Then comes the anxiety over the shaming I’ll have to endure if I choose to stop without a legitimate excuse. After just a few drinks, I often feel nauseous, become bloated, experience tension headaches, or find myself strangely congested. Similar to Wood, I have never been a big drinker. However, drinking alcohol has become so ingrained and normalized in day-to-day life that choosing not to drink is often frowned upon. Talking about moderation is more acceptableīefore you come at us, we’re not trying to convince anyone to stop drinking! Alcohol, of course, is safe for many people if they don’t consume too much. “It's capable of changing the way that we think, feel, behave, and that's one of the reasons I think alcohol is so widely used,” she said. Alcohol is psychoactive, which means that it affects the central nervous system. “The thing about alcohol that we forget sometimes is that it is a drug,” Adams said. Small amounts supposedly have heart health benefits (even that’s debatable), but if you exceed the recommended amount - which is typically one drink per day for women and two drinks a day for men - your heart attack risk goes up. She said that an increasing number of people want to quit or cut down on drinking simply to improve their health - and she happens to be one of them.Īlcohol has a long and well-studied impact on the body it can increase anxiety, interrupt sleep, raise cancer risk (particularly breast cancer), damage the liver, and affect the brain, especially if you drink to excess. “To have a problem with alcohol doesn't mean you're pouring whiskey on your cornflakes, as it were,” she said.Īdams’ research focuses on hangovers, alcohol harm reduction, and sobriety. But there are many other reasons why drinking can be problematic. Of course, one big reason to stop drinking is an alcohol use disorder, or what’s commonly known as alcoholism. “There are lots of reasons why people decide to not drink anymore,” said Sally Adams, an associate professor in psychology at the University of Birmingham. Depending on the state, about 9% to 21% of people in the US don’t drink at all, according to. Though popular culture would likely stigmatize Wood’s choice or imply she lives a boring life lacking fun or social activity, she’s far from alone in making this change.Īccording to a 2019 survey conducted by IWSR, a drinks market analysis group, 52% of US customers reported that they were trying to reduce their alcohol intake. So she decided to stop for a bit and quickly realized she’d completely lost the urge. On top of that, Wood also noticed that drinking made her anxiety worse. The twentysomething Instagram personality and creative strategist had never been a huge drinker - and when she did imbibe, only one or two drinks left her feeling sick the next day. And no, she didn’t have a “problem” with alcohol, as most people assume when she turns down a cocktail. Sophie Wood hasn’t had a sip of alcohol since Sept. Oh, and FYI - prices are accurate and items in stock as of time of publication. Just so you know, BuzzFeed may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page if you decide to shop from them. We hope you love the products we recommend! All of them were independently selected by our editors.
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