I Quit Drinking for 10 Weeks. Here Are My Actual Numbers.

I'm not going to give you a transformation story. I didn't find God. I didn't lose four stone and run a marathon. I just stopped drinking in early January and started writing things down because I'm the sort of person who puts everything in spreadsheets.

This is 10 weeks of data. Tracked daily. No rounding, no cherry-picking, no "I feel amazing" without the numbers to back it up.

Here's what actually happened to a 46-year-old bloke who was drinking maybe 20-25 units a week and decided to stop.

The headline numbers

Right. Now let me show you how it actually went, because it wasn't a straight line and the first two weeks were genuinely hard.

Week by week

Rubbish. Absolute rubbish. Couldn't sleep properly, which I wasn't expecting because I'd assumed alcohol was helping me sleep. Turns out it was knocking me out, which isn't the same thing. Spent most evenings on the sofa wondering what to do with my hands.

The weight drop was just water. Everyone who's done Dry January knows this. I've done the "lose 2kg in a week" thing before and put it straight back on by the second Friday of February.

Sleep started improving. Not dramatically, but I stopped waking up at 3am needing water. Deep sleep went up for the first time. This was when I bought my first AF beer (Athletic Brewing Run Wild, if you're wondering) and discovered you can hold a can at 6pm without anyone staging an intervention.

I started tracking the money properly. It's not just the pints. It's the taxi instead of driving. The Deliveroo at 11pm. The "sod it, another round" at 9:30 that turns into two more rounds. The paracetamol, the Lucozade, the "I'll just get a McDonald's breakfast."

This was the week my wife said my face looked different. I thought she was being nice. Then I looked at a photo from December and I could see it. Less puffy. Less red around the nose. I looked less... damp.

The running improvement surprised me. I hadn't changed my training. Same three runs a week. Same routes. I was just... recovering faster. Saturday parkrun after a Friday night of AF beers and early bed versus parkrun after four pints and a kebab. Turns out the beer was the variable, not the training.

This is where it got boring. In a good way. The novelty of "I'm not drinking" wore off. It just became... normal. I was sleeping better, running faster, and spending less money. None of it was dramatic anymore. It was just Tuesday.

By week 5 I'd tried about 15 different AF beers. Most were average. A few were properly bad (Beck's Blue, I will never forgive you). Three were genuinely good enough that I forgot they were alcohol-free.

Went to a mate's 40th. First proper social test. Drank AF beer all night. Nobody noticed until about 10pm when everyone else was slurring and I was still making sense. Couple of people asked what I was drinking. One of them ordered one. No drama.

The running continued to improve. Not because of fitness gains from not drinking - those had plateaued. Because I was sleeping properly every single night, including Fridays and Saturdays.

Diminishing returns on most metrics. Weight loss slowed right down. Sleep levelled off at about 78-79. But the running kept improving because I was doing more sessions - I actually wanted to run on Sunday mornings now, which would have been science fiction in November.

The money breakdown

People always ask about this so here's the full split:

£847 in 10 weeks. That's £4,400 a year if it holds. I'd been spending the price of a decent holiday on feeling rough three mornings a week.

What didn't change

I want to be honest about this because most "I quit drinking" posts only tell you the good stuff.

• My social life is the same. I still go to the pub. I still go to parties. I just drink different stuff. Nobody cares as much as you think they will.
• I'm not more productive at work. I thought I'd become some sort of morning person. I didn't. I'm still rubbish before 9am.
• My mood didn't transform. I'm slightly less anxious on Sundays. That's about it. I didn't suddenly become optimistic about the state of the world.
• I still want a pint sometimes. Especially on a Friday at 5pm. The AF beer handles this. It's the ritual, not the alcohol.

What I actually drink now

I tried about 20 AF beers over these 10 weeks. Most were forgettable. Here's the honest breakdown:

The good ones: IMPOSSIBREW Triple Hopped IPA (the one that fooled my mate Gaz in a blind taste test), Athletic Brewing Run Wild, Big Drop Stout.

The fine ones: Lucky Saint (overhyped but drinkable), Guinness 0.0 (surprisingly decent), Peroni 0.0 (good with food).

The bad ones: Beck's Blue (tastes like someone described beer to a computer), Heineken 0.0 (metallic), most supermarket own-brand attempts.

The IMPOSSIBREW one has L-theanine and ashwagandha in it which apparently helps with relaxation. I was skeptical but Tuesday evenings genuinely feel different with it. Whether that's the ingredients or the placebo effect of holding a nice beer, I honestly don't know. But I keep buying it, so make of that what you will.

If you want to try it, here's a referral link that gets you £10 off. I get credit too, which funds my running shoe habit.

Would I go back?

Honestly? Probably not. Not because of some big philosophical shift. Because the numbers don't make sense. I'm paying £67 a week to sleep worse, run slower, and feel rough three mornings a week. When you put it in a spreadsheet it looks insane.

The biggest thing isn't any single metric. It's the cumulative effect of never having a bad morning. That sounds small. It's not. Ten weeks of never waking up and thinking "why did I have that last one" - that changes how your whole week feels.

I'm not evangelical about it. Do what you want. But if you're curious, track your numbers for two weeks. The spreadsheet will do the convincing for you.