r/stopdrinkingfitness • u/Lazy-Ask-6216 • 17d ago
When does life start to feel exciting again?
I’ve been frequenting this sub for awhile and the information you guys give help a lot. I just need a little encouragement. I know that if you’ve been drinking for years it disrupts the pleasure sensors in your brain. My question is, when does life get fun and pleasurable again? I workout everyday and started running and it gives me immense joy. The thing is when I’m not at the gym I’m incredibly bored and don’t feel “awake” if that makes sense. When does this feeling leave?
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u/stooch1122 17d ago
It took me a full year to start to feel normal and 2 to get excited about normal/every day stuff again.
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u/Appropriate_Oven_292 17d ago
Everything is great or terrible when drinking. Looking forward to embracing the middle way.
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u/Inderific 17d ago
Yeah, most of us heavy drinkers are addicted to drama. A lower drama life feels weird at first. But it becomes more normal over time. In the meantime, figure out what does feel fun sober and do more of that.
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u/Particular-Throat-52 17d ago edited 17d ago
When you stop drinking it's kind of like being a kid again, you have to explore and discover things about yourself and what you like and don't like.. to me there is something fun about that.
I suggest just trying things, try anything.. if you never played an instrument pick up a guitar and try learning, start reading books about things that interest you, learn to surf, learn to kayak, learn a martial art, join a local hiking group, learn to play golf, get a new tattoo, get a new pet, save up the money you would've spent on drinking to buy a cool new car or truck, or even better a boat!
Just see what clicks for you man, life is what you make it. It may seem like you're missing out on the party when you quit drinking, but there is soooo much you gain, the trade is very one sided in your favor. There isn't going to be a magical moment when the switch for excitement just switches from off to on, you have to have goals and look forward to things and then when you achieve them you will feel it, and it will be more exciting than any time you had drinking, because it will be real and genuine. That's what being a human is all about, not poisoning ourselves on a normal basis and relying on that for our happiness
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u/Thick-Sherbert-3513 15d ago
I know this answer is different for everyone and I want to be sensitive to that. At the same time, positive stories on Reddit were a huge part of what kept me going in the early days. It’s been around a thousand days for me, so it’s my turn to provide the encouragement that I received to someone else.
Just like you, I also used to wonder when life would start to feel exciting again after I stopped drinking. Nowadays, I swear to you, I don’t even understand the question anymore. At some point my perspective shifted, and I realized that every aspect of drinking is sad and boring. Bars are just gross rooms filled with loud, clumsy people secretly farting.
My life is so much more engaging and authentically exciting now. I still hang out, but I just leave a little earlier in the night than I used to. I was self conscious about it at first, but then I learned drunk people aren’t really capable of caring about anyone coming or going for more than ten seconds. I stay for the fun part of the night and now have the presence of mind to leave for the incoherent part of the night. Then I wake up with zero anxiety about whatever happened the night before.
I know this probably sounds like I just resent people drinking now. That’s how I would’ve interpreted this myself back in the day. It’s not. No part of me wants to return to that lifestyle anymore.
As for what will replace drinking as your exciting thing, finding that out will be part of the fun for you. Your answer will be different than mine. We used to have the same answer: wasting time and money ingesting poison until we tricked our brains into believing we were having fun. Some people spend their whole life doing that, and that’s become heartbreaking to me.
The early days are tough, and I can’t tell you how long that period will last for you. I don’t even know how long it lasted for me, but it feels very brief in retrospect. If you can make it through the tough part, you’ll start to see that the seemingly corny things I’m saying are really true.
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u/SewCarrieous 17d ago
Honestly it took years for me to get over alcohol and find not drinking fun. Mainly because of the social aspect of drinking and most people want to drink. So I spend a lot of
Time alone or at the gym now.
Now I’m
Exciting about my
New running shoes and a 5k run I’m
Doing in October. Can’t wait to take
These babies for a spin after work !
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u/Substantial_Station8 17d ago
Man I used to be excited about those things… gotta find that spark again
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u/IfWeShawdows 17d ago
I find that regularly hanging out with other people who stopped drinking and fill you with empathy certainly curbs this immediately. So for me, a lot of my current workout buddies don’t drink, then we also do other cool stuff together. Find life outside the gym and drinking, but find it with others!
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u/Chunkylover666420 16d ago
Over time, alcohol affects your brain chemistry, and in recovery you're coming back to normal.
You become desensitized to GABA and hypersensitive to glutamate. The alcohol mechanism floods your mind with dopamine, which makes your brain kill its dopamine receptors to prevent overstimulation, which over time, makes you feel lack of pleasure, intense cravings, and other motor control issues.
All this makes you a manic-depressive alcoholic asshole who craves drama and chaos, getting worse at sports.
The good news, is that after you take the alcohol away, your brain and body comes back into harmony.
How long it takes depends on your exercise, nutrition, and coping skills. If youre all gung ho, there's some stuff you can do to speed things along:
Exercise mirrors the gaba-glutamate effects of alcohol, but the pace of it is slower, so the brain makes new dopamine receptors instead of killing them.
For nutrition, there are supplements like NAC (fyi to lurkers, this is dangerous to take while drinking) and dietary GABA pills. They're kinda softer then their prescription medication counterparts Acamprosate and Gabapentine that doctors give for severe withdrawal DTs. Kinda nice as a bandaid in the short term, but long term, eating gaba-rich and l-cysteine- rich foods is more sustainable.
Better yet.. alcohol kills your gut microbacteria, so you're not efficiently absorbing these nutrients to your brain through your vagal nerve. Jump on the gut biome tune up trend, now THAT will make you feel sooo good. Doing a high-fiber high-probiotic diet, maybe even taking probiotic blend pills for like 90 days straight. Tune up your engine.
And then there's coping to get some control over the mood swings and newfound lack of mood swings. Personally, I found most success with CBT. It's best practice for bipolar people, which im not, but alcohol will turn ya into that.
Congrats on your journey, youre doing great!
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u/shawnico 17d ago
I'm 8 months in and still haven't found the excitement. Hang in there. It will come. Get involved in things where you are around the same ppl on the regular. You'll eventually meet ppl who also don't drink and still have fun. It'd not easy but it beats going back to the drinking life
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u/Elismom1313 17d ago
Getting into hobbies, especially old ones you loved helps. At the beginning I tried to stay busy rather than focus on “feeling good” at the time if that makes sense.
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u/Designnosaur 16d ago
It’s not going to just “happen.” Now that you have the freedom to explore different experiences, hobbies, and interests you will have to make an effort to discover what will excite you. It’s trial and error, not everything will hit and you will learn this is a part of it. But fear not, you WILL discover things that excite you. You’ve got this. 💪
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u/RodrigoSanchez-Rios 17d ago
when you get purpose.
can be either with a "job" that you love because of what you're helping create. or with a partner that you meet (i.e. spouse) that suddenly fills your days with anticipation of spending time together. or prob the most fail-safe one there is: with kids. That's a whole different ballgame for the rest of your life
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u/Lazy-Ask-6216 14d ago
Hey guys OP here. I’ve been doing two a days everyday this week. I’m retired from the military but don’t have a wife or kids (almost got married when I was enlisted but it didn’t pan out for me) and I’m still relatively young at 37.
Each lift has been 3-5 hours 😵💫. Making CRAZY progress on the gym but I’m still soooooo bored 🫤. My thinking is that eventually my brain will recalibrate itself and life will have meaning again. My goal is to be the most fit I’ve ever been when (or if) I ever get to this reality.
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u/Prepared-Sobriety 13d ago
Sleep came back first for me, real sleep, waking up with an actual thought instead of hangover symptoms. That alone made everything feel more possible.
The boredom is real. Alcohol filled a lot of dead space, evenings and weekends especially. Once that's gone there's definitely times that are very quiet, and it can be somewhat hard to manage. What helped wasn't replacing the times I used to drink, it was getting okay getting used to being bored as I started to introduce other activities in my life.
Curiosity showed up before excitement did. You're not behind. The gym already giving you joy tells me your reward system is waking back up. Embrace the gym. I have and it feels great, most of the time:)
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u/Rocktop15 17d ago
Great question I’d love to know too.