What Happens When You Stop Drinking?

Whether for reasons of health, to lose weight or to have a better lifestyle, stopping drinking alcohol is a very difficult decision to hold.

However, seeing the answers to the question “What happens when you stop drinking” may give you the motivation to get rid of this bad habit!

But first, let’s see what happens when you use alcoholic drinks.

How will your body be affected when drinking alcohol?

The main ingredient of wine and beer is alcohol whose chemical name is ethanol. When entering your body, ethanol can cause various destructive effects.

​When the concentration of ethanol in the blood reaches 0.05%, the effects of alcohol starts to appear. It makes drinker show their excitement and euphoria.

When this amount in the blood reaches 0.1%, you start to lose your self-control ability.

If it reaches 0.2%, you have already reached the point of drunkenness; when they reach 0.4%, you can lose consciousness, coma, and even life.

When alcohol hurts our liver, pancreas, and stomach, we have to stop drinking. However, the level of damage depends on many factors, especially alcohol metabolism.

#1. What is alcohol metabolism?

Alcohol metabolism is the way the body breaks down and handle alcohol in your body. Because each of us has different host factors, the ways we metabolize alcohol are not the same.

But more importantly, differences in alcohol metabolism can affect alcohol-related problems.

In details, the more the body breaks down ethanol, the easier it is to metabolize alcohol, which means the body will suffer more negative effects of this liquid.

#2. Why is alcohol metabolism important?

The body can only deal with a certain amount of alcohol. However, the amount of alcohol that can be metabolised varies widely from person to person.

​This depends on a range of factors, including body weight, liver size, environmental factors, and genetic differences in metabolic enzymes.

In other words, if alcohol is effectively metabolized, there may be a higher risk of drinking problems.

What happens when you stop drinking?

Good news is your body will change magically after you quit drinking. Various benefits can be gained when you stop drinking.

#1. Will your injured liver recover?

The damages alcohol may cause to your liver include alcoholic liver, fatty liver, cirrhosis, and liver cancer.

If you stop drinking during the first stage of alcoholic and fatty liver, you have high chance of recovering your liver.

Quit drinking and keep improving your lifestyle, in some cases, your injured liver can fully recover.

The liver damage caused by drinking can repair itself. If you quit drinking, the level of cirrhosis can be reduced by 12.5%, while insulin resistance can be by 28%.

#2. Will you lose weight if you quit drinking?

Alcohol is a substance that has steadily increased daily caloric intake. One cup of Margarita has almost 300 kcal of energy coming from sugar and 450 kal of sweet and Pinacolada.

In one study, on a day when drinking a "normal" amount, men eat more than 433 cal more than usual. And if they are women, they eat 300 cal more.

Therefore, if you cut alcohol (without replacing it with dessert), you can lose weight easily.

#3. Is it true that your skin will get better?

The answer is yes. After you quit drinking a few days, you will see the appearance and texture of your skin get better. This is because alcohol is diuretic. It is a substance that makes urine easier.

​Furthermore, alcohol reduces antidiuretic hormones that help hydrate the body, which restrains moisture from spreading in the body and causes dry skin.

If you do not drink, the redness of your cheeks and nose will be drawn, and rough skin such as dandruff, eczema, rosacea may be improved.

#4. How about the physical indications?

Researchers at the Royal Free Hospital in the United Kingdom conducted a follow-up survey of 102 people who regularly drank alcohol.

At the beginning of the study, blood samples and liver status were tested. One month after stop drinking alcohol, the participants' physical indications changed significantly.

The study also found that if you abstain from alcohol for one month, your body will have many positive changes such as weight loss, blood pressure reduction.

Besides, your ability to concentrate and your sleep quality are improved.

#5. Is there any alcohol withdrawal and how is it?

However, it is possible that you will go through some withdrawal symptoms when getting rid of alcoholic drinks.

You may feel shaky, insomnia, insecurity, anxiety, depression, sweating, etc. in the days after abstinence. These are withdrawal symptoms that you may suffer if stop drinking.

What is alcohol withdrawal?

When routine heavy drinkers reduce alcohol consumption or stop drinking, alcohol withdrawal occurs.

The symptoms of alcohol withdrawal usually appear in regular alcoholic drinkers. This period may be accompanied by disorders such as hallucinations, convulsions, delusions, etc.

Alcohol withdrawal symptoms usually occur within 5-10 hours of your last drink. But in general, it is known that alcohol withdrawal obviously occurs several days after the last drink.

However, if you are not a routine drinker, you don’t need to worry since the withdrawal symptoms may not be considerable.

How can the withdrawal symptoms be?

Symptoms of alcohol withdrawal can range from mild to severe. In the worst case, if you immediately quit drinking, it may even threaten your life.

​Alcohol withdrawal symptoms and duration of alcohol withdrawal vary from person to person. But in general, the longer you have been drinking, the stronger the symptoms are.

Can we facilitate the abstinence process?

During the abstinence period, we can also speed up the process of abstinence through some dietary adjustments to help the damaged liver return to normal.

It is highly recommended to eat food rich in B vitamins, such as oatmeal, whole wheat bread, animal offal, lean meat, peanuts, most types of vegetables, wheat bran, milk and so on.

It is necessary to know that the activity of alcohol dehydrogenase in the human liver is very low at noon. Therefore, drinking at this time period is easy to get drunk.

However, you can drink oatmeal in the morning. This will help reduce the desire to drink at noon. Besides, porridge can also protect the gastric mucosa.

Should you suddenly quit drinking?

The level of alcohol withdrawal response varies from mild to severe. The specific situation also depends on the length and quantity of alcohol abuse. People who drink a small amount of alcohol in the short term usually only have very mild withdrawal symptoms.

However, people who drink a lot for a long time will experience severe reactions, which are also called tremors in medicine, and can even be life-threatening.

​Be cautious that once you suddenly stop drinking, your body will have withdrawal symptoms such as weakness, tachycardia, elevated blood pressure, and depression.

Therefore, if you are a regular drinker, don't stop drinking immediately. However, you can gradually reduce the amount of alcohol day by day.

Try to give your body an adaptation process so that you can completely quit drinking.

In conclusions

Experts say that the benefits of drinking abstinence are far more than imagined. However, alcohol is just like drugs. Sudden withdrawals can also make you collapse.

Hope that the article has provided you with knowledge about what happens when stop drinking and what to note when getting rid of this habit. For health, you should drink less and exercise more!