that is definitely going to be a major challenge -

but it is the kind of challenge that (if successful) - you will be thinking to yourself "I can conquer anything now (in terms of not drinking).

I made it through my birthday without a drink - so I'm feeling pleased with myself.

Just before you meet up with them smoke a nice fat doobie. This way you still get to have some fun while out and by the time they all start getting annoyingly drunk your buzz will wear off and you can go play poker.

Lol I hate weed. That would just make me so paranoid and uncomfortable I'd either have to leave or start drinking a ton to get past it. I was thinking about taking a Norco though (strong vicodin). I just don't know if that would lower my resolve not to drink. Maybe I should just go into a massive k-hole. That's over in 15-30 minutes with little hangover.

I'm at the point where I know this would definitely be a positive compared to where my life's at now, but I still don't want to give up the dream of being able to go out and drink while never having more than like 8 drinks to the point that I get stupid. I really would much rather be a social drinker than just quit drinking, but it's really difficult for me to stop once I get started.

It's not that I need to drink all the time or anything like that. Lots of times, I won't drink for a week or so just because I don't feel like it, but if I have enough drinks to get a buzz (say 2 or 3), then I just keep drinking until the bars close about 80-90% of the time and often I'll just get obliterated. After an incident on Super Bowl Sunday where I lost a bunch of money playing poker on credit blackout drunk, I bet a friend that I could go a month without taking shots (since about 90% of my alcohol-related problems happen when I take shots) just to try to cut down on my drinking, but he just ended up conceding the bet early to get me to take a shot with him one night so that didn't help too much.

Part of me thinks it's not realistic to just be able to control my drinking, but at the same time I quit driving drunk which I used to do all the time and never do now, and I also quit playing online poker drunk (was a problem for a year or so and I never ever do it now), so it seems like I should be able to control whether I get wasted whenever I go to the bar too. It really does seem daunting to quit drinking altogether, not because I like being drunk that much (as drugs go, alcohol has to be one of the most damaging and one of the least fun), but just because it's so ingrained in the culture. I don't have any friends that don't drink and 90% of my social life revolves around alcohol.

I haven't had a drink in just over a month now (well 31 days but Feb was a short month) and I feel the best I have ever felt.

Tuq, thanks for the comment about sugar. That helps explain why I was craving (and eating) 2-3 large bowls of ice cream every night, although I managed to stop doing that and get my diet back on track this past week as well. Other than the ice cream my diet is pretty healthy though.

I still haven't decided if I'm going to quit completely or try to drink casually from time to time. I'm not sure if I will be able to just drink casually though so am probably better off quitting completely. Once I get the taste of alcohol my urges for the following week are very strong. I'm not sure if I could just drink once and then shut it right back off. It took me several months of saying "this is my last night drinking" until I actually stopped.

I am not going to drink in March for sure (and am ecstatic about keeping my alcohol-free streak going and love getting up each morning and counting the number of days it has been) but April is going to put me to the full test with opening day and a planned trip to Vegas coming up.

suzzer,

Any chance you could just lose all the numbers of people who could get you coke? Or at the very least remove them from your phone and write them down somewhere else if you need them.

LOL. I love friends!

suzzer,

I think go late and just pound water. Leave early and you will leave being proud of yourself and feeling great. May be tough but not impossible.

This is why I'm committed to just never drinking again. I don't think I can have one drink.

This makes a lot of sense.

no.

I mean, yes, there is, but than you just ruin your night dialing every other person that has the remote possibility of having their number or blow.

suzzer here is what I did

no drinking/drugs etc during the week m-f and sundays. fri/sat were free for alls.

by friday, you are going nuts itching to go and drink, etc, and go so crazy that saturday night is ruined anyways and you feel like **** until mondays.


after a bit of this when friday rolls around, you dread the ****ty feeling, becuase you actually feel so great during teh week etc w/o the booze/other ****, that you dont even feel the need to party on the weekends, and if you do, you dial it way down

The one thing I would say is that therapy with a really good therapist can help. May take a few goes to find the right one.

This thread doesn't get bumped enough...it's really great and I thank everyone who's contributing.

Possible slight derail: I drink everyday to varying degrees of ******ness and within the past year I've noticed a constant dull pain, sort of right at my waistline on the right side of my body. Sometimes it feels like it sort of bubbles or feels like it's moving. I thought at first it was shingles bc of the pain but I never experienced any of the other symptoms of shingles after.

I should note the pain is more noticable as I'm having the first drink of the day, but then starts to subside as the night goes on. If I don't drink for a few days, the pain slowly goes away to nothing at all.

I think it's probably just an overworked liver, but I'm wondering if any of you who used to be drinkers (or still are) have experienced this, and if so, how concerned should I be?

Suzz, if you are still taking suggestions, go early, don't drink alcohol at the first pub, go to two or three other pubs and have no more than three drinks TOTAL. Then leave and go home.

If you can't stick to that regime then you're probably at a place where you shouldn't drink at all.

P.s. Obviously, you cant have a triple jack and coke or something and call it 'one drink' for this to work. Good luck mang.

Sorry I have no idea what it is. It is my understanding if you have liver pain though it will be your upper-right abdomen. I'm not sure what it could be around your waistline. Go to a doctor and make sure it isn't something serious or something you can prevent from becoming serious. And if it's nothing you will have the peace of mind.

I havent read all this thread but but i have some experience with drinking.

Not gonna write a book here, but story was simple

Broker up with my girlfriend. Two weeks later went to thailand with friends. Drink there for 35 days (every day). Came back home. Everything was ok about for a week. Then started drink again. Firs about three time in week. Then like overday. Afte a while i was like woke up>ATM>store>alcohol>drinkt drink drink.. And that way about for 1.5 month.

So one morning woke up in my appartment. I neveever feel wort in my life that in this morning. I didin't know where is my car keys,mobile, and wallet. I wanted to drink some water so badly that i went to store. I found out that its was early in the morning, store was just opened and there i find out that i had like $1 something in my pocket. I got smalles bottle of water and then i started to walk to my fathers place to find out where is my car and other things..

Anyway. I had to wal about 2 miles and i had some time to think how the *** i ended like this.
Promised that day, that i will never gonna end so low..

Havent drink for about 7months. Two minths back i quit smoking to.

And i really feel so .. so good. I never felt better in my life. Im in good health, and that allows me to do everything. (smth like A game )

Sry for english and little book.

Great post! Thanks for sharing and very inspiring. It is a blessing being able to quit while you still have your health!

i rly don't think gobbo was casting judgment or being critical with his comment. i think if you took a poll of those itt who do/did drink that most would find his comment harmless.

Yeah, Gobbo didn't mean anything by that at all, it's fine.

As I told suzzer on AIM I really think he should remain stone-cold sober for the pub crawl. I can only speak from my own experience, but once I got started anything was possible. That fact, among other things, led to me quitting entirely.

One question. How much quiting alcohol has affected relations with you friends? I mean what friends mostly do at weekends? Drink and have party yes..
But if im not drinking then its pretty annoing to hear all nigh long what some drunk äss have to say or smth.
Anyway my relations with friends is pretty much minimized, cuz i just don't want to hang around with all those drunkheads and ofc poker is taking a lot of time.
But im not really worried, because i dont think that i miss very much..???

And i really hated to watch how really good potential some have and dont use it for more than drinking. My 'friends pretty much drink their lives away. They dont have dreams, dont have something to work for etc.. cant express myself very clearly..

Absolutely. The "I'll just have x drinks" isn't likely to be a successful gameplan on a pub crawl with the whole weekend in front of him and a history of taking it deep as he has.

Just don't drink and after 3-4 bars when people start to get drunk (and annoying to sober people) then his resolve will hopefully strengthen and that coupled with the growing annoyance of being on a different plane than drunk people will lead to an early exit. The rest of the crowd will notice initially and make halfhearted attempts to get him to stay, but he'll soon be forgotten as the party goes on without him. That's how it happens.

(This is why one of my party exit strategies is to...just leave. Unless there are certain circumstances like a special visitor that I need to say goodbye to, I can bail unnoticed and it takes awhile for my absence to be noted, or more likely it won't be. The alternative is a long round of goodbyes, followed by catching crap for leaving early, etc. No thanks.)

Luckily for me, I'm surrounded largely by somewhat responsible people who by and large have decent jobs and many are married with kids. If the overwhelming majority of people I hung out with made drinking or otherwise getting high a major component of their existence, it would probably require a pretty serious lifestyle change on my part, which would be another hurdle to clear.

Speaking with someone the other day who gave up drinking, they said they can't even go to bars anymore, or walk down the liquor aisle at grocery stores. To the point where if someone wants to meet up at a bar, they redirect them to a Starbucks instead. This just seems crazy and unfortunate and luckily I don't have those triggers. I've been to many bars in the past month+, including some of my regular spots, and not been remotely tempted to drink. Last week I stopped in one to grab some food and ran into a friend and regular wingman who said he didn't call because he knew I wasn't drinking at the moment and didn't want to tempt me. I let him know that's not an issue, as it really isn't.

This.

Been drinking fairly heavily for about 3 years now. Usually a 6 pack a night then a case on the weekend. Stopped on Monday for a time period of 90 days. I'm going to Vietnam/Cambodia/Thailand/Malaysia for 2 months in June and July and I'll probably do some drinking while on vacation.

At any rate, it's been semi difficult not to drink when I get home. For so long I've just associated it with everything that I do. Go outside to grill a take, take beer. Go out to eat, get beer. Play poker, drink beer.

It's interesting to essentially re-learn how to enjoy things without alcohol. I'm fairly certain I haven't had an alcohol free weekend in the past 5 years. I have no idea what I'm going to do this weekend...well, I sort of do.

I should probably get back on my bicycle and learn to ride again. I used to ride frequently and long distances at that. Longest one day was 160 miles across Indiana. I get tired after riding 15 miles now.

I could also learn to take poker seriously again. Getting drunk and playing poker is obviously a bad thing. At a certain point I just didn't even care if I won or lost.

I'm on the same page with a lot of people here. If I buy a 12 pack and put it in the fridge when I get home, 95% of the time, it's gone by the time I go to bed. It's pretty embarrassing really.

A strange thing that I have taken notice of is that I drink all liquids in large amounts and very quickly. If I go out to eat and drink a coke, I can go through 3 cokes before ol girl gets through her first one. At breakfast I'll have to big glasses of orange juice. At work I'll drink 10-15 16oz glasses of water.
Anyone else roll like that?

At any rate, it's nice to not waking up extremely tired. I was so sick of the headaches and the guilt I felt every morning when I woke up.

Things are looking good though. Inspired by the W0X0F flying thread, I've taken up flying lessons and plan to follow through and become a pilot. I was wildly successful when I was younger and not drinking but over the years alcohol has destroyed my self confidence and my will to essentially do anything at all.

I'm 26 years old. It's time to make a great change in my life. The world is my oyster and I shall treat it accordingly.

Good luck to us all.

I like the idea of no drinking at the first bar. I think I'll probably just not drink. It's not like 3 beers is that much more fun than club soda and good vibes. I also made semi-binding plans on Sunday with the kid I help raise. That usually keeps me out of trouble.

Oh yeah LFS sorry I was so out of it on AIM. I had like 17 tables going that whole time.

Oh yeah. This oral fixation has always been a big habit/issue of mine. When at a restaurant, the only thing that really stops me from drinking is when I'm eating. I'll go through refill after refill of water/soda and am both grateful and apologetic to the waitstaff - and tip extra well if they keep me topped off.

So of course, change water/soda to alcohol and you can see the problem. (I can only imagine the habit I would have if I smoked.) My go-to drink for the last couple of years at my favorite bar has been double vodka & soda, which they poured strong even for doubles since they know me. After I grimaced my way through the first one, which often took awhile, I'd mow down the next few in no time unless I had either water or food to keep me occupied. I don't know if the oral fixation thing is a product of heavy drinking, a personality trait independent of that, or just a dysfunction, but it's definitely something I can relate to. If I could temper that it mayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy help me keep drinking under control but I'm hardly going to point at that and say it's the lone reason why.

man, i would be so much fatter if i drank

Suzzer - still on a bender?