It's easy to get in the habit of drinking every day, but what are the health benefits of giving up entirely? Photo / 123rf
It's easy to get in the habit of drinking every day, but what are the health benefits of giving up entirely? Photo / 123rf
Julian Tittershill quit alcohol after health scares, including heart problems and blood cancer.
He lost 38kg, improved heart health, and no longer needs treatment for his blood disorder.
Despite social challenges, Tittershill’s life is ’95% better' with improved sleep and mental health.
Julian Tittershill’s wake-up call was not the progressive weight gain, the atrial fibrillation or the enlarged ventricle. It wasn’t even the blood cancer diagnosis. Julian knew he needed to give up drinking because of the depression and anxiety that haunted him every morning after.
Julian, 52,liked beer. His social life revolved around the pub. He was, and still is, a successful people manager for a large pharmaceutical company.
But when he wasn’t working, he was enjoying a drink. His last four homes had bars in them.
He was the life and soul of the party. He never drank spirits and doesn’t count himself as the archetypal alcoholic, reaching for spirits in the morning. He was “mentally dependent” and drank, on average, 70-80 units a week, sometimes rising to 100. The cumulative effect of all that grog was killing him.
Today, apart from two accidental mouthfuls (a sip of his wife’s Coke, which had rum in it, and an inadvertently served bottle of Becks instead of Becks 0%), Julian has not touched a drop in nearly four years.
Unlike many teetotallers, he doesn’t sugar-coat sobriety. There are things he misses and things he’s had to give up. His social life has suffered and friendships have changed. “There are one or two negatives,” he admits. “But I could list 20 positives to being alcohol free. It’s not perfect, but my life is 95% better.”
The positives include curing polycythaemia (a benign form of blood cancer), losing 38kg, recovering heart health and lowering his blood pressure and bad cholesterol levels.
Giving up alcohol might mean you need to make changes to your social life, but the health benefits can be worth it. Photo / 123rf
“I would have a beer at dinner time, another while I was cooking dinner and then beer or a bottle of wine, and I’d finish the bottle off,” he says. “On Wednesdays I’d have five or six pints at the pub.” Weekend drinking started straight after work in the pub each Friday, then continued on Saturday afternoon and through the evening.
“On Sunday I would subconsciously be thinking how quickly can I start cooking the roast and get a beer in my hand? I couldn’t socially function without alcohol,” he admits. “Mentally, I was utterly dependent. I couldn’t exist socially as myself without alcohol.”
All his friends were drinking buddies from the pub.
During all this time Julian was a regular gym-goer. He trained several times a week and ran. Despite this he gained more and more weight, reaching 123kg by the age of 48.
“The training never had an impact and I never saw a benefit,” he says. “I was 101kg at 30 and realised I needed to do something, but the weight just went up and up and I hated myself for it.”
Julian was a functional drinker. There were no real car-crash moments. “I remember once having several pints, getting on a bike, and falling into the middle of the road, sprawled out in front of a car,” he recalls. “And in my student days there was the time at a Christmas meal when I ran behind everybody and set their Christmas hats on fire. But generally, I never got drunk. I’d get tired before I got drunk.”
The health problems began to show in his mid-40s.
“I had my first cardiovascular warning sign, which was atrial fibrillation, an irregular heartbeat,” Julian recounts. “The cardiologist said to me ‘you are the stereotypical fat, middle-aged boozer. I see people like you 10 times a week and nobody ever listens. You’ll have your first heart attack in the next five years or so.’”
Then, in 2020, he was diagnosed with polycythaemia, a type of blood cancer in which the bone marrow produces too many red blood cells.
“It puts you at a higher risk of stroke and heart attack,” says Julian. “The haematologist said it won’t kill you tomorrow, but if you don’t start behaving, it will eventually.”
Some people find they are unable to go from a heavy-drinking lifestyle to drinking in moderation - they need to give up entirely. Photo / 123rf
After these health scares Julian managed to give up alcohol entirely for two months, after which he thought he could moderate his drinking. But within a few months the old habits were back and with them came disturbed sleep, post-drinking anxiety and depression.
“I woke every morning feeling rough, thinking, why have I done it again? Can I not just have one day off? The hangovers weren’t headaches, they became deeply psychological. It was the depression of waking up and thinking, I’ve done it again. I was awake every night with anxiety, feeling so down and depressed. Every morning I said to myself today I won’t drink, but by teatime I had a beer in my hand.”
Julian and his wife, Sharlean, who encouraged him to cut down over the years, have two adopted daughters.
“I wasn’t particularly present. I wasn’t being a good husband or good father,” he confesses.
Catalyst for change
It was during one of these night-time anxiety attacks that Julian was scrolling on his phone and found One Year No Beer (OYNB), an organisation that offers support, resources and coaching programmes to help people give up alcohol. The company offers subscription packages and Julian signed up for a year.
It was the catalyst he needed, and he’s become an advocate for the programme.
“I determined that the life I had created for the last 30 years was closed to me,” he says. “The pub was out so I had to find other things to do. I had six months of jigsaws because I needed something to do with my mind and hands. I then had my model aircraft phase. I walked a lot. This year I will have walked 10 million steps. I started writing a book.” He also increased his gym activity and took up running seriously.
He says physically, he had no withdrawal symptoms.
“The one real challenge was fomo, or fear of missing out,” he continues. “It would be dishonest to say that social life does not suffer. It does. My relationships with a lot of friends have changed because I don’t go to the pub much any more, but overall, that part of my life has been replaced with much better things.”
“If I thought I could go to the pub at 5 tonight, have several pints then wake up tomorrow and not drink again for six months, I’d do it,” he concludes. “But in alcohol-free communities you see people who think they can moderate, and they wake up six months later, right back to where they started.”
Julian went from 123kg to less than 90kg. Photo / 123rf
The health benefits of beer-free living
Weight
At his heaviest, 182cm-tall Julian weighed 123kg.
“I was getting fatter and fatter,” he says. He is now 86kg. A body composition analysis records his total body fat at 14%. His waist shrank from 42in to 32in.
Heart health
No more atrial fibrillation. His enlarged left ventricle is now a normal size.
“I have a perfectly normal heart,” says Julian. “My pulse has gone from a resting heart rate of 72 to 52.”
Liver
Julian explains: “I was diagnosed with a fatty liver. I no longer have a fatty liver. My bad cholesterol level has halved.”
Blood cancer
Julian was diagnosed with polycythaemia, a blood disorder that put him at high risk of clots, stroke or heart attack. He needed three-monthly venesections to reduce the volume of his blood. He no longer needs the treatment and his blood counts have normalised.
Before quitting, his haematocrit count – the percentage of blood made of red blood cells – was 56. A healthy range is 40-45. It is now 42.
Alcohol can affect your sleep and increase anxiety and depression. Photo / 123rf
Sleep
Julian previously averaged six hours of broken sleep a night, punctuated by anxiety attacks. In 2024, he averaged eight hours 25 minutes' sleep a night, “which is just unbelievable. I easily get 25% more sleep now”.
Mental health
Julian no longer suffers depressive episodes.
“I don’t wake up in the middle of the night for two hours of overthinking and full of self-loathing and anxiety,” he says.
Fitness
His 10k time has been reduced from 76 minutes to 49 minutes. His 5k time is 23 minutes 35 seconds, down from 30 minutes. His half marathon time was 136 minutes, it is now 117 minutes. He has 48 running medals.
He trains in the gym six days a week. “I get a buzz out of achieving more in the gym, lifting heavier and seeing if I can push it a little bit further,” he says.
Family life
Sharlean says: “We get quality time with him instead of just time with him. We work together as a family now, there isn’t a fifth member of our family (booze). He does his fair share of the driving! We no longer have to go to the pub to see him on the weekends. We were always second fiddle. We have conversations instead of him just singing drunken 80s songs at me. He listens.”
Lexi, 15, says: “He’s not a fatty any more.” Grace, 17, says: “We get more of him because he’s not in the pub all the time. He is more brain alive. He is there for me; I feel more secure.”
