It’s easy to find articles online about how drinking alcohol affects your looks –

Alcohol and Hair Loss: What You Need to Know

How to Combat the Effects of Alcohol on Skin, According to an Expert

How Does Alcohol Affect Weight Loss?

But I think the effects of alcohol on your looks go much deeper than your hair, skin and weight. And I think that if you listen to your body it’ll tell you what you need to know more than any article you might find online.

My friend just emailed a roll of photos that she’d had developed from when we lived together in Taiwan years ago; they’re very beautiful and they brought back so many memories from our time spent exploring the island. But something that I noticed immediately is that in most, if not all of the pictures, I am holding an alcohol drink. In so many of the candid photos of me, I’m sort of awkwardly standing, shoulders slumped, with my hands folded around a cold booze-thing. I’m often holding onto it with both hands, like it’s some sort of safety floatation device keeping me from sinking into the abyss. 

Then I looked on that function of Instagram, where you can see the photos in which you’ve been tagged. Same thing! In a number of photos, there are my hands: clutching for dear life onto something containing enough alcohol to fuzz and soften the membrane between me and the world. 

Body language says a lot, and mine has been speaking loud & clear for a while now. I have grown so dependent on alcohol to numb, mute, and lubricate my interactions with the world around me. My body has been UNCOMFORTABLE! I wanna listen to her and let her lead a bit more than I have been. Stretch, breathe, swim, dance, sex, laugh, eat, run, stroll, bathe, sleep, massage, bike, cuddle, somersault…ahh there’s a lot our bodies love to do! 

Drinking is a violence to the body, in so many ways. This has been one of the bigger, and more difficult, lessons learned over the past few months of living mostly alcohol-free and I’ve learned it over and over in many different ways. 

If drinking too much alcohol destroys your looks from the inside out what does going sober achieve? What does going alcohol-free offer? Here is an article from online that answers that question vividly – 59 Before & After Pics That Show What Happens When You Stop Drinking and you can answer it yourself by taking a break from the Booze. Stopping drinking is not about giving something up as much as it is about getting something back. Putting down the booze not because you are weak and cannot handle it, but because you have found that you are STRONGER without it.

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9 Observations on My First 3 Months Sober

You Deserve Another Chance – A Sober Dance