Ruining My Mind

One of my greatest fears when getting sober was that I hadn’t quit drinking soon enough to prevent permanent damage. I knew that quitting alcohol would be great for my health, but what if I was already too late?

I had been a daily drinker for ten years. That was a long time to have been neglecting my health so badly. Had my habit already caused irreversible damage to my mind and body?

My biggest concern was whether all of these years of drinking had lowered my intelligence and cognition. I’ve always valued my ability to think clearly, and I worried that all of my reckless drinking had compromised it.

During my drinking years, I often suspected that alcohol had negative effects on my mind, but it was hard to be sure. One of my biggest warning signs was that my memory seemed to be getting worse. Like most alcoholics, I often woke up with fuzzy memories of the night before.

Even more troubling, my long-term memory appeared to be suffering as well. I had a lot of trouble remembering events from even a few years ago.

In addition to my memory problems, I also often felt like I was thinking more slowly. Sometimes I’d get stuck on the same thought again and again, when everyone else in the room seemed to have already moved on.

Despite these problems, I was a little reluctant to link my cognitive deficits with my alcohol use. I never took any tests designed to measure the effects of alcohol use, so ultimately, I was just speculating.

In addition, there were some areas of my life where I was clearly still performing at a high, intelligent level. I did very well academically during my years of daily drinking, which suggests that maybe my mind was functioning better than it felt like it was. This should have been reassuring, but instead the ambiguity only added to my stress and concern.

When I quit drinking, my cognitive skills initially got much worse. I was in a constant mental fog — I had trouble concentrating on even the most basic tasks, and often felt confused about what I was doing.

These troubles were at their worst during my first week sober, when I was suffering from the acute withdrawal symptoms associated with quitting alcohol. However, even after these symptoms faded, I continued to experience a less extreme version of my poor mental state for months.

I was able to function well enough to get through the day, but complex tasks like writing were harder and took longer. This experience wasn’t debilitating — I could still get my work done — it just made everything a little bit trickier.

I was extremely concerned during these months, because it appeared as if my biggest concerns about sobriety had come true: I thought it was likely that all of my drinking really had caused permanent damage to my mind.
My Return to Normal

Fortunately, my weakened mental state didn’t last forever. It took months, but finally the mental fog disappeared. It was a huge relief when my mind finally returned to normal.

Although I still had occasional moments of confusion for the first couple of years, they were rare and had no impact on my life. I’m not even sure whether they were related to drinking.

These days, four years after getting sober, I can think as clearly as ever. My mind feels as sharp as if I never drank in the first place.

One of the most exciting changes is that my long-term memory has gotten much better. I’m able to recall events that I’d forgotten about for years; memories which I had assumed were permanently lost.

Overall, I’m now confident that all of my years of drinking didn’t leave lasting damage to my cognitive abilities.

I recently read a scientific study which mirrored my own personal experiences: Cognitive Performance in Long-Term Abstinent Alcoholics.

The researchers sought to understand how long-term sobriety affected cognition — the exact question that I had been puzzling over in my personal life. According to these authors, previous studies had shown poorer cognition during the early days of sobriety, but no studies had looked at long-term effects.

Their study discovered that among people who had been sober for an average of 6.7 years, there was no noticeable decline in cognitive ability when compared with a control group, except in the realm of spatial processing.

They concluded that “[v]ery long-term abstinence resolves most neurocognitive deficits associated with alcoholism, except for the suggestion of lingering deficits in spatial processing.” (Source)

This is great news for former drinkers like me, as well as people actively trying to quit. Although it might sometimes feel like we’ve done permanent damage to our brains, the vast majority of that damage is actually reversible.

Even better, there isn’t anything special that we have to do to reverse the damage — just staying sober is enough.

Although the researchers call the 6.7-year average sobriety from their study “very long-term abstinence,” I see it as a remarkably short time to wait for a perfectly restored brain. My mind is fixing itself far faster than I destroyed it.

The human brain is remarkably resilient. Although drinking will certainly damage it, most of that damage is not permanent. Getting sober was my first step in getting my life back, including restoring my ability to think.
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Me Alcoholism, like smoking won’t damage your mind, but it will destroy your body so that you don’t live (usually) beyond 55-65 years old
So do you want a short life or do you want a long life, hopefully without any medical issues – your body, your choice.
We won the lottery of life to be here at all and we are a long time dead afterwards and nobody knows what happens when we die, but if there is something else, then I have won the lottery twice…sort of thing and you too…..