Nobody Warns You About Days 30 to 100 Without Alcohol

0:03 Welcome to another episode of the No More Wasted Days podcast. I'm your host, Sarah, and today we're going to talk about days 30 to 100. If you've been listening for about a month now, I did an episode about the first seven days without alcohol. And then I did an episode about the first 30. And today I want to dive into days 30 to 100. And when you research this, these days really don't get a lot of attention. But I've said it before and I'll say it again. Day 100 was my favorite milestone that I've hit. I think one year is probably the next favorite milestone and then 1000 days. But day 100 was something that did not feel in my reach when I started. It felt way out of touch. Now since then, I've gone past 100 days,

0:50 but to get there, it felt like a huge accomplishment for me. So I want to talk about what happens when the initial excitement of quitting drinking wears off. And I did a little research for this one, so I'll be able to give you some science behind it and show you why giving yourself 100 days can be so much more informative than stopping at 30 days. I think 30-day breaks are really common and Things like Dry July, Dry January, and Sober October have really come into the mainstream, and I think that is awesome. I love that because I do think 30 days gives people a really good, honest look at what their life can look like without alcohol.

1:24 But when you go to 100 days, you really show yourself like, hey, this could actually be my lifestyle, and this is not bad at all. This is actually really awesome. Now, before we dive all the way into this episode, I do want you to know that my next Push to 100 is starting on September 24th. Enrollment to that 100-day alcohol-free challenge will actually close at midnight on September 23rd.

1:46 So if you're listening to this podcast on the day that it airs, now is your time to get in. For my podcast listeners, I have a special coupon code for you. It's PODCAST50, and this will save you $ 50 off of your enrollment. Now, like I said before, 100 days is my favorite milestone still. And I love to work with people in their first 100 days of being alcohol-free.

2:08 If you join this challenge, you get to be on seven different live coaching calls with me. The course is loaded with tons of content, videos, emails, workbooks. But more importantly, you have a community, so you're not alone on the journey. So why not end your year alcohol-free? It's no coincidence that this challenge starts on September 23rd, and that means that your 100th day will be January 1st, 2027. I did that very intentionally. And I know that the people who are going to be in this group and go to that day 100 on January 1st, 2027 are going to be such sober baddies and I'm so excited to work with them. So why don't you hop in and be one of them too? Just head to the link in the show notes of this episode or you can

2:49 type in nomorewastedays.co forward slash push dash 2 dash 100. And don't forget your coupon code as a podcast listener, podcast 50. That's podcast 50. This will save you $ 50 on your enrollment. All right, now let's dive into this episode. So like I said in the beginning, everybody talks about 30 days, but what happens when you get to day 31?

3:12 You're past the beginning, but you're definitely not at a point where alcohol-free living necessarily feels completely normal. And this is where quitting drinking can get a little weird. At this point, you're going to feel significantly better. You're going to be thinking about alcohol so much less. But suddenly, new thoughts and challenges can actually appear during this time. Boredom, random cravings show up that you weren't expecting because you didn't have them during those first 30 days. feeling like you should be farther along, like you should be finding this journey easier at this time. And that voice starts to creep in that says, I bet you could have a drink and you could do it normally now. I

3:50 think this is a huge one during this day's 30 to 100 because you really do start getting comfortable in your alcohol-free skin and you start being like, my drinking wasn't that bad. I can just go back and now I can moderate. And also at this point, you really do start to question who you are without alcohol. You can ditch alcohol for 30 days and you don't really have to question that very much. But when you go for 100 days, that takes you through a full season, three months. You have a lot during that time and you really start to go, who am I without alcohol?

4:18 What is my life going to look like without alcohol? So let's dive into how we feel by day 30. By day 30, a person typically notices better mornings, better sleep, more energy, less bloating, clearer thinking, less anxiety, you start to notice that you're saving money, and you're feeling proud of yourself, and this is leading to higher confidence. There's a study that followed moderate to heavy drinkers who were not alcohol dependent and compared people who stopped drinking for one month with people who kept drinking. After one month, the abstinence group experienced significant improvements in blood pressure, insulin resistance, weight, and liver enzymes. For example, insulin resistance fell about 26%,

5:00 systolic blood pressure about 7%, and body weight about 1.5%. So your body may already be responding to not drinking by day 30, but that doesn't mean the entire process is finished. This is where people sometimes get confused. They think, I've been doing this for a month. Why don't I feel completely different yet? And it's because your body and brain didn't spend 30 days learning alcohol. Whenever I remind myself that, I have to go, oh yeah, I actually had my first drink probably when I was like, I don't know, 13 or 14? And I quit drinking when I was 40. My brain had a lot of time to learn how it was as a drinker. So that means recovery doesn't happen on a 30-day deadline. So during days 30 to 100, your brain is still changing. Chronic

5:47 heavy alcohol use can affect brain systems involved in decision-making, impulse control, memory, motivation, attention, emotional regulation, and sleep. Now, when I first heard all of this, when I was just starting my alcohol-free journey, I got really down on myself. Like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I did all of this like abuse to my brain. I was drinking and it was so hard on my brain because I never really thought of that when I was a drinker. But also as I did my research, I started to realize that the brain has neuroplasticity and that means that your brain can change. And one of the ways we can change our brain around alcohol-related issues is by prolonged abstinence.

6:26 Researchers followed people with alcohol use disorder at approximately one week alcohol-free, one month alcohol-free, and 7.3 months alcohol-free. And they found significant increases in most of the brain's regions studied across those months. The fastest changes tend to happen during the first month, but recovery continued well beyond day 30.

6:46 Many measures of attention, memory, executive function, all of those showed recovery over 6 to 12 months. That's why I always say it's so important to take it past day 30. There is no magical day 30 brain reset. And there isn't good evidence for that popular idea that dopamine magically resets at day 90 either. Your brain is always adapting over time. Day 30 isn't graduation. It's actually still really early on the journey. And I don't want you to feel bad if you're like, but 30 days was so hard for me. I totally get it. 30 days is really challenging. And I honestly think the first 30 days, the first 100 days are really the hardest days on the journey, right? The very first days are where you're

7:28 learning how to change a habit. But you have to be patient with yourself to really experience some long-term changes. So during this day 30 to 100, the cravings can get really sneaky, and this is why I think doing something like the Push to 100, where you have a group to keep you going on the journey, is really important.

7:45 Early cravings sound like, I want a drink. Later cravings might sound like, I've done really well. Maybe I could have one now. Maybe I'll be different this time. Maybe weekends only would work. I clearly proved I can stop. So why does this happen? It's almost like your brain turns into more of a negotiator after day 30. Alcohol doesn't just create an association with alcohol itself. Your brain learns associations between alcohol and Friday night or sitting on a patio, cooking dinner. Certain friends, vacations, specific music. I think you get it. Dopamine is involved in learning associations between alcohol's effects and the cues surrounding drinking. And those cues can later provoke craving or alcohol-seeking behavior. So you

8:32 may go two weeks barely thinking about alcohol and then suddenly you're sitting outside on a beautiful afternoon and you think, man, a glass of wine would be so good on this beautiful afternoon. This happens to a lot of people, like right when the good weather shows up, they're like, oh my gosh, I want to drink in the sun. That was me. It would be like a random Tuesday, but the sun would be out for the first time in a long time. And I would be like, oh my gosh, I want to go sit out on the deck. And when I go sit out on the deck, I want to have a beer. That doesn't mean you're back at square one, like your brain is totally reset. Now you've got to start relearning all of these things again. It

9:05 just means that this is a situation that your brain is strongly associated with drinking. This happens with me with like crisp fall mornings. I'll think, oh my gosh, we could go to a pumpkin patch or go on a fall hike today. When we get home, we could have a beer on the deck around the fire pit. I had to really relearn a lot of these things. And the farther you go on your journey, the more these things happen to you. It's basically like a whole year goes by and you go through all these things and you go, oh, this is where alcohol is associated with this.

9:38 I really think this is what's so important about this round of the Push to 100 because we're going to go through Halloween and you're going to see Do you have any alcohol-related cravings around that holiday? What about Thanksgiving? What about Christmas? What about New Year's Eve? And the cool part is you're going to have a group going through it with you so you can all talk about it and go, hey, this is happening. Oh, yeah, that's happening for me. And you're going to go, oh my gosh, I'm not alone on this journey. When you go through all of these motions, you're actually practicing a different response.

10:09 And you're getting to expose yourself to more triggers so you can get stronger on this journey. Now, I think that really after two weeks, a lot of the excitement has worn off of quitting drinking. But definitely after day 30... You start being like, oh, there aren't as many fun milestones because at first you get through day one and then day seven and then two weeks and then day 30.

10:32 Everything feels like a really fun milestone and then that slows down. All of a sudden it's day 43. It's Tuesday. Nothing exciting is happening. You're folding laundry. You're still annoyed with your partner. Your kid leaves their crap everywhere in the house. Side note, kids are like the worst roommates, aren't they? That's like our running joke in our house right now. And you still have work issues at times.

10:57 You're still stressed. There's still life, okay? But a key point to remember is that alcohol-free life eventually stops feeling like a challenge and starts feeling like your actual life. So you're experiencing these things, and at first all these things kind of felt easier without alcohol, but then you're like, oh my gosh, they're still just happening. Also, it can feel a little boring at times. A lot of people say they're really bored in the very beginning. I feel like it took me a while to experience that boredom in an alcohol-free journey because I was so excited at the beginning. I'm also a person with way too many hobbies, so it takes a lot for me to get bored, but I needed to get through kind of boring weekends

11:37 where there was nothing on the agenda. Those don't happen every weekend, right? So when the first one came up and I wasn't drinking, I was like, oh, this is kind of boring. But I had to realize that boring isn't necessarily bad. Sometimes you're simply adjusting to life without turning every Friday, dinner, vacation, or celebration into an alcohol-related event.

11:57 So instead of asking yourself, why isn't sobriety more exciting? Try asking yourself, what would make my actual life more interesting? This is a huge thing we work on in the Push to 100. I talk a lot about building a life that you are excited to show up for. We talk about building hobbies, figuring out how to use the money we're saving for travel. working in adventure into our life, learning something new, changing up your routines. This is a huge thing that I teach as far as the fact that we are going to build a bigger life, not just a sober one. I think a huge thing we get to see too when we go beyond day 30 is that you still have crappy days. All of a sudden it may be like day 52 and you're thinking,

12:40 why am I anxious today? Or why did I sleep terribly? Or why am I irritated with everybody? Unfortunately, quitting drinking doesn't eliminate the human experience. And in the very beginning, some of these things can actually be withdrawal and there can even be longer withdrawal periods. But sometimes you're not experienced with withdrawal. You're just having kind of a crappy day.

13:03 And now you're having to experience it without numbing it. This is a really important skill to learn. Learning how to sit with the crappy day, navigate the crappy day and be like, it's all right. Tomorrow is a new day. I get to try again. I do not need to use alcohol. It's not going to make the day better.

13:20 That's always one thing I had to remind myself over and over. I would always be saying, alcohol is not going to help this. It's only going to make it worse. And it was true because I knew if I drank, I would over drink. I would have a hangover. I would be upset with myself the next day that I chose to drink. And then I would still have whatever problem was sitting there. And I would have a hangover and be really mad at myself that I chose to drink.

13:42 But you also have to remember that being alcohol-free doesn't mean you're never going to feel bad again. That's just part of being human, right? It just means that alcohol is no longer going to be your automatic answer when you feel bad, but that is a learned skill. Now, this next thing I'm going to talk about is so important.

13:59 It's the idea that we start thinking, maybe I'm fixed. I really think when I do my live 30-day challenges, I think they're amazing. I have a lot of people do the 30-day challenge, and they go on to quit drinking after that. I have a lot of people do the 30-day challenge and they never intended to quit drinking.

14:15 It was simply a break for them. But I probably have the biggest majority of people do the 30-day challenge and then they go back to drinking because they think, I'm fixed now. I'm going to be able to drink normally. Because a lot of times at day 30, you're sleeping better. You're really proud of yourself and you're functioning better throughout your life and alcohol isn't occupying every thought and your cravings have faded. And you even start to have this voice that's saying, maybe I overreacted. Maybe my drinking wasn't really that bad. You might even actually have friends saying that to you too. And then you're thinking, I could probably moderate now. This is incredibly common. A huge part

14:54 of this is because you stopped drinking and things improved. And your brain concludes drinking was never the problem. But there's another possible interpretation that I really want you to lean into, and that's maybe feeling better is evidence that not drinking is working. Whenever that voice creeps in that tells me, like, you're doing so good on this journey, you could probably go back to drinking now, you could probably have a drink every now and then, and you would do awesome at it now. You have all this research, you know all this data about alcohol, you won't go back to over-drinking. But then I really stop and go, why do I even want alcohol in my life? If everything's actually going better without it, Why do I want

15:32 to reintroduce it? It's not something we need to survive. And it's actually a poison. It's a carcinogen. And when I remind myself of those things, I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to have it. And then when I remember that a lot of our drinking is just paired with associations like, oh, sitting out on the porch in the sun equals having a drink. Or it's Friday night. Time to have a whole bottle of wine, right? We have all these different associations, and once I knew that knowledge too, I was like, I can just start changing these things.

16:02 So I always urge people that after 30 days, instead of testing moderation, keep gathering information. Keep going and see what it's like to go through a ton of different situations without alcohol. Don't listen to that part of your brain that's saying, see, you're all good. You can totally drink now. Instead, challenge that thought and be like, hey, it's only been 30 days. Yes, that's a huge accomplishment, but it's not quite enough time for me to see I'm going to keep going to 100. And then there is the identity shift. Early on in your journey, the question is, how do I not drink tonight? And eventually the questions become, what do I actually like doing? How do I relax? How do I celebrate? Who are my people?

16:44 What do I want my weekends to look like? And who am I without alcohol? And even farther along on your journey, you start to think things like, am I someone who just doesn't drink? Here's the good news. You don't need an answer yet. But what I want you to lean into is that I never expect you to just white knuckle an alcohol-free journey. That is never my intention.

17:03 And if you're doing that, it's not going to stick. Instead, I want you to start really leaning into what lights you up. The real and authentic you. What do you love to do? And then you start building this life where alcohol just doesn't really matter. You start getting to authentically build your identity. And I think so much of the time as adults, we're always thinking like, who am I?

17:25 What do I like to do? And I know for me that stripping away alcohol actually made it easier for me to decide that. There was so much of my drinking life that was simply that I liked drinking. That was my hobby. It didn't matter what the activity was as long as drinking was involved. And when I took away the drinking, I had to actually learn like what activities do I like? What goals in my life matter to me? What's my purpose even? Like really big questions I've gotten to tackle in my alcohol-free journey. This is where you stop just focusing on removing alcohol and you start thinking, what am I putting into its place? What am I replacing alcohol with? And this is where you start building a life that you love. Do you have

18:06 anyone in your life that you watch and you're like, God, their life looks so amazing. They've got a dream job. They've got a dream life. They have their dream circle of friends. They go on all these amazing adventures, whatever it is, right? We all have a person that we watch and we're like, God, they're just like always excited.

18:23 They're always happy. What is it? I think what it is with those people is that they know who they are. They know what lights them up. And I know for me that when I took away alcohol, I actually started to learn those things about myself. So why 100 days? 100 days isn't magic. I just had my friend Chelsea on and she talked about how at one year she actually relapsed. There's no magical number, right? There isn't a biological transformation that happens at exactly day 100. And that's not why I picked it. I really picked it because I feel like 100 days gives you time. And 100 days is doable, yet feels like a stretch, right? But it gives you time to experience good weekends and bad weekends.

19:05 Boring nights, exciting nights. social situations, and nights in. Great mornings and great evenings, difficult emotions, you get to experience people drinking around you, and in particular, this round of the Push to 100 is going to allow you to go through many holidays. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and even New Year's Eve. This is huge. We're not picking a time where we can avoid real life. I mean, quitting drinking in January is great. Quitting drinking any time is amazing, okay?

19:37 But man, it takes a badass to quit right now. And I'm not saying if you quit on January 1st that you're not a badass, okay? But there's something really powerful about taking advantage of this time and saying, I'm going to quit. And here's what I want you to know. My first Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas without alcohol, they were amazing.

19:58 I used to end every Christmas as a drinker crying. I remember Just being so overwhelmed. First of all, I was drunk because I had been drinking all day. And I was also like hungover from Christmas Eve drinking. So then by the end of Christmas Day, I was just like overwhelmed. I had been a mom all day. I had been with my family all day. It had been really emotional. But on top of that, I was drinking.

20:23 It's like I was pouring gasoline onto the fire. And I would end the night always thinking, where's the magic? Where's the magic in the holiday? Why can't I find it? And I have to tell you, my first alcohol-free Christmas, I found the magic. Things were simplified. Things still are simplified without alcohol. I'm not showing up hungover. I'm not showing up alcohol-fueled. I have real emotions happening, which sometimes are big and sometimes are small, but they're real. They're not alcohol-fueled. None of my holidays have felt boring without alcohol.

20:56 They've all just felt easier. And that's what I really want you to see. And if you can see that at the beginning of your alcohol-free journey, I think it is such a cool thing for you. You get to practice being alcohol-free during what a lot of people consider the toughest time of the year. So I want you to remember that 30 days can prove that you can stop drinking, and that is a huge accomplishment. But 100 days can begin answering the question, What does my life actually feel like without alcohol? And I think that that is an entirely different answer. Now, I know I talk a lot about your alcohol-free life, that I slip that in there a lot, but I'm not asking you to decide today that you'll never drink again. That really is

21:33 too big. That's not what I decided when I quit drinking. I told myself, I'm going to go for 30 days. After 30 days, I said, okay, I'm going to go for 100. I'm going to see if I can do 100 days. And that's how I did it. I said, I'm going to see if I can do 100 days, okay? So give yourself enough time to actually experience an alcohol-free life before deciding whether you want alcohol back in it.

21:54 That's what the Push to 100 can do. If you've been listening to the past few episodes and you're starting to go, okay, I really want to do this, but I'm scared. I want you to know that is okay. You don't have to know what's going to happen on day 101. On January 2nd, you don't have to make that choice. You're going to commit to the 100 days that are right in front of you. Remember that the Push to 100 starts on September 24th. And enrollment does close at midnight on September 23rd. This is so on September 24th. We are all in there ready to go on day one. To get yourself into that challenge, just head to the link in the show notes of this episode or go to nomorewasteddays.co forward slash push dash 2

22:32 dash 100. And do not forget your coupon code for being a podcast listener. Podcast 50. Just enter that podcast 50 and you're going to save $ 50 off your enrollment. I want you to know that you don't need to know whether you're quitting forever. You just need to give yourself enough time to find out who you are without alcohol.

22:51 I really hope this episode was helpful. And whether you're doing the push to 100 or not, I hope it has motivated you to go, OK, I'm going to go past that 30 day mark and I'm going to see what it's really like. If this episode was helpful, be sure to leave a review. And if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to this podcast on whichever platform you use to listen to it. And thank you so much for listening. And remember, life is short. Don't waste another day of it to alcohol.