Heavy Drinking Turned Me Ugly
Has sobriety restored my rugged good looks?
An Ugly Drunk
Nobody ever looks good in their passport photo, right? For the past nine years, I’ve absolutely hated mine. I’ve occasionally wondered if it’s the worst photo ever taken of me in my entire life.
The photo was taken about one year before I got sober. At the time, I was drinking heavily every single day, and it shows.
[Let me mention, right off the bat, that I won’t be sharing before-and-after photos in today’s newsletter. The trouble is that those photos often get picked up and shared outside of their original context, sometimes even in malicious ads and spam. I don’t want to have my image used like that, so you’ll have to live with my descriptions of the photos instead.]
In the photo, I weigh about 215 pounds (97.5 kg), which is the most I’ve ever weighed. My cheeks are so puffy that they look swollen. My eyes are red and have huge bags underneath. My beard is unkempt and my hair is in an ugly buzz cut. I look absolutely exhausted—as if I’ve either just woken up or stayed awake all night.
I don’t have many pictures from that time of my life, so it’s hard to say how well the photo represents my typical appearance back then. I don’t remember taking the passport photo, but my guess is that if it was really worse than I usually looked, I wouldn’t have used it. Therefore, I suspect that it’s a fairly accurate representation.
I also managed to find a couple of photos from half a year earlier, and while I looked less tired, most of the other details were the same. I think the simple truth is that during the last year before I got sober, I looked worse than at any other point in my life.
How is it that drinking alcohol altered my appearance so much? The extra calories added to my weight—that much is straightforward. When I was a drinker, I could never keep my weight where I wanted it to be, because I was consuming about one thousand calories a day (or more) just in beer.
I actually tried to go on a diet a few times before getting sober, but I ended up eating almost nothing because I was unwilling to cut the alcohol from my diet. It was extremely dangerous, and of course, impossible to maintain.
Alcohol also made me look worse because it interfered with my sleep. I used to wake up again and again throughout the night, and when the morning came I was always still tired. That explained the bags under my eyes and the general look of exhaustion.
In addition, drinking too much alcohol can prematurely age you. A study from a couple of years ago found that a single night of binge drinking can have the same effect as one and a half months of normal aging. (You can read more about that study here and here.)
Lastly, during my drinking years, I just didn’t care as much about my appearance. Instead of going to a barber for a haircut, I’d just clip it myself over the bathroom sink. Instead of carefully grooming my beard, I’d just let it grow.
All of these effects combined to turn me into the ugliest version of myself. And I don’t mean that as some kind of metaphor for my spiritual or mental side—I mean that I quite literally looked terrible.
Sober and Handsome
The reason that this has been on my mind is because last month I got a new passport for the first time since getting sober. Nearly ten years have passed between my terrible last passport photo and this new one, and the difference is night and day.
In my new passport photo, I’m 50 pounds lighter, my eyes are sparkling, my posture has improved, and even my skin looks clearer. Looking at them side by side, you couldn’t even tell that they were both the same person.
I sent a comparison shot to a couple of friends, and they were as blown away as I was. One who had met me sober said she wouldn’t have even known that the first photo was me. Another called it a “hard glow up.”
My drinking years certainly damaged my appearance, but fortunately, those changes weren’t permanent. Eight years later, I look far better than ever before. (Although, I certainly have a bit more grey hair than I used to.)
Without all those empty calories, I was finally able to lose weight. Without the drinking, I was able to sleep better and wake up feeling refreshed. I’ve also been able to devote some time to exercising and taking better care of my appearance.
All of these little changes added up, and they were all made possible because I got sober.
I know that it can feel a little superficial to dwell on the physical changes that sobriety brings about. It’s not as if looking better is the most important benefit of sobriety.
However, sometimes it’s nice to have a clear, tangible way to see how we’ve grown. It feels good to look in the mirror and not be embarrassed by the face looking back at me. It feels even better to compare how I look now to how I looked when I was a drinker, and to see how much I’ve changed for the better.
If you’ve just recently quit drinking, I recommend taking a couple of pictures so you can document your progress. You don’t ever need to show them to anyone else, but they can provide a powerful source of motivation to stick with your sobriety.
Eight years of sobriety improved my appearance more than anything else ever could have. I’m excited to find out how I look another eight years down the road.