream soda, and I have to be careful or it starts to get a noticeable alcohol content. most of my friends drink when we get together and I am not fond of the flavor of beer. But home brew ginger beer seems to fill the space and I can drive home after as the sodas when done properly have like 1% or less abv. just have to pasteurize it at the right point or drink it soon enough.

Flavored sparkling water

I've replaced the beer in my fridge with Athletic Brewing's non-alcoholic beer.

How do you like it? I like the taste of beer, and often want something more than water at night. But, I don't typically have alcohol except on the weekends (my wife and I joke about 2 beers and things are getting crazy lol). So during the week I often drink milk or a sugar free sports drink. Tea is also ok, but I try to avoid all caffeine late in the day.

It's not exactly the same taste as beer but they satisfy my cravings. They've completely replaced the occasional beer I have with dinner in the evening, and if I drink socially I often alternate between them and “real beer” so that I don't pay for it the next day.

There’s a couple of really good non-alcoholic beers here in Iceland. For want of a better explanation the flavour is really there but it lacks the edge or bite of real beer. I don’t know if it’s flavour or feel but it’s noticeable. That said due to recent medical stuff I’ve been drinking it and think I could stick with it long term.

I'm in a similar position, and lately I've been having flavored sparkling waters (Mmm Orange Bubly) and herbal (i.e. non-caffeinated) teas, depending if I want hot or cold. Obviously they don't taste like beer, but what I found was at least for me after doing it a while, it's not really the taste I wanted; that was just the association I had with the ritual I enjoyed of a nightcap, and now I'm happy with my new ones.

They're decent, and definitely towards the top of the pack of non-alcoholic beer brands. Clausthaler is also ok if you prefer a lager to an ale.

(I spent a couple months trying every variety of non-alcoholic "craft" beer that I could get my hands on earlier in the pandemic)

Hoplark Hoptea (sparkling hoppy tea) is another good alternative I have found, and is lower in calories and comes in varieties that are caffeinated or not. I'll note that I tried Athletic's hoppy sparkling water and Lagunita's and neither was nearly as good. Though I will say overall, all of them seem too expensive to be buying on a regular basis unless they can really cut out more expensive beer for you.

Not OP, but I've also stopped drinking entirely and my standard go-to is a lime soda. I've never been somewhere where this is not known and it's not overly sweet or expensive. It looks enough like a drink to be a drink, if you know what I mean.

Give quality sparkling water a go if you can, eg San Pellegrino, Castello, Harrogate (glass only), etc.

Usually seltzer, coffee, tea. Recently I discovered Hoplark “hop teas” which (to my tastebuds) separate the best parts of beer from the alcohol.

If you like hop-flavored beverages, definitely try Lagunitas Hoppy Refresher.

As another non-drinker, Kombucha and occasionally non-alcoholic beers.

Kombucha has a tiny bit of alcohol (<0.5%) and tastes a bit like a soda but has a tiny amount of sugar (usually only 8g / serving).

And as long as it hasn't been pasteurized, is a living probiotic too. (though I prefer milk kefir myself)

For reference, humans drank only water after weaning for several hundred thousand years. Today we act like only water is deprivation.

I found eating or drinking later has started to mess me up. (see e.g. the 3 hours before bed rule from the literature around circadian arrhythmia.)

Between that in particular, and all the intermittent fasting faddishness in the air, calories in drinks, especially outside mealtime, just began to feel weird. Water it is.

I live in Germany where beer is abundant and so are the non-alcoholic variants. My favorite is non-alcoholic Hefeweizen - unfiltered wheat beer: no spoiled taste, the only thing absent is alcohol.

I went to a party the other night and didn't drink at all. Very unusual. I brought a bottle of tequila for the host and friends.

Strangely, I didn't feel anxious at all, despite having pretty high general anxiety. My energy levels were higher than usual, which I felt was connected to not drinking. I felt totally normal in my social interactions, didn't force anything, felt good. I kept my water bottle in hand and never felt out of place.

It was a good lesson that alcohol is not needed to have a good time.

Curious about your age? Does this get easier as you get older? I stopped drinking for 6 months and then a friend got a new job and my birthday rolled around. I felt like the situations called for celebratory drinking or that it was expected.

I really enjoyed my period of non-drinking and I feel exactly the same as you in regards to sleep, anxiety and well-being. But being in my late 20s I feel like people around my age just expect drinking and going out.

I'm sure that it feels like a real problem, but it really isn't. I haven't drank anything for my 39 years of life and I have found most people to be quite accepting of it and those that aren't aren't worth it.

In my experience: some people may take it as a personal reflection on them, if you stop drinking, and will react negatively.

(I don't recommend keeping those people in your life.)

Part age and part friends. As people get older many stop or cut back their drinking. Responsibilities means there's no time. Real friends support you if not drinking is something you want to do.

It also doesn't have to be a binary thing. I go months without drinking and then have a beer or wine because I want one.

I'm sure it just varies a ton from person to person. As much as some people (notably alcoholics) find it extremely difficult to stop drinking, I pretty much stopped without even trying. Got married, had kids, stopped hanging out so much with friends. I just didn't drink for months at a time and didn't really notice. I never consciously quit drinking, but I average maybe 2 drinks a month now and don't miss it. I also never really found that alcohol really relaxed me emotionally.

Exactly the same experience. Gave it up after a concussion, substantially happier now. I notice the effects of even a single drink the next day.

How much you used to drink before?

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