Recently I was sick – not with COVID thankfully – but my symptoms did include headaches, fatigue and low energy levels. They were similar to the after effects of a night of drinking.
- Headaches from dehydration
- Fatigue from not sleeping well
- Low energy due to alcohol sapping my energy reserves
When we are sick with a cold virus or other illness, we take care of ourselves by resting, hydrating and eating well.
And we do all we can to prevent getting ill in the first place.
Think of all the measures we’ve put in place to guard against getting COVID – masks, hand sanitser and social distancing.
Yet when it comes to drinking we shrug off any ill effects and just accept them as being what happens when we drink.
“How’d you pull up after last night?” we might ask our partner or text our friends.
We then joke about spending the day slumped in front of the TV eating greasy, fatty ‘hangover’ food.
Why do we put ourselves through something that is so preventable?
One of the main reasons I started questioning my drinking was because I was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.
And the older I got the harder it was to bounce back from drinking.
It didn’t even have to be a big night – even having a few drinks was playing havoc on my physical and mental wellbeing.
Healthy in every other way
The other thing that was really annoying me about my drinking was that in all other areas of my life I led a healthy lifestyle.
I exercised most days, I generally ate a healthy diet (although give me a plate of hot chips and all bets are off) and had good self-care practices in place.
I used to say that drinking was my one ‘vice’ and looked at it as a treat.
But when I started questioning how much of a treat it really was and whether my vice was undermining all the other good things I was doing for my health, I realised that there were plenty of other ways that I could treat myself.
If you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired, feel free to contact me for an obligation-free chat about how you can reset your relationship with drinking.
You really do not need to feel like crap to ‘treat’ yourself.