Alcohol Damage To Liver

in this video, i want to talk about 10 waysthat my life improved after i stopped drinking. i�m not talking about little improvements,i'm talking about massive improvements here. i'm kevin ohara for alcoholmastery.com. today i wanted to talk about just some ofthe big ways that my life has improved since i quit drinking. 10 ways in fact. so i�ll start off with the most obviousone of all, that i'm saving a shitload of money since i stopped. i mean this one is really obvious. the amountof money that i was spending on alcohol was

just ridiculous. i think at one stage a friend and i workedit out that we were probably, between the pair of us, put about �1,000 across theone bar counter every month. that's drink and food. we were having an argumentabout how bad we were being treated at the time by some of the bar staff, and we startedworking it out. so �250 a piece, �125 each. i can wellbelieve that if not more. the things that i can actually do now withthat money! now that adds-up to a lot of money, i'm talkingabout maybe six grand a year or something like that, in that region.

what i can do with all that dosh now, especiallywith my now un-intoxicated brain, it's just staggering. number 2, another obvious one, is time. time is absolutely our most precious commodity. when you�re drinking, you use up a lot oftime just on either thinking about the drinking or just doing it, getting ready for drinking,thinking about the pre-drinking sort of thing. pre-drinking thinking -- when you're thinkingabout the weekend, when you're going to go to the party to or down to the pub or to thematch or whatever it is. thinking about the evening getting home andsitting down and popping open that first bottle

of wine or cracking open the first can ofbeer. you've got that pre-thinking, then you'vegot the actual time that you spend in the process of drinking. putting the stuff into your body and thenyou've got the obvious consequences when your body has to overcome all the poisoning. and you're in this time warp, like a timefreeze -- where you just can't do anything else. i don't know how much time i've wasted overmy years. but that's all in the past, the past is thepast you can't do anything about it.

all you've got is the present. at the present moment, and in every futuremoment i know that my time is not going to be wasted on that shite. number three is health. it's another obvious one but according toa lot of people and according to a lot of drinkers� and specialists, there is a healthbenefits to drinking in small amounts. i don't believe those benefits at all becauseof the negative effects. alcohol is a drug and you've got tolerance,and once you've got that tolerance in the mixture, then your body can overcome the immediateintoxication.

it can deal with the small amounts of alcoholbut once you start using alcohol, your body begins to tolerate it and you need more alcoholto get you to the same level. so the health benefits that people are propagating,scientists, mostly drug companies that are propagating these theories. they are only theories and they're very sketchyand they're based on statistical evidence which can be bent to whatever. anyway my own personal health issues wheni was drinking were my stomach and digestive system were shagged up for a lot of years. if i went out on a walk like this when i wasdrinking i�d just have pure pain in my stomach

with all the carbonated drinks that i wasdrinking. obviously a weight problem, because of allthe alcohol that i was consuming. you can't drink as many pints as i was drinkingand not start getting health issues. , especially once the exercise starts laxing and all thatkind of stuff. sleep issues, so i never get any proper sleep,because i was always in this fight mode, underneath it all, your body's in this fighting for yourlife while your sleep. so how can you be getting a great sleep andgetting all the rem rest that you need. when your body is at the same time in an alarmstate underneath at all. you don't actually realize how bad your healthis getting until it�s gotten bad, until

way into your life. because the damage is very gradual, your bodyas they say is this fantastic piece of equipment and it's there to keep you alive. it's very good at trying to minimize the damage,because the damage is gradual -- you don't really get a grip on how bad you�re actuallybeing damaged until you feel it. so although it's a gradual deterioration inthe one direction as you're drinking, you'll start to feel the benefits almost immediatelywhen you stop drinking. you're obviously going to have to go throughthat one final hangover so you are gonna have to go through that series of whatever yourbody is going to take you through to get rid

of the alcohol in your body and to go throughthat last piece of the cycle. then your body is going to start renewingand regenerating and making you feel good, i just feel great now. another aspect of this is that, as i saidearlier -- your body is designed to help you, to give you warning signs about everything. so to keep your body in the balance now that i don't drink anymore -- if i don'tget out and exercise, then i feel the consequences. i feel weird, i feel a strange feeling inside. when i don't eat the right types of food -- wheni eat crap food, i feel it straight away.

i feel how my body is reacting to it. when i don't get enough water in my system,i feel it straight away. when i'm not exercising my brain cells enough,i start to feel it. so that's your body telling you that the balanceis shifting one way or the other. that you need to stop eating the crap food,that you need to get more water, that you need to go out and get more exercise. the opposite end of the scale that you needto back off from the exercise that you�re getting too much, that you�re putting toomuch of a strain on your body. they�re things that your body that are hiddenfrom you.

when you're drinking alcohol because alcoholis such an insidious thing. it floods everything when you�re feeling either the cravingsfor alcohol or the consequences of you drinking alcohol or while you're actually a drunk,what is your body feeling? it's not feeling anything. so a lot of the time that's what people want-- they don't want to feel anything so they get pissed or drunk and they don't have tofeel that anymore. number four is that i feel like i've got alot more control over things over my life in general than i had before. i remember when i used to drink and be alwaysthat sort of thing about controlling the alcohol,

trying to control it -- so i would try andmoderate it at times. so instead of going to the pub four timesa week, i would try and go only twice a week. or i�d only have enough alcohol for a certainamount in the house so i wouldn't be able to drink anymore. on other times i'd be thinking, �well, imight be going to run out of drink.� so i�d stock up in the house to make surethat i wouldn't run out of drink and then i'd be drinking more than i'd want to drink,more than i intended to drink in the first place. or maybe that was just in the back of my mindall along, that i wanted to get drunk and

the intention was to get drunk. so to hell with it make sure you have enoughin the house. you know yourself well enough to know thatif there are two bottles of wine in the house or three bottles of wine and house then i�mgoing to fecking drink the stuff. another area where i had lack of control wasin the area of food. so as soon as i was drinking or when i wasdrunk, i�d eat the most god awful types of stuff, i mean the stuff that you get infast food restaurants, this was not really food at all. and then when i was hung over -- feeling sorryfor myself because i�d poisoned myself all

night, i'd be eating loads of comfort foodand that was basically the same crap. i�d go down and buy boxes of biscuits andjust all sorts of crap i don�t even want to think about half the stuff that i had putinto myself. that's not just a problem then of puttingon weight but, you are just adding insult to injury with your nutrition levels. god! awful, it�s terrible. when i think about that it makes me laughto one degree but it makes me sad to another degree. but how you can do is laugh really.

there were other things that i lacked controlof. i had plans that i would make and then break,never fulfilling any of these things. and then there was driving - my lack of controlin that was lethal. hopping into the car after i�d had a fewpints was very bad. i can't remember the last time now i got intoa car and had even to think about that kind of stuff. i can't remember any time in the last whilethat i've had a plan that's just been, where i�ve gone � i can�t be bothered doingit. i've had plans that i've altered it a littlebit and looked and thought, - well, i don't

really want to do it in that way. but i've changed it in some way. this is muchdifferent to what i was doing in the past. in the past i used to just go, - yeah i can'tdo that. deadlines will go by, just things never gotdone and my brain will be that fogged that i couldn't think about stuff. anyway, all that's changed i�m more controlnow. number five is related to number four in thati don't have that constant bug in the back of my mind that is telling me that what i'mdoing is wrong. that is screaming at me to stop fucking doingthis to yourself, to your own body and to

mind, to your life, to the people around you. i don't think like that anymore. i also don't have that feeling of missingout on something all the time, fear of missing out fomo. in the beginning you get that a lot becauseyou're trying to withdraw yourself from this whole alcoholic storm that you've been involvedin for - god knows how many years - for me, for thirty years. that's the only way i can describe, it isjust like lifestyle choices that create havoc and it takes a while to extricate yourselffrom that, from that whole thing and to change

the way that you socialize. to change the way that you relax, to changeall those things that mean an overall lifestyle change. so in the beginning, there is always goingto be that big fear that you're missing out on something and that is just bullshit -- imean it doesn't exist. when you start looking at drinkers from theperspective of a non-drinker, when you start seeing people and how theybehave and how they act, not only as they going into the shops and they are buying theirbooze. take a look at people that, standing in frontof the wine store and pretending that they're

making these serious choices about this rottengrape juice. watch them when they're drunk, how obnoxiousand boring people can be. some of the shite that comes out of people'smouths when they're drunk. then look at people afterwards when they'rein the hangover and they�re dying. once you started getting a grip on that, yourealize that you're missing out on nothing, absolutely nothing. so that thing at the back of my head is welland truly gone now. that bogus, - i know i'm doing something wrongwith myself. so that's good, it's such a relief to knowthat i don't have to go through this anymore.

that i've won that particular mental gameand that i don't have to think about the consequences of my hangover, think about the hangoversevery morning, think about how much alcohol i�ve got in the house, how much alcoholi'm going to drink tonight. think about any of that stuff, any of theconsequences, any of the embarrassment of it all not just the drinking but being a drinkerand being an asshole when i'm a drunk or whatever that meant. number six is something that i've spoken abouta lot, one of my symptoms - side effects, whatever you want to call it, one of the discomfortsthat i had after i stopped drinking was that i didn't sleep well for about a month or ittook me a month to get into a decent sleep-cycle.

but i also never had a decent sleep-cyclewhen i was drinking, it was just impossible. like i said earlier, your body is just goingthrough too much turmoil to seriously expect decent sleep. so that's one of the best things is that forthe last three years since i stopped, i'm getting great sleeps. i go through the whole sleep cycle, not onlydo i sleep well, my brain is functioning better during the day, my body is functioning betterduring the day. when i get to bed at night, i naturally feeltired and i naturally want to fall asleep. it wasn't like before where you had to havea drink almost every night in order to get

to sleep, i mean how ridiculous. if people don't think that they're drug addictsyet they still need to have a pill to put them to sleep at night, there's somethingwrong with that definitely. so i don't need any of that crap anymore,i sleep very well thank you very much. number seven is, some of the environmentalchanges that i�ve made in my life, i mean before i stopped drinking when i was drinking,my life basically revolved around alcohol. because alcohol was a definite part of whateverit is i was doing. i'll talk about my social circle in a whilebut the environment has a big impact on you psychologically.

so everything that i did was basically sittingin the bar, chin wagging, basically putting the the world to rights with other peoplewho were doing the same thing that i was doing. from a psychological perspective that justencourages you even though it's not might not be upfront that this is encouragement,it's there. when you actually go into a bar and you watchpeople drinking now and you see how they are � it�s just boring. that's a big thing that's changed is becausei don't do that anymore. because i go in and i'm focused on -- if igo into a bar i�m focused on the match. i watch a match and i'm focused on the matchand then once the match is over i leave.

so there's no time for boredom. and i am mixing with drinkers but it's a moreeclectic mix because there are different people. most people are there to watch the footballand most people will leave as soon as the football is finished and they'll go on todo with the things - time is precious. as somewhat related to that number 8 is thati've changed my social circle and that�s a massive change in influence. it's a massive influence in how you move forwardwith your life. they say you can judge a person by the fiveclosest people that they surround themselves with.

that's definitely true, all my mates beforewe're drinkers -- none of my mates are drinkers now, none of them. they drink, for the most part, i�ve onenon-drinker friend, he doesn't drink most of the time. but none of them are heavy drinkers and noneof their lives revolve around drinking. just that whole atmosphere in the pub -- froma psychological point of view, you�re surrounding yourself by people who are knocking back booze,just talking crap and beer bellies everywhere. whereas now i go out walking, i just startedback doing yoga. i still go to restaurants but i tend to�it�sjust me and esther, we enjoy, relax and just

chill out. but it's a different psychological directionthat each one is leading me to. if you're surrounded by people who like todrink and people who see no problems with putting on loads of weight because they drinking. guess what that's going to do to your mind? whereas if you're surrounded by people whoare interested in getting fit and staying fit and keeping healthy, eating the righttypes of foods, extending their knowledge in their brains, that's what you're goingto do as well. i'm still not there a hundred percent, i stillhave a long way to go to find the things that

i want to do in my life to find the rightactivities. i'm only really three years into this so alot of that time i�ve been spending doing this in doing � figuring things out. the ninth thing that's changed is just myrelationships. my relationships with other people are justblossomed since i stopped drinking in terms of whatever way you want to look at it. in terms of trust, definitely people trustme more. in terms of balance, there's more of a giveand take nature. whereas when you're abusing any drug, whenyou�re using any drug, it tends to be one

sided thing or a lopsided thing where youget a lot of people trying to give you stuff. all your relationships are dodgy. when they say five of the most, take fivepeople, the closest five people to you and you'll understand. somebody you'll know, somebody who they are. i had great affection for a lot of my drinkingbuddies who i thought were my friends, and really when i think about it now there weremore acquaintances, they were enablers � i hate that word but because it's so mixed upin the alcoholic literature and bullshit. but there were more like co-conspirators thananything else, they were doing this and we

had this tacit agreement not to say anythingto each other, not to criticize each other about what we were doing, because we wereall doing the same thing and that's no good. and finally, number ten is i've re-writtenwho i am. before i quit drinking, i was a mess, i wasin secure, i was volatile -- just a pure mess. everything that i did, everything that i triedto do in my life just eventually got�either the plans didn't get done or they were watereddown versions of what could have been. it was always, - yeah should have done this,could have done this and would have done this if only i had done that. i was basically just living a watered downversion of my life.

by changing that one thing in my life, byeliminating that one element from the equation, everything else changed with it, everythingelse. it's a gradual process, but everything elsehas to change because the alcohol habit is supporting a lot of other bad habits as well. once you take that one umbrella habit outof the equation, that one foundational habit,then there's a lot of other things that need tochange, that have to change and that you will definitely want to change once you stop drinking. i�ve began liking myself from those first30 days, i started to like the effects, like what i was seeing.

for the first time in a long time � there�sa pigeon, oh shit. i also began to like myself, i like who iwas becoming. like i said, earlier on, i had this naggingfeeling all the time, these nagging thoughts all the time in the back of my mind, thatwhat i was doing was just wrong. the person i was, that i had become was justnot who i wanted to be and that's all changed. i really like the direction that i'm taking. i like the way i feel about myself now. it takes a long time before you can un-gripyourself from this alcoholic lifestyle, from everything that you've been doing.

it has its tendrils in all different aspectsof your life, so it takes a long time before you can pull those holds away and start toplant your new lifestyle. and that�s tough sometimes, it's not easybecause a lot of these things - if you've been drinking alcohol for a long time thenthose roots are going to be fairly deep. so you've got to do them, but it's a gradualprocess like i keep saying. it's one day at a time so you just followthrough and you do one change at time and you do it in small increments. change is going to happen, change happenson a personal level from moment to moment. it happens whether you like it or not, changehappens in everything around you.

in a moment by moment basis so all the timechange is happening everywhere. it's impossible to take the reins of thatchange and to guide it where you want it to go if you've got something so destructiveand so unpredictable as alcohol in your life. once you get alcohol out your life, you'regoing to improve vastly. you will be able to take the reins of thatchange and guide your life in the direction that you want it to go. so give us a thumbs up click if you like thatvideo, if that�s your thing. leave a comment down below. come over to the website and leave a commentthere.

until next time i'm kevin ohara for alcoholmastery. onwards and upwards.