I wouldn't get fall-down drunk everywhere I went, but if I only had a couple of drinks there was always a reason, like not feeling well.

On the contrary, I can think of many occasions that I decided NOT to drink, or not get drunk, and then I would completely ignore what I had decided and go ahead and do it anyway. This was a pretty big and obvious warning sign that all was not well.

good luck lfs. like everything else for some its easy for some its not. you seem to be a smart responsible adult so i know youll be able to do what you have to for yourself and your family. feel free to pm me if you wanna unload or w/e and remember there's tons of help out there should you decide you need it. not everyone that has a drinking problem is an alcoholic and plenty of people are successful at quitting by themselves.

My dad quit drinking about 2 years ago. Just a warning: He's mid-forties and I, like you, thought the weight would fly off but it didn't.

I don't think he drank as much as you but he could put it away. I don't think he very often drank just for drinking's sake but usually it'd be him doing it out of habit in situations where drinking was the norm. He went to (and still does) lots of gigs. The purpose isn't to get drunk, but it usually happened, and I guess he just decided it was a bit silly and that's why he knocked it on the head.

He's since drank at a frequency of maybe once every other month in very small quantities, and each time he is disappointed. Not because of some guilt thing, but just because he doesn't enjoy it. He says it just makes the blood go to his head, but not in a good way. I think he would like to get back the enjoyment you can get out of one really nice beer, but every time he tries, it isn't like he remembers. I don't know what the lesson is here. Maybe that one beer just isn't worth it?

The other thing I've noticed is that my dad plays designated driver at pretty much any opportunity. He's not told me this, but I think that when he first quit, he was happy to have this as a good excuse not to drink. I'm certain that he doesn't have the same hang ups anymore, but maybe this is a good way to get comfortable in your non-drinking shoes.

Yeah, this is the price of middle-age, I guess. I'm exercising daily (exercise bike), eating better, and not drinking, and not really losing weight. That said, I look better, I think. I think I was drinking enough to just kinda look puffy and ****ty all the time.

I've also saved a fair amount of money. The scotch I was drinking was typically in the $70-$100/bottle range, and when I drank beer it was usually fancy Belgian $10/bottle stuff.

Yah the money saved is a big incentive for me for me. I spend 100-200$ a week on drinking pretty easily and thats not even going out

Im trying to quit now for many reasons and in the last 3 weeks Ive drank once per week where as Id usually drink 3+ times of a 5th of vodka or more. I feel like there is just so much time being freed up and it feels great to not be hung over all the damn time. I dont think Im gonna quit altogether but I do want to stay dry for the next few months just to see all the advantagels. Just cutting down a lot is having a huge impact so far.


Im curious about what techniques other people are using to quit. Right now Im using affirmations and I figured Id give it a shot since I used it to quit cigarettes and weed 4 or so years ago. Doing them everyday since a month ago is working its magic so far.


GL LFS and everyone else who is trying to quit.

The culture of people drinking and driving is kinda baffling to me. If you happen to hit someone, you and your family are screwed.

I don't live in the US, But what I know is that especially there you will get sued and your family is going broke in the process. You are probably going to lose your job aswell I assume? None of this matter when you take the chance?

Pretty much same as someone giving you 10,000:1 odds, if you win, you save the cab fee, lets say 20$? If you lose, you lose everything, including your freedom and future.

My father is a recovering alcoholic. Drank really heavy from my early teens to my late teens. It taught me that substance abuse can destroy any man or any family by itself. The sickest binge drinker Ive seen, when he starts drinking its like he is trying to kill himself. Goes from handsome looking guy to crackhead who lives in the streets in a week. Like a switch.

Good luck, it can be done, and I think this is the time to do it. Ive learned that nobody can make you quit, you need to really want it, And I guess you are on your way since you made this thread so gl.

LFS,

Good luck and thanks for posting this.

When my father was 10 he used to have to go down to my grandfather's factory job on payday and get his check and bring it home to my grandmother before he went out and got drunk and spent it all. When my mom was younger, her father was a raging alcoholic and physically abusive to her and her sisters.

Thankfully my parents probably drank <100 beers from the time I was born until the time I left for college, so I was lucky. For myself, I know I'm not going to be the drunk factory worker or the physically abusive husband and father, but reading a story like yours it is easy to see how people can be successful in every facet of life but still let alcohol take hold.

I'd definitely suggest doing some sort of therapy or AA or whatever as its always good to have some outside support system that you can be fully honest and open with.

I know its hard to understand (the DWI issue) But the majority of people who cause fatal accidents are blacked out drunk and have no control over their facilities/ decision making. Many times I have said "Oh man Im not driving" and ended up doing exactly that and finding out in the morning.

LFS,

Do you feel you could have made the change as a single person and the typical social life that comes along with it?

while this seems reasonable, many american alcohol rehab doctrines say that simply blacking out or puking more than once is a sign of a problem.

I have been blacked out drunk and have never driven drunk, and never would. I will lose control on other things, but i still have some selfprotection left. I guess it might be an individual issue but I have no sympathy or understanding.

Now that im thinking about it, I don't even put myself in a situation where I might be tempted to drive drunk, since for me its not a possibility, if im going to go drinking somewhere im not driving a car there if im coming back the same night.

And if that is something that happens to you where you simply can't control yourself, you should know it the next time and not drink yourself to that stage, and if you can't control that after a few drinks then you really shouldn't drink at all. Everything that happens after that is 100% on you.

fortunately, he never started because he's seen my struggles with alcohol his whole life. We're really pulling for you LFS. Don't let your kids grow up worrying about your well-being like I did.

So yah you dont know what you are talking about. Because if you did you would know it wasnt true.

That's odd, from your response in the 'how do blind people know when to quit wiping?' thread I thought you must have the neatest, driest poo around.

Also good luck obv. The kids deserve for you to make it.

This thread has made me evaluate some things. I'm some kind of weekend warrior alcoholic I guess. The idea of socializing, or of playing poker all weekend w/o a few beers is pretty much unbearable. If I do make through one weekend w/o drinking I pretty much have to the next weekend.

Also drinking often also leads to harder drugs. And if I drink liquor I basically go off the rails at some point--not violent or anything but usually not content with whatever I'm at and whatever I'm doing--often driving if I have access to my keys. If I start drinking gin & tonics I basically have to make sure someone else has control of my keys and my wallet. Not good.

One thing I've noticed that's pretty much common to all drunks: at some point they flip a switch and instantly go from relatively sober to their drunk alter ego. Many of my friends even had a name for the drunk. Sam becomes Sloppy. Ben becomes Benoit (cuz Ben barely speaks and Benoit gets laid right and left). So I do think that after an initial period of gaining tolerance when you first start drinking, you lose tolerance as you get older and the more you drink.

Have you noticed this in yourself?

I've started to see it in myself and gotten a little spooked. I used to be able to have a pretty much normal conversation on 12 beers. Now I hit a wall and I can just tell the people I'm talking to are looking at me lilke "ok, you're drunk".

I heard Artie Lange say the definition of an alcoholic was that you become an ass hole when you drink. I fit this definition perfectly. When I quit, I had terrible sugar cravings, like, eat an entire cake then go to Del Taco type stuff. This proves just as difficult to get under control as the drinking itself. I haven't had a drink for over 3 years but I had Cherry Garcia last weekend.

Did you have any such cravings when you quit? Do you eat sugar and excess carbohydrate?

In many instances, the examples that you find in these categories are exceptionally delicious. Not being able to enjoy these would be the toughest part for me to quit.

I am middle aged and have grown to not enjoy being impaired in even the slightest. With that being said I love the taste of good liquor, wine and beer. I don't entertain many fantasies but I do often wish that someone could develop a drink that tastes identical to excellent alcoholic drinks yet is non alcoholic.

haha I know these well!. Mine took a little longer to kick in though. 6-8 weeks

Dude its great that you apparently dont have a serious issue with alcohol. When someone does have a problem though you can pretty much throw all of what you said out of the window. I pretty much told myself Id never drive drunk or Ill quit after a certain amount ect. ect. After a while all that **** gets steamrolled, especially considering what Victor said about the US.

25.4 oz bottle of Chimay: ~460 calories, 41g of carbs. Reading the nutrition facts got me off that stuff. Absolutely no way you can lose weight and drink that on any kind of regular basis.

You might seek out a nutritionist to run your blood work and put you on a good diet. Made worlds of difference for me. Once I got used to it it doesn't even feel like a diet anymore. I've lost a ton of weight and hardly ever feel hungry (exercise too of course).

very solid thread. not trying to be smart but you kinda sound like me. i was the guy who drank too much every time i drank, still do but surprisingly i am not a person who goes out of my way to get a drink, only go drinking a few times a month

also dont think its possible to change though. i kinda realised that i will normally get drunk on a night out but my friends are always as drunk, some nights we wake up the following morning and nobody can remember anything from the club.

what im trying to say is, has anyone ever went from been a binge drinker to being a social drinker cos if i dont drink i dont know how i can socialize with people. kinda quiet when sober(kinda to loud when im drunk, want to reach a happy medium slightly drunk stage)

anyone got tips on not drinking too much on nights out

If you drink hard drinks such as rum and coke, alternate betweens rum and cokes and plain cokes. You'll always have a drink in your hand so nobody will hassle you/offer to buy you a drink, but only half the time it'll be alcohol.

If you drink beer, try drinking some of the lower calorie beers like MGD64 or something. They trim down on the calories by lowering the alcohol content.

All,

Please don't turn this thread into a debate on drunk driving or whatever else. This is a thread for and about people with alcohol issues. Debating that stuff serves no purpose in the context of this thread. If you want to compare this thread to the Facebook people do it in THAT thread, not this one. Thank you.

Hadn't thought about it. On the one hand, no, because I care more about my family than myself. On the other, I would think that eventually I'd make the decision for myself to feel better. Also if I were single I'd need to look better than this to get laid.

I quit eating sugar many years ago, so no. I always have loved me some carbs, no discernable difference.

I said that recently in another thread. I really did love the taste of Laphroaig and Lagavulin. And Talisker. I would drink non-alcoholic Islay Scotch if it tasted identical to the real thing.

When reading the OP, I, like another poster, saw myself. The only difference is that while my grandfather was a very high-functioning alcoholic, my mother chose not to drink instead of becoming an alcoholic herself. She was always extremely strict about me drinking in high school, so naturally once I got to college I began binging. Mostly on Thursday/Friday/Saturday. I ended up leaving college, although it had less to do with alcohol and more to do with the fact that Turningstone was an hour and a half away.

After leaving college I began drinking alone fairly often, and, like LFS, I was 6'3" 230lbs (at the time) and facial hair, so picking up booze regularly was never an issue for me despite being underage and not having a fake ID.

I began drinking alone every night about a year and a half ago, lining up pretty directly with my 21st birthday. I started out only drinking a 375mL bottle of captain morgan, but at this point I'm drinking at least a fifth every night that I'm not out with friends.

I don't want to be an alcoholic my whole life and maybe I'm just being a ******, but I think I'll quit eventually. A couple of months ago I wen't 4 days without drinking but it wasn't an attempt at quitting, it was just to see how hard it would be if I did decide to quit. I found it extremely easy.

A friend of mine was around for the summer and we drank at his place almost every night, splitting a 30-rack of beers and a bottle or two of various hard liquors each time. He went back to school and is 3 days sober now (big win, I know). He's tried to several times before and did a 30-day program but obviously it didn't fix everything.

I know this is already a tl;dr but this thread is the first time I've ever talked to anyone besides my friend about how bad my drinking has gotten so if you made it this far in the post then thanks.

edit: I also drive drunk constantly and I've been pulled over 5 times when drunk but have never had any consequences. I'm trying to stop doing that because you're totally ****ed if you get a DUI.