How Cutting Down on Alcohol Can Help Your Mental Health
A lot of people notice that their mental health improves after they have cut down or cut out alcohol. It is one of the reasons why many people who are sober curious or mindful drinkers choose to continue lowering their alcohol consumption.
So if you are looking to focus on your mental health and well-being, cutting out alcohol can make a huge difference. And it doesn’t have to be as painful as it might initially sound. With such a huge selection of different alcohol-free spirits, wines and beers you won’t feel like you are missing out at all.
Want to know more? Well here are six reasons why cutting down your alcohol intake will help with your mental health and well-being.
1. Reduces Negative Feelings Like Anxiety
Alcohol is a depressant meaning that it dampens your central nervous system. This is why initially when drinking you can feel more relaxed, less anxious and less depressed. But in the long run, when you drink regularly, your brain can become used to this dampening and throw off the balance of your brain chemicals. This increases your anxiety at the moments in the times when you are not drinking.
The good news is that your brain chemicals can start to rebalance themselves when you cut out alcohol or drink less. After four or more weeks without drinking alcohol, you are likely to start already feeling more balanced mentally, less anxious and less depressed.
2. Gives You More Energy
By reducing how much alcohol you drink, you are likely to have much more energy. That is for a number of reasons.
Without alcohol, you will get better, longer and deeper sleep. That means you are fully resting your body and allowing it to recover from the day, so you will wake up feeling more refreshed and ready to take on the world.
When you drink alcohol your body loses around four times the amount of liquid you drank. So by reducing your alcohol intake or cutting it out altogether you are significantly helping your body stay hydrated. And proper hydration is required for your muscles, organs and brain to work at their best. Hydration helps your body feel less fatigued and more energetic.
3. Helps You Feel More Focussed
With the improved mental health, more energy and a more hydrated brain that come from cutting back on your alcohol intake, it becomes easier to focus on whatever you are doing. That means that you can feel more focused on yourself, your relationships, your hobbies, and your work, all of which can help you feel a greater sense of achievement and connection to the things you find important in your life.
4. Gives You More Space to Deal With Difficult Things
Cutting back on alcohol gives you much more mental space in your brain, a deeper ability to focus and more energy. This means that you have more space to deal with the challenges of life in healthier ways.
Too often people use alcohol to avoid having to deal with other problems in their life, as a way to avoid feeling emotions they’d rather not. By cutting alcohol out of your life it is harder to run away from difficult things. However, whilst this might initially seem harder, in the long run being able to process and deal with tough things, instead of letting them linger, unprocessed by still present, helps your overall mental health and well-being.
Having more mental space and focus increases your capacity to deal with and process these things, which leads to a positive spiral where you become more skilled at dealing with the harder things in life so they take less of your mental space!
5. Gives You More Time To Exercise
Exercise is notoriously very good for your mental health and well-being. However, let's be real, it can be difficult to force yourself to exercise. This is only harder when you have a bit of a hangover, feel lacklustre, dehydrated or low on energy - all things that come from drinking alcohol.
By cutting back on the amount of alcohol you drink not only do you have more energy and motivation to go and exercise, but it's also likely that you have more time to do so. And if there is one thing that helps your mental health, gets your endorphins pumping and picks people up, it is doing exercise of some sort.
6. Helps Foster More Stable and Deeper Relationships
One of the most important factors for your mental health and well-being is the quality of your relationships. People who feel loved and supported in healthy and stable relationships are more likely to have better mental health.
Embracing an alcohol-free, sober curious lifestyle can help foster stronger, healthier and more supportive relationships. Why? Because there are less likely to be silly, alcohol-induced arguments, you are more able to focus on the relationship and have more mental space for it, individuals are able to communicate in a more thought-through and empathetic manner when sober, and many other reasons.
With strong, supportive relationships you will have the right support and care network in tougher times, something that is very important for your mental health and well-being.
Sign Up For JOMO and Priotitise Your Mental Health This May
Want to cut out alcohol and prioritise yourself? Then sign up for a JOMO subscription box and dive into the world of alcohol-free drinks. Why should you have to miss out on a tasty drink just because you don’t drink alcohol?
Each alcohol-free subscription box contains a mindfully curated selection of delicious treats including:
One full-sized bottle of alcohol-free spirit
Mixers, garnishes and cocktail recipes paired with the spirit
A range of ready-to-drink non-alcoholic beverages
Tasty snacks
A magazine with everything you need to know about your new goodies and more!
What are you waiting for? Sign up and find your new favourite alcohol-free beverages!