This is likely to be a poorly-controlled experiment, isn’t it? For instance, my quality of life changes greatly based on sleep quality, which lately is controlled by work schedules, seasonal allergen exposure, and whether or not my baby is teething, none of which I can greatly effect and any of which could overwhelm any experimental variable.
But what the heck:
I was only contemplating this before, but it seems like a good idea and perhaps posting here will make it “official” in my head: I’m going to be a teetotaler for the next 40 days. I’ve never been a heavy drinker, but it’s been months since I’ve gone more than a couple weeks completely dry, and it would be good to double-check that I haven’t developed any habituation.
An update in case anyone cares, because I appreciate the precommitment effect that posting here gave me:
Not drinking didn’t noticeably change my quality of life in most of the metrics I was trying to keep track of (sleep levels, stress levels, behavior towards others, effectiveness of parenting, quality of output at work). These are obviously hard to measure so I can’t rule out the possibility that there were improvements that neither I nor close friends and family noticed. By far the strongest benefit of not drinking was simply the assurance that I could do so without straining my willpower, and for that reason alone I’m glad I participated.
Not drinking didn’t strongly impair my quality of life in the few instances where I might have feared it would: social outings and work functions where alcohol was served were still pleasant when I didn’t partake. I did sometimes miss my dinner cocktail at home, but not enough to tempt me to “cheat”. By far the strongest cost of not drinking was the inability to destress as rapidly at the end of a hard day, but my life isn’t stressful enough for this to be a real problem.
I expected to save $40 or so by not drinking, but I spent about that much more than average on entertainment this month. I think this was coincidence, but maybe “mixology” entertains or sedates me in a way that sates my demand for new games/movies/etc.
Also unexpected, and more interesting: after two or three weeks this became a real life “Smoker’s Lesion” situation. I already had enough experience to come to nearly all of the conclusions above, so the value of the experiment was over, and there was no value in continuing… except that “I’m not addicted, therefore I can stop abstaining” would have been precisely the sort of thing a rationalizing addict would say too, and so would have been (weak) evidence that I was addicted! Thanks to the public precommitment to a fixed length of abstention, though, the situation was made much less ambiguous: quitting the experiment now that Lent is over is fine; quitting before the Schelling point was reached would have been strong evidence of a problem.
This is likely to be a poorly-controlled experiment, isn’t it?
Sure. But I think it’s easy to come up with lots of reasons like this not to try new things, with the end result being that you never try new things. Bad times. So, at least in my own life, I’m trying to implement a general policy of erring on the side of trying new things, and I’ll cross the bad-methodology bridge once I get to it.
This is likely to be a poorly-controlled experiment, isn’t it? For instance, my quality of life changes greatly based on sleep quality, which lately is controlled by work schedules, seasonal allergen exposure, and whether or not my baby is teething, none of which I can greatly effect and any of which could overwhelm any experimental variable.
But what the heck:
I was only contemplating this before, but it seems like a good idea and perhaps posting here will make it “official” in my head: I’m going to be a teetotaler for the next 40 days. I’ve never been a heavy drinker, but it’s been months since I’ve gone more than a couple weeks completely dry, and it would be good to double-check that I haven’t developed any habituation.
An update in case anyone cares, because I appreciate the precommitment effect that posting here gave me:
Not drinking didn’t noticeably change my quality of life in most of the metrics I was trying to keep track of (sleep levels, stress levels, behavior towards others, effectiveness of parenting, quality of output at work). These are obviously hard to measure so I can’t rule out the possibility that there were improvements that neither I nor close friends and family noticed. By far the strongest benefit of not drinking was simply the assurance that I could do so without straining my willpower, and for that reason alone I’m glad I participated.
Not drinking didn’t strongly impair my quality of life in the few instances where I might have feared it would: social outings and work functions where alcohol was served were still pleasant when I didn’t partake. I did sometimes miss my dinner cocktail at home, but not enough to tempt me to “cheat”. By far the strongest cost of not drinking was the inability to destress as rapidly at the end of a hard day, but my life isn’t stressful enough for this to be a real problem.
I expected to save $40 or so by not drinking, but I spent about that much more than average on entertainment this month. I think this was coincidence, but maybe “mixology” entertains or sedates me in a way that sates my demand for new games/movies/etc.
Also unexpected, and more interesting: after two or three weeks this became a real life “Smoker’s Lesion” situation. I already had enough experience to come to nearly all of the conclusions above, so the value of the experiment was over, and there was no value in continuing… except that “I’m not addicted, therefore I can stop abstaining” would have been precisely the sort of thing a rationalizing addict would say too, and so would have been (weak) evidence that I was addicted! Thanks to the public precommitment to a fixed length of abstention, though, the situation was made much less ambiguous: quitting the experiment now that Lent is over is fine; quitting before the Schelling point was reached would have been strong evidence of a problem.
Sure. But I think it’s easy to come up with lots of reasons like this not to try new things, with the end result being that you never try new things. Bad times. So, at least in my own life, I’m trying to implement a general policy of erring on the side of trying new things, and I’ll cross the bad-methodology bridge once I get to it.