If you think that your life will be all boredom and drudgery if you give up drinking or smoking pot, you need to think again. Hardcore drinkers and smokers who have tossed their habits report that they not only have found many alternatives to drinking, but that they have experienced health and lifestyle improvements. Your drinking or drug habits may be blinding you to alternatives that can give you a natural high and a greater sense of well-being.
When you stop drinking and you are no longer dealing with morning after hangovers, you’ll have more time and energy for exercise. Alcohol, tobacco and marijuana numb your taste buds. Giving up the substances that cause the high will reactivate your flavor senses and allow you to taste and enjoy food. The high you craved from drugs or alcohol likely pushed your hobbies and avocations aside. When you give us the high, you can reconnect with your favored pastimes. You’ll have more time to travel, enjoy the arts, or volunteer. You can kick back and relax without feeling the need to satisfy your cravings for drugs or alcohol.
If your drug or alcohol habits make the alternatives sound too trite, think about the health benefits of giving up on destructive habits. Your digestion will improve, you’ll have a better chance to lose weight and to make yourself more attractive to others, and to ward off illnesses with a more robust immune system that is no longer degraded by alcohol or drugs. Your ambitions and opportunities will increase with your renewed vigor. At least one former US president attributes his political success to kicking his drinking habit. Giving up alcohol or drugs might not get you into the White House, but it may give you the increased energy you need to start a business or to gain a promotion and increased income.
Even if you don’t believe that you have a drinking or drug problem, you can benefit from a fair self-assessment of how and when you turn to alcohol or drugs and how your use of those substances makes you feel. You may no longer enjoy the feeling of being high, and you might find that you are drinking or using drugs more out of habit or in response to an external stimulus than for enjoyment. A sober lifestyle might also open your eyes to relationships that, although tolerable when you are high, are actually toxic and non-productive. Your friends shouldn’t only be your friends when you’re high.
Popular culture, peer pressure, advertising and your own early experiences with drugs and alcohol can combine to trap you into feeling that you have no alternatives to getting high. You always have alternatives, but you might need help in finding them. If you want to talk to someone about alternatives and lifestyle experiences you can have without getting high, please contact our staff at Hired Power at 800-910-9299. We can help you identify and seek new experiences that don’t involve drugs or alcohol and that will create a new and healthy lifestyle for you.
