1000 days without alcohol

Some reflections on the impact of not having a drink for a very long time...

Today will be my 1000^th day without an alcoholic drink.

People who give up alcohol like to count their days, and we love a milestone.

Milestones are usually thought of as a marker of distance. This has its origins in the Latin word millarium, which means ‘a thousand paces’. A ‘mile’ is the distance a Roman Legion could cover in 1,000 steps. Roman road makers would place stones at every mile (ahem, mile-stones) to help travellers determine their distance from the Millarium Aureum  - the Golden Milestone - the starting point for the Roman road system.

The Golden Milestone for people who give up alcohol is Day Zero – the date of the last alcohol containing drink. All milestones are measured with reference to this. All milestones are of arbitrary importance, but I like those with a zero at the end. Those that add an extra zero to the total. Additional zero’s tell me I have levelled up my alcohol free game. I remember the pride initially achieving double (10 days) and then triple (100) figures.

1000 feels significant. It makes me a triple zero person.  I’ve waited 900 days to add this zero. Getting to 10 once felt impossible.

But milestones are about psychological as well as physical distance. Long-distance athletes know the psychological importance of ticking off each mile. Knowing that you have less distance to go than you have already travelled is often the difference between stopping or carrying on. I think the same is true for people wanting to remove alcohol from their lives. The objective of reaching the entirely arbitrary, but psychologically meaningful, milestone of 100 days can make the difference between drinking and not drinking on day 90. Milestones can also be points where people leave the alcohol-free (AF) road. I remember getting to 100 and thinking that I had proved to myself that I was in control of my drinking and could start again. I wasn’t and I didn’t, but it was the closest I came to abandoning this AF project.

As a psychologist, the term milestone has an additional meaning. In child psychology milestones are the units by which we measure growth and development. Milestones are the behaviours or capabilities that we look for in babies and children that tell us development is on track.  When parents bring their children for assessment, we use standardised scales to ask what age the child started showing certain behaviours. For example, when did they first speak, stand independently, or realise that objects that they can no longer see are still there!

Milestones in child psychology represent the child’s journey towards adulthood. This is not a journey in space, it’s a journey in time.  It’s an unfolding of the brains natural ability to develop and mature with age and with experience. When a milestone is delayed, or missed, it is a sign something might be neurologically wrong, or that the home is lacking in some vital way that is preventing a capacity from unfolding. Milestones becomes the basis on which we recommend different forms of treatment. Frustratingly for many parents, the most common intervention recommended by psychologists is to ‘wait and see’. We have a saying: the best treatment for most childhood difficulties is development. This is because we know that the brain has an innate ability to sort itself out if left to its own devices. It is very hard to prove the effectiveness of many treatments in child psychology because so many children grow out of their difficulty without any intervention at all.

At this point you may be asking what all this got to do with 1000 days and giving up alcohol?  It’s relevant, I promise!

So, the journey of going alcohol free has got more in common with the process of child development than it has to a Centurion trudging along a Roman Road. Adults don’t have milestones in the same way that children do. We cannot measure adult development using standardised scales. Nevertheless, psychologists have proposed that adults do continue to develop after the age of 18, but in a different way. This process is known as self-actualisation.

Kurt Goldstein, a German Neurologist and Psychiatrist, was the first to introduce the idea that all organisms have an innate goal to actualise themselves, to become what they are meant to be. He put it beautifully: ‘every individual, every plant, every animal has only one inborn goal – to actualise itself as it is’. I love the idea that my Peace Lily and I have the same fundamental goal in life! Perhaps this is why people love houseplants.

‘every individual, every plant, every animal has only one inborn goal – to actualise itself as it is’ - Kurt Goldstein

Abraham Maslow, the founder of modern humanist psychology, adapted Goldstein’s idea and proposed that self-actualisation is a fundamental drive that organises behaviour and causes psychological problems if it is frustrated. He proposed that all humans possess a “desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming."^[3]

Self-actualisation is so deeply ingrained in collective consciousness that most people don’t appreciate how radical the concept is. It suggests that adult development involves a natural process of becoming what you are meant to be. As Maslow put it: “what a person can be, they must be”. [i]  He proposed that the drive for self-actualisation was as fundamental to human development as hunger, thirst and sex. Much like the child uses language, touch, and play to unpack their innately given box of capabilities, adults continue to grow into their potential for the rest of their life.

“What a person can be, they must be”- Abraham Maslow

The main difference between adult and child development is that adults can become aware of this process and influence it. This is basic assumption of many forms of psychological therapy. Through interacting with our clients, we enhance the individual's self-concept through reflection, reinterpretation of experience, allowing the individual to recover, develop, change, and grow. 

Although self-actualisation is an unfolding of innate potential, experience and behaviour is critical to the process. What we do influences the self-actualisation process. A plant does not grow if it is not watered. And people do not become self-actualised in environments that provide fail to provide opportunities for challenge and growth.

Maslow believed that the drive for self-actualisation was innate and universal. But he was also deeply sceptical that it was achievable for most people, stating that “self-actualisation… rarely happens… certainly in less than 1% of the population”.[ii] He referred to the fact that most people are functioning at a level lower than self-actualisation as the “psychopathology of normality”.

What makes self-actualisation so hard? Carl Rogers, the founder of person-centred therapy located the problem within culture: "individuals are culturally conditioned, rewarded, reinforced, for behaviours which are in fact perversions of the natural self-actualising tendency”.

And here’s the point: I believe that socially sanctioned heavy drinking is a common and insidious barrier to self-actualisation. This is probably the scientific explanation behind George Bernard Shaw’s observation that “alcohol is the anaesthesia by which we endure the operation of daily life”. I’ve now been a psychologist for well over half my life, and most of my adult life. I continue to be amazed by the remarkable feats of creativity, resourcefulness and resilience made possible by the human mind. The brain never stops developing. Continually reorganising itself well into old age, relentlessly using the substrate of experience to prune redundant pathways and forge new ones to help us survive and thrive. It has the capacity to solve any problem that life presents to it. But we must create the conditions to let that happen. Alcohol, and the way society encourages heavy drinking, arrests this fundamental capacity. Heavy drinking shuts down this innate capacity for healthy adult psychological development. 1 in 4 people drink too much. Probably more. Heavy drinking is perhaps the most common “perversion” of the minds innate capacity to reach self-actualisation, and certainly the most socially acceptable.

Heavy drinking shuts down the innate capacity for healthy adult psychological development.

Maslow and Rogers both produced lists of the characteristics of self-actualised people. These lists look uncannily like the characteristics of people who decide to take a sustained or permanent break from alcohol – referred to here as long-term AF’ers! Let’s explore a few of these characteristics of self-actualisers:

We see things as they are, not how we want them to be. Self-actualised individuals have the ability to read people and situations accurately, and tend to be very sensitive to the superficial and dishonest. To remove an addictive substance from one’s life involves learning how to take a clear and honest inventory of oneself and others. Long term AF’ers have finely tuned bullshit (BS) detectors. We have had to learn how to recognise and challenge our own BS in order to free ourselves from the endless tricks used by our chemically dependent brain to keep us drinking. We take this BS-Detector and apply it to the rest of our lives. Good luck trying to pull the wool over the eyes of someone who no longer drinks!

We accept ourselves and others, warts and all. Self-actualised people accept themselves for who they are, flaws and all. They understand the inherent contradictions of what it means to be human and accept their own and others flaws with humour and tolerance. AF’ers are some of the kindest and compassionate people I know. Despite having an enhanced BS Detector, we choose to temper our perception of reality with the tools of empathy and compassion. Becoming AF involves choosing to face the past, present and future without the anaesthetising balm of a psychoactive substance. We feel things deeply and try to respond to others with compassion rather than criticism. 

We think for ourselves. Self-actualised people make up their own minds and tend not to be swayed by groupthink. Deciding not to drink in such a pro-alcohol culture is a real flex of independence. It can feel like continually pushing through a crowd of people walking in the opposite direction. So, we become hardened against social norms and peer pressure. It’s almost impossible to get a long-term AF’er to do something they don’t want to do.

We are spontaneous and full of natural gratitude and joy. Self-actualised individuals tend to be free spirits- they go with the flow, do things on a whim and know and appreciate what feels good. Long-time AF’ers are some of the funnest and funniest people I know. Alcohol destroys your brains capacity to get pleasure from anything other than drinking. To remove alcohol, you must rediscover alternative ways of firing up the brains pleasure circuits. As your brain recalibrates it results in a renewed appreciation of simple pleasures, a greater capacity for spontaneous joy, and the ability to access deeper, more nuanced meanings. Long-term AF’ers rejoice in wholesome pursuits. But it would be a wrong to mistake wholesome for boring. Our lovely, finely tuned recalibrated brains find as much richness and stimulation from a forest walk as our desensitised brains got from ten pints, a kebab and six hours dancing at the Raz![iii]

We give back. Self-actualised individuals have a strong sense of common humanity. They perceive the similarities between people and get satisfaction from being part of something beyond themselves. Many long-term AF’ers do voluntary work or are members of communities in which they use their experience to support other people. Most people cannot become alcohol free by themselves and need the support of others to reclaim their lives. Many of us are part of communities where we can offer a helping hand to those at earlier stages in the journey.

We have fewer friends, but the friendships we have are profound. Self-actualised people are comfortable in their own skin and their own company, and would rather be on their own than settle for a relationship that is superficial. Choosing not to drink throws the quality of one’s relationships into sharp relief. You quickly learn who it is that you have something in common with, and who you don’t. Many of us lose friendships on the way – mainly other people who are unhappy with our decision not to drink. But many of us find deeper and more fulfilling relationships with others who are on a similar journey.

We have a lot of ‘peak experiences’.  Self-actualised people are easily able to access strong positive feelings such ecstasy, harmony, and deep meaning. Long-term AF’ers do strange things like cold water swimming, skydiving, singing in choirs, becoming yoga instructors or crossfitters, and loads of other things to challenge themselves and feel good. Heavy drinking is like putting blinkers on yourself, reducing your goals and ambition to getting the next drink. Removing those blinkers reveals a wealth of possibility, a world to be experienced. We do stuff that develops our mind, body and soul. As a result, long-term AF’ers tend to have plenty of times where they feel one with the universe, stronger and calmer than ever before.

I didn’t give up drinking with a conscious intention to ‘self actualise’ myself. But in retrospect that is exactly why I gave up. I knew the way I was drinking was arresting my development. I was ossifying, becoming stuck and limited. Getting to 1000 days without alcohol has not been easy, particularly in the early days. But it has been worth it. A lot has happened since my Golden Milestone. In some ways my life is objectively harder than when drinking. I’ve had multiple health problems. I have developed and learning to live with uncurable chronic pain. I’ve moved country and am dealing with the culture shock of starting a new life on the other side of the world, separated from friends and family. And yet I am happier and more content with myself, and my life, than ever. The only other time I felt such a profound sense of life satisfaction were the years of being a stay-at-home dad.

Developing the characteristics of the self-actualised person takes work, and there are days and weeks (sometimes months) where I fall short of being that kind, compassionate, delusion free, independently minded, ecstacy-heightened free-spirit described above. But even my worst days feel better than the best of my late-career drinking days. I may never achieve membership of Maslows elite 1% club. But as the saying goes, who wants to be part of any club that would have them as a member. I doubt that there is any such thing as a truly self-actualised person. Anyone who tells you they are self-actualised is probably delusional, and so by definition very much not self-actualised. It’s a journey without a destination.

Being AF has gifted me a confidence that whatever life throws at me, I can handle. To use the vernacular of the day, to know that one can rawdog one’s way through life is a total flex. Being 1000 days alcohol free is to totally understand life’s assignment! It’s very demure. Very mindful. I had my Brat Summer in the 35 years I spent drinking. I’m entering the fall with a demure and mindful mindset. It feels nice. I am happy. After many years of arrested development, it feels good to be self-actualising again.

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[i] The original quote was ‘what a man can be, he must be’ but I have adapted it to reflect more gender inclusive language.

[ii] I’m not sure how evidence-based this figure is. Or even how it might be possible to measure the prevalence of self-actualisation scientifically. It’s a catchy figure though!

[iii] The ‘Raz’ is a legendary nightclub in Liverpool beloved of students, blue light workers and anyone with a soul: https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/nostalgia/legendary-liverpool-nightclub-became-institution-23382325

Milestone image adapted from Michael Aigner at Pixabay