Empty Pressed Juicery juice cleanse bottles courtesy of Jonathan Elfalan.

How difficult is it for someone to go on a juice cleanse, especially someone whose cocktail intake exceeds the amount defined for binge drinking, who starts every morning with a big mug of black coffee and who doesn’t count it as breakfast unless there’s some bacon involved? Surprisingly not that hard. I “survived” Pressed Juicery’s three-day Cleanse 2, not including the two days of vegan eating and clean living I had to do to prep for it beforehand. And during that time I felt pretty good.

There were the minor hunger pains, of course. And it really helped that I worked from home that entire time, only going outside to walk the dog. No media dinners or cocktail tastings scheduled. Plus, I made my bf eat his dinner in another room and held my breath whenever he did so I wouldn’t have to smell the warm deliciousness of his stir-fry. I wasn’t too grouchy and I wasn’t in pain from headaches, starvation or, thank goodness, explosive diarrhea that I was warned about. But I couldn’t be too far from a restroom most of the time because of all the liquid ingested.

The fact that the juices were delicious helped lots — Roots were my favorite, Citrus second and Greens m’OK — as did my already being mostly vegetarian. And I liked being able to just grab a juice out of the fridge. I never starved. Before the juice cleanse I’d often skip breakfast and maybe even lunch because was usually too busy from work to eat. This was a nice change. The only really hard part was smelling my bf’s morning coffee and looking at my friends’ food and cocktail photos on Instagram and Facebook. But whenever I felt tempted, I’d just remind myself that it was only a few days. That became my mantra.

So there you have it. The juice cleanse wasn’t hard or painful, like my friends made it sound like it was going to be. Oddly enough, it was only when I eased myself back into solid food again that I felt like crap. So weird. And when I was hungry, I was REALLY hungry, to the point of feeling faint.

Anyway, I don’t know if I’d do this again, just because of the price. It was only the fact that Pressed Juicery’s deal dropped the three-day cleanse to $117 from $285 that I even considered it. People say that I should just get a juicer but frankly, since you have to have a juice every two and a half hours, you’d spend most of your time prepping, juicing and cleaning. And I’m just too lazy for all that.

In any case, this experience did open my eyes up to how I was treating my body before. Now I’m more conscientious about what I put in it. I cut down on my coffee intake, drink eight glasses of water a day, take vitamins and decided to be mostly vegan. And I feel better for it. Maybe one day I’ll even return to the gym. I won’t cut back on my drinking, however. I mean, come ON. But I will take the occasional week off just to reset.