Well, I'm not going to get into all the little disagreements in the thread, all I know is that alcohol abuse is a tough and very ugly condition. I do know that I drank like many of you for a long time, but since walking into the rooms of AA I have been happy, joyous and free of alcohol for more than twenty-one years. There is hope if you really want it.

I've long been puzzled by the anti-AA sentiment, particularly by people who have no vested interest one way or the other. Maybe it's the feeling that AA members may proselytize - which to be fair annoys the **** out of me so I totally understand that, but it's not really accurate. I don't see AA members running around trying to convert anyone or sell stuff. Not to mention - if it ever gets to the point where someone is trying to get you to go to an AA meeting, you almost certainly need it.

Oh, and congratulations on 21+ years. That's fantastic.

I don't know man. That last paragraph makes it seem like alcohol does help you escape the hopelessness and misery of humanity.

Have you thought about becoming a full time stoner? Maybe you're not medicating yourself properly.

I endorse Ron doing bong hits all day.

mari-joo-wana is bad, mmmkay

Thanks!

It's funny how some people believe that AA is against alcohol when in fact it doesn't take a stance on it either way. I have drinking friends and non-drinking friends, all of whom know I don't drink, but don't usually know why. If they ask how I stopped I would tell them, but I don't think preaching helps anyone. It's that first step where I had to admit I was powerless over alcohol. That powerlessness is both in myself and others.

Many in this thread seem as if they could benefit from AlAnon though, being around an alcoholic can be tough and they have plenty of ideas for coping.

Good luck. You are going to need it.

I don't care one way or the other about AA.

Pot meets kettle? I don't have a substance abuse problem and I have a very awesome life with tons of friends and things that make me feel whole as a human being. Ron does not and I pointed that out. He quite clearly needs psychological help. He will never seek it out but that doesn't change the fact that he needs it.

Ok, I think I need to stop drinking altogether. I feel a bit daft even posting this but also feel that it may help me focus and move on in life.

I'm 37, and basically have tried several times to control my drinking by just having a few, but there's always someone wanting to goto the pub. My grandfather was an alcoholic, and my mother drinks too much IMO but she won't have it. Since I've been 15 I've always drrank to get blotto ****faced every time. Gradually over time I've lost all of my oldest friends all due to my alcohol related behaviour (fighting, arguing, racist comments and I'm really not a racist, just a tool of an alpha male type clutching at straws to get on top, women, just being a disgrace generally).

I've stopped drinking often, but when I do I get smashed, absolutely hammered every time. And that's with me telling myself to be careful and just have a few, but I just can't. Last time it was off to a football match at 9am and then home by 4am having drunk spirits and lager constantly for all that time. Nothing disastorours happened but I there's some shameful memories of those hours ~(again) and I did piss off a close friend. Another thing I've noticed is the people that I end up drinking with (last time I'm last man standing with a skinhead, tattooed big ****er, being invited to goto Leeds with a football firm and smash a pub or two up, (You're a big lad who looks like he can handle himself, are you coming. WTF?). I've been trying to stop smoking and manage it until I have a drink of course. This will hrelp that also.

Anyway I've been reading what others have put and just wanted to say good luck to them all and it's time for me to also make a major life decision and do what I know is for the best.

Is it common for alcohol to cause respiratory problems? A few days ago I drank a typical 3 glasses of wine and then some egg nog and Bailey's. I wasn't really drunk or anything when I went to bed. In the middle of the night I kind of half woke up with a feeling of a ton of pressure on my chest and I didn't really know if it was real or a dream. Then after a minute or so I realized it wasn't a dream, and also that I wasn't breathing. So I had to consciously breathe for a while until I could go back to sleep.

Yes Ron it is. You may be DTing and may need some benzos at minimum. My experience says go to ER and you'll get hooked up to saline IV and some Ativan.

If you are detoxing this isn't something to **** with. I've done it many times and it can be dangerous.

I doubt it has anything to do with the alcohol but I'm not a doctor


definitely disagree with previous poster...."you're gonna need benzos at a minimum"! That's ridiculous


if you get blackout drunk 6 days a week then maybe so but I don't get the sense that you do

I totally agree with you, I don't know his situation. Assuming the worst tho that's the best advice I can give.

uh no, I don't need to go to the ER or anything. This was 3 days ago and I'm fine now. I'm just wondering if this was likely caused by the alcohol.

Hard to tell. The fact you made that post in this thread concerns me.

St sanai is very thorough tho. They saved me from losing my arm fwiw!

Warning: Book-sized post below.

Three years ago I started a thread titled "Has alcohol's net effect on your life been positive or negative?" and LFS posted that it had become negative for him, so he had recently quit, and people started asking him questions about quitting, so he started this thread. I, like many others, subscribed to this thread, and I thought it would be appropriate to post here today.

Today, February 12th, 2013, marks one year without an alcoholic drink for me. I wanted to share my experience because in threads about people quitting drinking a lot of the stories you read are these huge sagas by some guy who's 45 and has drank a half-gallon of vodka a day for fifteen years and how he's lost his job and his kids and has 3 DUIs and sleeps on cardboard in a gutter or whatever. I was never going to end up in a gutter or anything because of my drinking, so it was easy to read those stories and think, Jesus, I'm not that bad, so I must be fine. I think a lot of people probably think that way, and that can be dangerous.

The first time I got a good buzz I was 16 or 17 and I could not believe how great it was. It felt like there was an enormous pressure on my chest, that I didn't even know was there, that was being relieved for the first time. Like a steel ribcage around my body was finally loosened. I felt more relaxed and free than I had ever felt. When I sobered up the tightness came back (except I now noticed it was there) and when I had a few drinks it went away again. This pattern of relief held for my entire twelve year drinking career. I think that's an less-appreciated reason why a lot of addicts use whatever they use. A lot of the time it's not for a high at all, it's for relief from a tremendous discomfort. That's why it can be so, so hard to quit.

What I liked to do was come home around 5pm, crack a beer and browse 2p2 or reddit, watch TV, play video games or whatever and relax. When I finished the beer, I'd get another one, and so on until I went to bed. Earned a nice buzz, but didn't get outrageous, usually. Still, it would work out to about 6-8 beers a night, every night. Throw in a few extra on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, it's about 50-60 drinks a week. For years straight. Again, there are alcoholics out there who drink twice that, and since I never got fired or got a DUI it was easy to shrug it off as not a real problem. But after years of waking up every day with some level of hangover, living every morning at what felt like 40% mental capacity until the hangover wore off (and it was time to start drinking again), the realization became inescapable: even if I wasn't going to end up in a gutter, I was still turning into a much smaller man than I wanted to be. I'm a bright guy, but I realized I was living my life based on what I could get away with, rather than what I could do. There's a quote I saw that stuck with me: "In one version of hell, on the day you die the man you are meets the man you could have been."

The first time I started to think I was drinking too much was 2006 when I was about 23, and over the next couple of years I tried various personal rules to moderate myself: only drinking on weekends, only drinking with friends, no more than three per night out, etc. The problem was I'd have a few drinks and then I'd say, "f--k it, these are my own arbitrary rules anyway, they're stupid, I'd rather enjoy myself." Because I didn't want to have a glass of wine at dinner and then call it quits. What I like is a delicious, steady stream of drinks, one after the other, until I earn a nice, fat, warm bubbly buzz, so I feel completely calm, relaxed, and happy. Anything short of that is kind of pointless, frankly. Why have one glass of wine? Would I buy a ladder to only use the bottom step?

In recent years I would take prolonged planned breaks with a conscious end date: New Year's Day to St. Patrick's Day, for example. Two and a half months with no booze. It was so good for me it almost made me mad. Right away I would lose weight without doing anyhing, I would save a f--kton of money, I would wake up every day unbelievably clear-headed. It was like I was playing life with a cheat code. Then at St. Patrick's Day I'd have 6 or 7 delicious Guinnesses to welcome myself back and celebrate a job well done (after all, I hadn't caved, I'd set a personal goal and made it) and tell myself I'd be more responsible to keep some of the good elements of sobriety. But after about two weeks I'd be right back where I was, 8 drinks a day, 60 drinks a week, bad habits back. And drinking like that, especially when you're pounding beers alone in your room, can make you feel isolated, unstimulated, and depressed. Not to mention fat and broke.

So I started to think that this wasn't something I could do half-measure. Around December 2011 I started seriously thinking about quitting for good, but I had this ski trip planned for February 2012 with my boys. What was I gonna do, not go drinking with my boys on our big ski vacation? So I told myself I'd quit at the end of the ski trip. So on Sunday, Feburary 12th, 2012, after a terrifically fun and hard-drinking weekend of skiing and partying with my high school buddies, I stood in the parking lot of the lodge, loading gear into my friend's car, and as one last silent hurrah, I took a big, cold swig of Hennessy right from the bottle, gave the bottle to my friend, and privately called it quits. That was one year ago today, and so far, so good.

So what have I learned? First, the good things: life, overall, is overwhelmingly better. I saved literally thousands of dollars, lost ten pounds and regained a healthy BMI without any real effort, and most importantly, I have the mental clarity to meaningfully address the things I want to do in this life. I had always daydreamed about being in shape, but every exercise plan I had while I was drinking fizzled whenver I woke up too hungover to jog three days in a row. Nowadays I have a small routine than I can stick to that has become habit. Also, the bouts of depression that kept me stagnant, and left me feeling like I'd probably have to go to a doctor and get on anti-depressants like the rest of America, miraculously evaporated when I quit drinking and started exercising regularly. I wake up at 100% clarity every morning and I'm good at things again. Overall, I'd say I'm easily the happiest I've ever been. I'm a 29 year old college graduate with no health insurance who waits tables for a living, by the way, and I'm still balls-stupid happy these days.

HOWEVER, one thing that annoys me about ex-drinkers is an apparent attitude of self-deception and insincerity. So here's some honesty: from a fun perspective, quitting drinking sucks. It sucks! Drinking is literally my favorite thing to do. Of course it is, I'm an alcoholic. I mean, even sex can feel like half an audition sometimes, but drinking? Oh my god, it's so much f--king fun. It's tough for a non-addict to understand, because if you're not an addict, then I like drinking more than you like literally anything. I miss the feeling of having a buzz and reaching for a beer can you think is almost empty but as soon as you put your hand around it, you realize it's still more than half full. Oh my God I loved that feeling. So there's the honesty. Drinking is so much fun, BUT, it made my life overall so much worse. I'd estimate that my life is about 33% less fun these days, but it's about 200% better.

Also, I hate talking about sobriety because there's this "Rah Rah" attitude around in in places that I find, frankly, grotesque. I know people need a lot of support to get through this, and being sober for a year is probably the hardest thing I've ever done, but the whole attitude of "Hey, slugger, good for you!! You can do it!", it makes me feel like I'm in kindergarten. Ugh. Like I'm showing you a crayon drawing on construction paper for you to put on the fridge. I guess I don't want to be reminded that I have to try really, really hard to do something that normal people can just do.

I'm also amazed at how the craving doesn't go away. I mean, it does gets easier, but I swear to God, I've thought about drinking every single one of these past 366 days. It feels like 5% of my RAM is always running "DoNotDrink.exe". And I'm resentful of that, frankly, because since it feels like I always have to use some of my willpower to stay sober, I can't offer my complete focus to any other one thing. Realistically, I know I can do so much more sober than I can while I'm drinking, so that 5% mental commitment is actually freeing up a huge amount of possibility, but still, it can be frustrating to have that always running, all day, every day.

Also, the tightness I felt around my chest, that drinking relieved? Yeah, that came back. It's still here. I just got better at accepting it and dealing with it.

But even with all that, overall, it's no contest. It's life with a cheat code. Probably the best thing I've ever done for myself.

I told myself I'd write this post on my one year, and it got way, way longer than I expected, but whatever. I've got some practical tips that have helped me in this past year that I'll include in a separate post below this one. I guess I figured that, as a bright but underachieving person in their late 20's who was drinking too much but in a more subtle, less dramatic way than the guy who chugs vodka in the shower, there are probably a couple people on these boards who can relate. I stumbled across a post somewhere by someone else who quit drinking that said something along the lines of, "when I was 18 I had to go to an AA meeting because of a DUI. All the guys there were in their 40s and had these huge problems: drinking a bottle of vodka a day, failing livers, failed businesses, divorces. I was 18 and thought, I don't have any problems like that, so I didn't quit drinking. Then I was 27 and I was drinking every day, but I still didn't have problems like those guys had, so I didn't quit. Now I'm 42, and guess what? I fit right in."
I feel like I might have caught something early, and it feels pretty good.

tl;dr: And that's how a bill becomes law.

Tips:
A couple times I've tried to quit drinking, start exercising, eat better and read more classic literature all at once and I always crap out around the ten day mark. I've read that everyone has a finite amount of willpower, so when I first quit drinking for good a year ago, I let myself indulge in whatever else I wanted. I started craving sugar, which is not uncommon among people who quit drinking, so I let myself buy whole bags of candy bars and tubs of ice cream and just eat the **** out of that **** whenever I wanted. I estimate I was drinking about 7000 calories a week, so I actually had a surprising amount of give in my diet for junk food, so it didn't hurt my weight too much. Also, I found that my body was used to drinking about two liters of liquid a night, so I felt crazy thirsty all the time. I needed jugs of water at all times to scratch that itch.

I also all of a sudden had a lot of boring sober hours to fill. Those are super goddamn dangerous, because I could totally have five beers on a boring Thursday, drink nothing on Friday, think I had the **** handled and be exactly two weeks from business as usual, drinking every day again. I think everyone has to find what works for them to fill those hours. For me it was video games. A playthrough of Fallout 3 can eat up 40 hours and you can get a copy for twenty bucks or less. Fallout and Civilization were like sponsors for me.

Also, I drink a tremendous amount of caffeine these days. Full pot of coffee in the morning, diet soda in the afternoon and early evening. I really enjoy it, and look forward to it. It's pretty obviously a simple addiction transferral: I've simply replaced my addiction to alcohol with an addiction to caffeine without addressing whatever the root causes of my addictive tendencies are, but whatever. One demon at a time, and I'm way better off addicted to coffee than booze.

Also, I'm surprised at how much less peer pressure I experienced compared to what I expected. Turns out, most people don't care how much you drink. Personally, I was really worried about making people uncomfortable by refusing to drink around people who were drinking. That kept me drinking for a long extra while, actually, being afraid of being an Evening-Killer. What I've found works best is to casually say, "Nah, I'm good." if you're casually offered a drink (like a "Hey, you want a beer or something?" when you walk in the door) and if it's a more insistent offer (like it's a party and everyone is doing a round of shots and they're excitedly waving you in) you simply say, "Nah, no thanks, I quit." People seem to accept that without it becoming uncomfortable. If they press and ask why you just say, "I'm just trying to be a little healthier these days." If they press further, they're an *******, and feel free to bring the mood down by saying, "No, I quit because I'm an alcoholic." So far, though, that has happened to me none times.

The hardest thing to do was decide that I was doing it. You can't waver, you can't compromise. The abolute nature of it makes it easier. I mean, you're in control, you're the one who puts the drink to your lip. Once you decide it's just not a thing you do, even if you want to, it's just not a thing you do. And don't think about forever. Remember: just get today. The rest will take care of itself.

Solid posts

J-Mac,

Thank you. Truly.

I saw this thread when it got started but like you my habit is more of drink at night 6-8 drinks and get buzzed before bed. I just turned 24 and like you it's not leading to me losing my job and I can skip days (as I often do when my gf sleeps over on weekdays). However the way you describe your habit is very similar to my experience.

I tried to quit once about 2 years ago after getting in a very, very bad situation after drinking too much and made it about 1-2 months and can relate to the bettered everything. Then I stopped for a beer after work, bought a 6-pack on the way home and haven't been able to stop again in a consistent way.

I'm having a bit of wine as I write these lines but I have been thinking like you for a few months now about quitting again and at the very least your post is causing reflection in me and I truly appreciate your input as someone with similar habits to mine. It is much easier to identify to your benefits and cravings than to those of someone who cannot stop until everything is drunk (as alcoholics are portrayed in film and tv; I OTOH will often go to bed with plenty of drinks left in the house).

Thanks.

J-Mac:

That is so awesome that you are self-aware enough to make a post like that. You seem like you are on the right track. Is your long term plan to try and cut out the caffeine and any other addictions in your life, or are you only focused on the alcohol right now?

Well said.
I think about this often. Its powerful

Had the exact same thoughts. Never will understand people who have wine with dinner....AND not even finish it.



I showed tremendous discipline and had amazing results with lifting weights and good eating...for about 9-12 weeks before I would say eff it. Always alcohol or something else

Same here. Well, not sure about the happiest.



I don't like care for that much either. It embarrasses me when relatives will applaud me for xxx days sober, tell me they're proud. I get it, and I appreciate it. But at the same time i'd rather not talk about me not drinking.

FWIW, I have 6 months in 4 days. I do think about drinking, but still remember what it was like to live hungover or sometimes withdrawing. It was awful and I don't miss that.

I want more money, but at the same time im scared to have a lot of money. I'm sure that makes sense to many in this thread.

Congrats on the year!

I feel sort of the same way.

For me, drinking and getting high is way better than any one thing else in my life, but it's not better than everything else.

I just had to realize that the price tag on my addictions was costing me individual things with a cumulative value higher than the fun of getting ****ed up.

Cool, I have 7 years sober. Look forward to reading thread.

J-Mac, good read.

Was just reading this article minutes ago which talks about the rah-rah stuff and how AA is the only option most doctors offer and some people just don't like that part of sobriety. The kindergartenness J-Mac described.

At the expense of coming off trollish (I'm not), most here would agree that getting wasted everyday, putting yourself in a stupor to avoid/recover from daily life issues is not rational (acceptable?) adult behavior, so you can't expect non, or sensible, drinkers to not congratulate/encourage you on taking steps toward empowering yourself to become a "normal" functioning adult, no?