The World Decided to Celebrate the End of No-Drinking January With Me

On New Year's Day this year, I decided not to have anything alcoholic to drink in the month of January. I have some a skin condition/immune disorder called psoriasis. Normal skin cells produce new skin at a rate of every 28-30 days. In some places on my body, my skin cells produce new skin every 3-4 days. This does not give the skin in those areas enough time to mature, so it is all flaky and thin when it gets to the surface, giving areas of my skin a red, dry look to them. It looks like a problem that lotion could solve, but the problem is actually deeper than that, hence immune disorder. My skin cells think that there is something wrong on that area of my skin and are therefore producing new skin in order to fix it. It's really pretty disgusting, but it's been mostly under control for the last 5 years or so.

And on a positive, I'm kind of like a superhero! If I get cut on a psoriasis spot, it's usually gone in the next day or so.

Anyway, I decided to try to eradicate the psoriasis by trying a few new things on my own. I did some research and decided on a bunch of things at once. Some of them I stopped right away and some of them seemed too hard, so here is what I ended up with.

I take 6 vitamins a day: zinc, B-complex, fish oil, flaxseed oil, echinacea, and a standard women's one a day.

And I stopped drinking for the month of January.

And it's working! Both of the large psoriasis spots (on my calf and elbow) have diminished to about 10% of what they were and there are areas on them which are nearly completely gone.

Now I honestly can't just stop drinking, but my plan is to cut that to about a quarter of what I was doing, meaning I'm not going to have that one beer with dinner anymore, or those two beers when I go see a movie. It will be cut down to just weekends, for the most part. I think I'll probably have to make exceptions for special occasions. I do plan on continuing with the vitamins though because I think that's what is making the biggest difference.

My mom is going to be so happy when she reads this.

Anyhow, I decided to cut myself a break and end No Drinking January this weekend, even though it was still technically January. This turned out to be great because we had our second snowpocalypse of the winter. The world decided to celebrate with me!

There I go!