This means, depending on the physical state of your liver, that you gradually start to feel better.

Once you stop drinking, the alcohol leaves your system quite quickly. Getty Images What happens when you give up alcohol for a month Week one: Increased energy, reduced calories, better sleep 'Dry January' is a campaign which encourages people to give up alcohol for the month of January. So their symptoms are addressed, but not the cause. Very often, people presenting to general practitioners with common conditions will not tell their doctor they are drinking two bottles of wine a day. I have a number of patients who come to me on anti-acid drugs, antidepressants and blood pressure lowering drugs, but when they stop drinking they don't need any of them. So along with feeling bad, you are putting yourself at further risk of a cardiac event or a stroke, particularly as you get older. Alcohol can also cause an increase in blood pressure, particularly if you are struggling everyday to detoxify yourself. In my opinion, abnormal liver function is a sign to stop drinking completely, immediately.Īdditionally, your gastrointestinal tract or stomach does not react well to alcohol, so drinking can increase your chance of developing ulcers, which can perforate and cause gastritis. Then, the liver will become more and more abnormal, unless you stop drinking completely. It takes a large amount of alcohol for this to occur and once it does, a person could live 20-30 years normally before the liver stops functioning correctly. Typically, my patients have abnormal liver function. 'I drank alcohol every day, one trick helped me cut down without quitting'.'I was addicted to alcohol and cocaine, this is how I finally got sober'.'I started dating my best friend, he said one thing that made me end it'.

You can drink for years and years until eventually your liver starts to become inflamed, without any pain, which silently proceeds to fatty liver disease and then to cirrhosis. For example, damaging your liver is like scratching the back of your hand with your nail constantly until you break the skin. If you overload the liver, you have more of those toxins inside your body, which can damage the liver itself, your brain, your stomach, your heart and your pancreas. So, while we can metabolize around a unit of alcohol an hour, if you drink a lot, everyday, your body has to rid your system of those toxins. Those byproducts are toxic to all tissues of the human body however, we are able to metabolize a small amount of them. Dr Niall Campbell/The Priory Group What alcohol can do to the bodyĪlcohol's two main breakdown products are acetaldehyde and ethanoic acid. It usually takes a month to see the benefits of stopping, but in my experience they become apparent relatively quickly.Ĭonsultant psychiatrist Dr Niall Campbell, of Priory's Roehampton Hospital in south west London, is one of the UK's leading alcohol addiction experts. Of course, not everyone who drinks has a problem, but a break from alcohol can allow people to consider how much they're drinking and why. Often, people drink because they're stressed or anxious, and they think alcohol provides an instant cure. In my view, taking a break from alcohol for four weeks is very psychologically beneficial, because it allows people to focus their minds on their relationship with alcohol. Many countries take part in 'Dry January', a campaign which encourages people to give up alcohol for one month. Perhaps they have over-indulged during the holiday season or there have been consequences to their drinking over the Christmas period. In January, I tend to see an uptick in patients who have been admitted due to alcohol dependence. Many of my clients with depression often have an underlying alcohol problem, which they don't initially disclose but emerges as time goes on. In terms of addiction, around 85 percent of the work I do is related to alcohol. My patients are aged 18 and over and typically belong to higher socio-economic groups around half of them have private medical plans, while the others are self-paid. I worked as a consultant for the United Kingdom's National Health Service until 2002, and have subsequently been the lead addiction consultant and a general adult psychiatrist at The Priory Roehampton, a private mental healthcare facility in south-west London for the last two decades. I have been a psychiatrist for over 40 years.

Alcoholic face changes