I had a confluence of events that changed my course:

1. I attended a tech conference where someone I personally knew who had went through rehab was hosting and speaking, and he was filled with a vivacity I hadn’t seen from him before.

2. My spouse gave me an ultimatum to quit or he’d be out the door. It wasn’t the first time he had said this, but I had a feeling it was probably going to be the last.

3. My progression in life was stalling. I couldn’t keep up commitments anymore, and I was starting to feel like I had already passed my peak.

So I quit. Cold Turkey. It was a dangerous, stupid thing to do, but I knew if I tried to taper off, I’d just slide back. The withdrawals were nightmarish, and I was lucky I didn’t die from it. But I pulled through, and then started to do some heavy soul searching for why I ever picked up the bottle — what was I escaping from? And I found those answers, and got to work — A real kind of personal work that most people will never have to put into themselves.

Since then, I have been a cofounder, jumped multiple levels in my career, and have been working towards several academic publications, on top of drastically improving my personal life. It’s been nearly five years since I put down the bottle. And every day I choose to never pick it up again.

For anyone else who’s drinking at this level (a litre a day of vodka) please don’t quit cold turkey without seeing a doctor. It genuinely can be lethal. There are temporary medications that dramatically mitigate that risk.

I’m coming up on my second year sobriety anniversary, if it’s not too personal could you talk more about this:

“A real kind of personal work that most people will never have to put into themselves”?

1. These feelings were never going to go away.

2. I needed to, and could, do something about it.

So I began transition. It was not easy, and communities like hacker news unfortunately are not typically kind about the subject, which is why I generalized to say it was a real kind of personal work that most will never have to endure.

I cannot fathom what your personal journey must have been like, but it makes me want to be a better person having heard it.

If I can ask, who or what helped you the most during this time in your life?

- My spouse, who was supportive and understanding the moment I came out

- My family, who were largely unsurprised by the news (my grandfather made an oddly supportive albeit sexist joke, saying “I knew that kid was a girl the moment she learned to talk and wouldn’t shut up!”)

- My friends, who were also completely unsurprised

- My own physiology, in that I discovered in the process of obtaining HRT that I am intersex, which honestly explained a lot.

Before I started doing this work I approached everything logically. "I shouldn't feel this way, because x, y and z are objectively good." "If I present things this way, I'll get people to agree with me." "I don't want to do x, but it will make so-and-so happy."

It never worked for long, and alcohol has a nice way of suppressing those feelings, as well as the little negative voice in your head that tends to accompany those suppressed emotions.

Rather than trying to logic my way to acceptance and contentment, I've had to learn how to wade into my emotions and figure out productive ways to express what they're telling me.

It's work to improve the relationship you have with yourself; it's still a work in progress for me.

You need chemical assistance, typically rather a lot of valium over about 5 days, under skilled supervision (so, in a clinic; or at home with a companion, and with daily visits from a clinician). The valium prescription will require assessment by a psychiatrist. The clinician will adjust the valium dose regularly based on his observations.

That's not really cold turkey, because most of the withdrawal symptoms are suppressed. But you have to stop dead, a good 12 hours before you start on the valium. If you're at home, the clinician will check you for alcohol on your breath, check blood-pressure etc.

Mixing alcohol with large doses of valium is a total no-no, and the clinician will cease treatment immediately.

This is why people with serious drinking problems find the "I drink a beer every night I must be an alcoholic" chat a bit offputting. And look, a bottle of vodka a day leaves some room for a few sober hours, so it's actually not as bad as the people who get withdrawal unless they stay topped up 24/7.

That’s why you or a drinker may have started to get the shakes 24 hours after you first drunk - they haven’t had any etoh in your system for 12+ hours

I use a BAC calculator test, for a 70kg person 20 shots takes more than 40 hours to reach 0 BAC.

(My drivers license requires 0 BAC so I’m aware of one beer taking about 2.5 hours to process fully.)

Have you ever measured? It's quite individual and usually much faster than the formulas they gave you in driving school.

It's not like, ruin my life, wake up in a gutter type situation, but it leads to just feeling somewhat crappy all the time, and I didn't like it, so I wanted to stop.

Some things that helped / are helping:

I have an app Habit Tracker. It's a pretty simple app with a list of habits you want do do, you can set on some schedule. When you do them, you tick them off and it keeps track of how many times, so you build up a streak. I made a "don't drink" habit, and check it off in the morning if I didn't drink the day before. It also shows a notification bubble on the app if you don't check it off and I hate that. It's like this little negative reinforcement that I have to live with that bubble all day if I drank the day before. It's silly, but it helped.

Reading the book This Naked Mind and listening to The Huberman Lab podcast episode about alcohol (#86) also helped. Alcohol messes up your body in a lot of ways, even at what's considered "moderate" or "normal" levels of drinking.

/r/stopdrinking on Reddit

Alcohol is an addictive drug and when you stop after using it regularly, you're going to feel cravings. It's not a moral failing, it's physiology. They do get less intense and less frequent after the first two weeks or so.

This is where I would settle as well, except some Saturdays when I'd have a bloody mary in the morning then just nurse gin and sodas from noon until 2am Sunday. Just enough to keep a little happy buzz going, I really don't like getting drunk at all.

My daughter started a practice of not buying alcohol for her home. I started doing that and it's actually working quite well. Still will get a beer or glass of wine with dinner when we're out but I don't burn down handles of rye or gin over the course of a week.

This has been working for me, too. For a few years in my late 20s I was doing 1-2 drinks per day on average, with a fair number of completely sober days in there as well. Never "problem" territory, but as I got into my 30s, I realized I felt way, way better on the days where I didn't have anything at all to drink the night before. So if I was ever waffling on whether to have a drink, I'd choose not to. Earlier this year I ran out of beers in the fridge and I've just not restocked it. We have some wine and stuff, which I drink with my wife when we have a nice dinner cooked, but it's probably one night a week now or even less. That feels OK to me.

I drank about half as often as you.

Enough to want to cut back, not enough to let me hit rock bottom.

Have gradually been moving towards sobriety myself if only because I'm finally taking it a little more seriously.

Huberman rec is great too.

The meetings made me feel good at first as I kept telling myself that my stories could potentially help someone else. I did not end up sticking with the AA program but the meetings really launched me into the right direction and finding my own path. I do drink NA beer and as many others in the comments have pointed out, there is a lot offered in that arena as of lately.

I am a very social person and navigating that lifestyle for the first time without alcoholic beverages was the biggest challenge for me. But I learned to like the challenge and found that sparked a lot of conversations with friends that were interested in quitting or dialing it back. It also identified and strengthened a lot of friendships where people normally wouldn't drink while doing whatever it was we are doing, but they did because I was 'the drinker.'

Next week marks my first year of sobriety, so I am certainly no expert, but feel free to reach out if you ever need to hash some things out.

When the train hits you, it's not the caboose that kills you.

Complete abstinence is really hard, unless we have some kind of supporting framework.

It's been my experience, that everyone that successfully quits drugs (I consider alcohol to be just another drug, but legal, and easy to get), has some form of Discipline. It may be a 12-Step fellowship, religion, extreme volunteerism, martial arts, spiritual practice, etc.

I've found that I enjoy the taste of beer, but I don't enjoy how shitty alcohol makes me feel. NA beer tends to solve that for me. Lots of good options coming out.

* Just the Hazy by Sam Adams is top tier.

* Athletic brewing is solely NA beer - lots of different varieties.

* Heineken 0.0 is great

* O'Douls amber is surprisingly passable as well

I suspect the options will get even better over time. It sounds like Gen Z aren't big drinkers and alcohol companies are responding to that with better NA options.

----

Lastly, I've discovered that I have an issue with wheat and/or gluten. Impact varies across beers (based on their mash), but it became really obvious that some beers would make me feel absolutely terrible.

I'd also add that NA beer also tricks my brain into not feeling awkward when I'm at a bar with friends who're all drinking.

Have also noticed that some NA beers make me feel elements of what I previously attributed to being hungover.

It might be histamine intolerance.

Part of what makes you 'feel hungover' is the fact that parts of the beverage has been converted to histamines/contained histamines already. It's the part that makes headaches. It's particularly bad because of the de-hydration part of drinking and histamine problems are a concentration thing, as in being low on water or having enough water in your system w/ the same histamine amount can be the difference between headache or no headache. Histamines are both present in alcoholic beverages in the first place and alcohol inhibits the DAO enzyme from breaking down histamines. Now the problem with NA beers for example is that even though there's no (or way less) alcohol to inhibit DAO, if you're low on DAO for example, this can still be enough to make you feel hungover as histamines are still present/going to be created from the beverage, even though it's no longer a 'double whammy'. Certain foods will be able to do the same if this is what was causing it for you.

An example of what might happen if that's what you have:

Non-alcoholic beer -> headache One piece of lasagna a day, no problem One piece of lasagna for lunch and another one for dinner from the left overs -> headache Drink one tiny bottle of Actimel -> headache

The exact amounts may vary for different people, some foods are worse than others etc. E.g. it might not happen with tomatoes for you but may happen w/ certain cheeses (e.g. blue cheese might be an issue, so don't eat that whole 200g package of Roquefort all at once even though it's tempting).

Basically anything that contains histamines (or biogenic amines in general) or gets converted into histamines (such as histidine - also added to some vitamin/mineral pills for example) can now give you a "hangover headache".

Not to mention what lots of yeast can do to your digestive tract if you happen to drink all the yeast that had gathered at the bottom of that bottle of Hefeweizen.

My brother and I once accidentally gave our dad NA beer. He didn't know. We soon realized it yet kept giving it to him all night. Bizarre, he actually got "drunk". Slower talking, ever more exaggerated stories, etc.

It's not just a personal anecdote, this has been replicated with two student groups in a bar, one served alcohol, the others not. Both groups got "drunk".

Likewise, you can give people a blue-colored and red-colored water and they will consistently report that the blue one is cool and refreshing whilst the red one is sweet. Neither has any actual taste.

Most people have experienced this glitch in our brains without realizing it. You have a glass of water and you take a sip. You violently spit it out. It's sprite, not water. It tastes like poison, even if you love sprite.

Being aware that you're drinking NA is technically not a placebo, but strong associations can still play a role in it act liking one regardless.

Also interesting in that regard: https://steadydrinker.com/articles/foods-drinks-alcohol/

I mostly enjoy IPA non-alcoholics, or a Weizen. But for regular NA pilsener I would recommend Grolsch, it's a bit more hoppy then Heineken.

Another good brewery: https://rationalebrewing.com/

Guiness even offers a non alcoholic now that isn't bad.

I think Athletic is way overrated compared to the above though and wouldn't start there.

I have exactly this problem but only with wheat beer, not other wheat products. It makes me feel awful, kind of lightheaded and I crash 30 minutes later and feel exhausted.

I don't have a problem with wheat or gluten though. My partner runs a bakery and if I had a problem with gluten I'm pretty sure I'd know about it. I have also tried elimination diets in the past to deal with migraines and wheat/gluten never showed up as an issue.

I also don't get this effect from non-wheat beer. So my guess is that some other chemical is created from wheat during the brewing process and I'm sensitive to that.

I believe there's some evidence that pesticides commonly used with wheat can actually be the source of the issue for some people. I recall having a colleague who said they'd import European wheat because they didn't have bad reactions to it. I believe the reasoning was Europe didn't allow a certain type of pesticide.

I've had the same issue with cigarette smoke since I quit ~20 years ago. The smell is awful and I seem to be hyper-sensitive to it if someone is smoking even remotely nearby.

I'm often driving when I'm out with friends, so I've sampled a lot of alcohol-free beers over the years.

There's an alcohol free wine called Fre. It tastes mostly like a dry grape juice, but it's fairly sippable.

In last couple years NA beers really got way better than they used to be.

Guinness NA is great. Heineken 0 is great. Clausthaler Grapefruit is great.

I, fortunately, am not among those who have the addictive response and when, as an undergraduate, I realized that my drinking was getting very problematic, it was easy enough for me to cut out the worst aspects of my drinking (straight vodka in a 20oz tumbler—definitely not recommended) and restrict myself to beer and wine and these days I almost never drink that either.

But I know people for whom doing things like making it through a month without a drink is a serious challenge.

I think your best bet is to find some form of support, whether that’s AA¹ or just a trusted friend who can help you stick to your choices.

⸻

1. The literature on AA points to mixed efficacy, if I recall correctly, but I think the whole concept of having a network of trusted peers you can turn to for support whether you succeed or fail is probably the key aspect of what makes it work and since it’s so widespread, if you’re in any decently populated area, it’s likely you can find a meeting any day of the week and can drop into one whenever you need it.

Now I drink only beer socially and very rarely wine at home, say once in a month.

First off, let me say that it took many tries for these abstentions to stick - that is normal, and you should remember that. Be kind to yourself. It's a skill and a habit you are building, and those things will take time. It took me years to finally gain real duration in my abstention.

Second, the fact that you are considering abstaining should be enough of a signal to you that something in you wants to stop - and this is enough to base the new behavior on. You don't need anyone's permission to stop. When I stopped I always heard about how "I wasn't enough of a drinker" to worry about it, etc. Many comments of this nature came my way. Just know that you know yourself best, and if these thoughts are arising, you should explore them.

And third, remember that if you are feeling unfulfilled in some aspect of life, substance abuse (of most types) will cloud this bad feeling, and give you an instant uplift. What happens then is up to you, but for me it led to a persistent drain on my ambitions. Thus I wasn't doing what I wanted, but at the end of the day, comfort awaited in the form of my drug of choice. This was my revelation that I eventually used as motivation.

Drinking 3-4 days a week seems like "okay". However, it basically means drinking whenever withdrawal symptoms kick in. This is creating a feedback loop, that is very hard to notice, because it is mild, and also socially accepted.

If you really want to know how addicted you are, stop drinking completely for a week.

If you find yourself unable to sleep, or sweating all over the place, or having weird stomach or muscle pain, or have unexpected mood swings: you already have a physical addiction to alcohol.

> "Alcohol exerts numerous pharmacological effects through its interaction with various neurotransmitters and neuromodulators. Among the latter, the endogenous opioids play a key role in the rewarding (addictive) properties of ethanol."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9040115/

Hence, being addicted to alcohol is comparable to being addicted to opiates (to some degree) and that seems to explain why withdrawal symptoms are fairly similar.

Psychologically, I think it helps one quit if you think of alcohol as comparable to laudanum use and old-school opium addiction. Junkie or alcoholic, it's not that great of a life.

I thought it was just "I'm getting old and drinking a lot, this is normal", but it sounds like withdrawal symptoms are more accurate.

Social drinking is very much a thing in Spain. However, most social drinking is light or moderate: walk to a nearby bar, have two beers with the family or with close friends (with free tapas, which accounts for dinner), then walk back home. In rare occasions (at least in my personal experience) things degenerate and one goes out for "just one beer" and gets back home at 5am with a vague recollection of chanting down the street.

My point is: every time that things get past the two-three beers limit in an evening, I am very conscious that I'm deviating from "social drinking" and "this is a meal" and entering "getting drunk" realm.

My personal point of view: having a responsible drink every now and then is a lot easier than cutting out completely. Here's what I do:

* If I want to enjoy a drink, I have a healthy meal with it. Can't open a second bottle of beer if the meal isn't finished, and by that point I'm full and happy.

* If I'm in a social situation where drinking is expected, I have a first drink, then switch to tap water (or sparkling water when plain water just won't do).

* More irresponsible drinking is an option. It's not verboten. However, it's reserved to very special occasions (New Year's Eve, my birthday party, a good time with friends not seen in years, …), and by the fourth beer I'm already sleepy enough to need a rest.

* On a tangent: Real tapas are *free, never paid*, and come with every drink ordered in a bar (including non-alcoholic drinks). I am certain this helps curb alcoholism to a significant degree in my hometown.

This is just me. YMMV.

https://themaritimeexplorer.ca/2015/12/01/tapas-in-spain/

So far it's about 1-2 times a year when I exceed this, and even then I don't go crazy but it's normally enough to make me wait a good few months before doing it again!

I talk to a LOT of people about this. But I am not a professional.

Tip #1: You have to stop beating yourself up over it. It's brutal. I get it. At my lowest I woke up for months wanting to eat a bullet. If I had better tools and coping skills I wouldn't have as close as I did.

Tip #2: Know you want to quit. Know that you CAN quit. It doesn't have to be today. But there will be a day.

Tip #3: Acknowledge that it's difficult and that you're doing the best you can.

Tip #4: I hate AA. I still think it's incredibly helpful for a non-insignificant number of people out there. I'm an atheist. I never bought into the steps. But the stories... hearing people say things that I'd never been able to put into words... was life changing. I wasn't the only one that couldn't put it down. It helped to hear that in words that I can relate to.

Tip #5: Get a mindfulness practice. I think a blend of meditation and stoicism (per William B. Irvine's book) is a great start. Skip the meditation if you have any trauma unless you're guided by a professional.

Tip #6: Make new friends, cut back on the old ones

Tip #7: Hobbies. Find some.

Tip #8: Keep doing what you're doing: asking for help.

Good luck. I hope you find your groove. My life is so much better today because I don't drink.

I've been told this is one of the hardest parts, because those old friends are often the ones encouraging and reinforcing the addiction. Finding new friends can be hard, especially if one has associated all social activities with alcohol. I have someone close to me in my life that had the perception, prior to giving up alcohol, that non-drinkers are boring and wouldn't spend time with them. Therefore this person ended up avoiding sober individuals and non-drinkers, but has since discovered that this is not the case, it was just the drinker's mind rationalizing and enabling.

The longest I went was about a year. I still enjoy the odd drink and very occasionally might have a bigger night but I feel fairly well moderated.

If you're really going for zero (or close to zero) then it's going to need a bigger habit change (which could be assisted by something like forming a new complementary habit).

As for social settings, it takes a lot of personal discipline but I find most people are quite respectful and encouraging if you assert that you have kicked a habit for good.

For me, exercise kills my appetite for garbage food, cures me of snaking.

The "feel good" hormones - endorphin, seratonin, oxytocin, dopamine - are released during exercise, and continue long after you are done exercising. These hormones life you out of a depressed mood or level out a too high mood and de-stresses and de-anxieties people. Those times are when one wants to drink, eat, smoke, whatever. Not everyone, maybe, but a lot of people start with bad behaviors when stressed or anxious. So exercise helps you level out your mood and prevents stress eating, stress smoking, stress drinking.

I used to do gym training (functional fitness followed by boxing class) Saturday mornings.

Because of this I had a reason not to drink Friday night - having an intense workout the next morning is not so fun, even after just a couple drinks...

If I ate or drank something bad the day before I could tell instantly what I did wrong.

So for the OP, I guess figure out what your reasons are and have some emotional buy-in if possible.

“I’m a person who doesn’t drink alcohol.”

“People will know and perceive me as a person who doesn’t drink alcohol. This is fine because it’s true.”

It’s the same as being a person who doesn’t do a thing that you already don’t do.

You can tell people you feel healthier without it and it’s just your preference. Most people won’t pry further. For some reason, Europeans tend to be more confrontational with me about it. You don’t need to share details about binging and lack of self control with anyone unless you want to.

This is very interesting. I have gradually become this person because I don't tolerate alcohol well anymore and it doesn't bother me to say this to myself or anyone else. Yet on the other hand, I have someone very close to me, who experiences incredible anxiety when embracing the identity of being a non-drinker. The way it was put to me was "Everyone will know I have a problem with alcohol and it makes me ashamed and self conscious".

And yet, my experience is that no one ever asks why I don't drink or even care and they still like being around me.

* Find the reasons why you started this bad habit: I was a lockdown smoker: the best part of the day during the lockdowns for me was when I went out to our balcony with my wife and we had a coke and cigarette. What is the reason why you enjoy drinking? Can you get similar results without drinking? My wife and I started going for a walk whenever we wanted to smoke, this helped us relax, spend time with each other without the negative effects of smoking.

* Recognize the circumstances under which it is extremely difficult to stop: For me, it was hard to stop after an extremely frustrating and unproductive meeting, before and after job interviews, etc... in short, under stress. When do you tend to "fall off the wagon"? Once you recognized this, you can attempt to mitigate. I attended meetings with my running clothes on, and if I felt frustrated after the call, I went for a run.

* Be honest with your loved ones about your struggles. I told my wife and sister that I enjoy smoking, but it makes me feel physically sick and it destroys all my ambitions for the day. They could help you in many ways.

* Do not make the bad habit easy for you: I don't have cigarettes or beer at home, this way when I get the urge, my laziness might save me (who wants to go to buy cigarettes when it is cold outside?)

* Don't beat yourself up over small setbacks: guilt is a negative emotion that usually just triggers more of the bad habit. Recognize that you are human, forgive yourself and move on, feeling guilty will only work against you.

* If you had a small setback, do not make it big: if I badly desired a cigarette and I bought a pack, I smoked one or two, but after my "uncontrollable" desire was satisfied, I threw the other 17 out.

This list worked for me, but it might not work for you. I came up with it, there is no research behind it.

* A mindset of , yeah you want a smoke right now - that's fine but you can probably wait another 10 minutes right? Then 10 minutes later, if you could go 10, you can probably go another 20? And hopefully you'd find something else to occupy yourself with by then.

I can't go into detail, in public, but I didn't do it, myself, and I didn't "moderate."

I stopped completely. That includes all mind-altering drugs (pot is a drug, and alcohol is a powerful sedative/hypnotic). To this day, I am extremely cautious about prescriptions, and there are many drugs that have been introduced, since I got clean. I avoid them, as well.

I hang out regularly, with many others, that have done likewise. Hanging out, together, is a big part of things. We do it One Day At A Time.

WFM. YMMV.

I used this method, along with keeping a log of drinks consumed, to eventually quite drinking over the course of a year. I went from having anywhere from 3-8 drinks a night, every night, to eventually stopping completely. In turn I've been sober 6 years now.

I found keeping the drink log useful both for charting my progress, and also just forcing me to be honest with myself about what I did and did not drink. It's too easy to skew ones memory in favor of having less of a problem if you feel like it.

I had to stop taking naltrexone after ~6 months because it was giving me insomnia / I started noticing an irregular heartbeat during the night (don't think this was naltrexone related though). But the effects persisted for a long time. It was like a complete reset with respect to my response to alcohol.

Unfortunately after a year or two of drinking again without it, I was back to binge drinking again. Very similar pattern to OP.

In the end I made the decision that it's not worth the hassle - had my last few parties with family and friends over Xmas & new year and then quit altogether from Jan 1st this year. Difficult at first but non-alcoholic beers have been amazing to trick my brain into thinking I'm having a drink with everyone else when out and about and, honestly, recently I haven't been missing it at all.

Good luck OP!

Highly recommend reddit.com/r/Alcoholism_Medication has a next step for anyone interested in learning more. Not only is the community extremely supportive, the sidebar links out to great resources including a free/legal PDF of the aforementioned Espaka book. That book was my starting point, highly recommended, it is a quick read and lays down the foundation for The Sinclair Method in the first few chapters (it is an incredibly simple system and that is why it works).

I found keeping a drink log helpful just for cutting down. I measured each drink with a measuring cup, and recorded the time and quantity. To my surprise, the act of maintaining a log naturally and painlessly reduced my consumption by 50% (a greater reduction was more of a struggle).

As soon as I do, I quit. I already recognize that drinking just makes everyone a sloppier, worse version of themselves, so I harbor no illusions that I am doing anyone a disservice denying them an opportunity to test their tolerance of me.

I'm also a mostly private drinker. I don't do bars or drinking culture, so there's little social pressure. I also make sure I'm never the only person to have had a drink. It's not a secret, just nothing to celebrate.

I've been on a dry spell for the past two years, and, as always, I don't miss it. I'll probably go another five years before I have more than a beer in a week, largely because my SO and I have a poor dynamic when alcohol is involved. We still keep alcohol around- we just end up cooking with it, instead.

My high level advice is to spend enough time not drinking that you really appreciate your health and clarity when you're sober. You're not alive for long, and alcohol really doesn't add anything of value to it.

I haven't had any alcohol in about 2 months. Prior I was consuming 1-3 drinks per week, almost exclusively beer, and almost never 3 drinks in a day. I got sick with COVID, found a podcast episode talking about the effects of alcohol and thought I'd give it a listen. [1]

The long and short of it is that alcohol is harmful to a laundry list of biological processes, and any minor benefits that might exist are absolutely dwarfed by the negatives. I wanted to feel as good as I could as fast as I could, so I haven't had alcohol since. Even my minimal consumption was affecting my sleep quality more than I realized.

I found the podcast to appeal to the logical side of me. If you made an honest list of pros and cons to consuming alcohol and were given the choice to have a drink after being raised without any exposure, you would say "why would anyone drink that stuff?", yet regular consumption of alcohol is deeply engrained in our society.

Right now I'm not drinking at all. I've been offered many times and heavily pressured a few. Alcohol hasn't been an issue for me, but it makes me feel awful for people who are battling alcoholism.

[1] https://hubermanlab.com/what-alcohol-does-to-your-body-brain...

For example https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323252 (2018).

Quote:

In August, we covered a large-scale review that drew an unequivocal conclusion: it’s not, in fact, safe to drink any amount of alcohol.

Senior author Dr. Emmanuela Gakidou referred to the idea that one or two drinks are safe for health as “a myth.”

She said that her and her colleagues’ research found that any level of drinking is tied to an increased risk of early death, cancer, and cardiovascular events.

I was told that there's no organ in the body that it isn't harmful to.

https://sites.duke.edu/apep/module-2-the-abcs-of-intoxicatio...

(My advice comes from the assumption that you don't have a serious pathologic adiction to alcohol. If that was the case, seek help from a profesional)

Once exercise has become a critical routine you start feeling terrible for killing your performance because you were too sluggish from drinking the night before. You begin questioning your life choices. At some point you get over the mental hump and can start dialing things back. Maybe even outright quit depending on your goals.

I started weight training 3 years ago and as of this year hit that sincere performance stride where I'm seeing genuine gains. I haven't outright quit drinking yet, however, these days I'm only downing a limited amount about once every 1-2 weeks as opposed to getting shitfaced 3-4 days per week.

The moral of the story is to engage in something that has its positivity stolen by alcohol and gets you angry enough about it to quit.

It may not work for everyone. It takes a lot of personal discipline to get started with exercise, let alone consider quitting alcohol. It could be a mental hole too deep for some people suffering from alcoholism to get out of, at which point I'd say try the numerous other options mentioned in this thread.

4 years ago, I was having a pretty boozy run up to Christmas one year. Out pretty much every night in December with different groups and sub-groups of friends, different events and whatnot. Some night might just be a couple of steady pints, some might be a full on sesh.

In the break between Xmas and nee year my GF and I decided we needed a break. She’d read about a book “This Naked Mind” which she understood to “help you take control of your drinking”.

As January rolled round with the festive season behind us we both read that book. You’re supposed to take your time reading it, over the course of a couple of weeks. We started drinking alcohol free beer tad a stop gap.

For me, the format of that book worked perfectly and I’m coming up on 4 years sober in January.

I still drink plenty of AF. There’s some really tasty ones on the market these days. I reckon I get about 80% the enjoyment from drinking alcohol free. It fulfils that desire to drink.

I’ll happily go to the pub and have a few AF while those around me drink, and then when the conversation takes a dip as the evening wares on, I say my goodbyes and leave them to it. The next morning I’m never not happy that I’ve got a clear head.

Good luck! I hope you find something that works for you.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Naked-Mind-Annie-Grace-ebook/d...

It is important to note age when describing alcohol consumption. I am 50. What worked for me at 20 does not work at all at 50. This is generally true for most.

I have been regularly drinking alcohol for over 30 years. I found that in my 40s my drinking was gradually increasing. I was at 4-5 beers every evening. I was using too much caffeine to get moving in the morning, caffeine and sugar during the day to work, and then alcohol to relax and go to sleep.

I fasted from caffeine, alcohol, and sugar and found my mood and energy overall improved. I simply have more capacity now without these things dragging me down.

I still have 0-3 drinks per week in social settings. The important thing to me is that I have a budget that is realistic for my age, just as I do for sugar and calories. I could get away with consuming more when I was young. Now, I easily gain weight and suffer long hangovers.

Total abstinence might not be ideal for everyone. Thinking about consumption in terms of a budget is useful for everyone.

I tried several times to stop drinking previously, the longest I managed was for about 3 months. I think the hardest part is really deciding that you want to stop drinking. Once I did that, I read the book and it was easy. I haven't had a drink in about 6 years since.

What I like about this book is it doesn't make it into such a big thing like AA does. I don't think I was an alcoholic, though I did have some problem drinking types of patterns, and maybe the AA approach is necessary for full on alcoholics but I don't have to avoid going to bars or social situations where others drink for fear of relapsing, I just don't drink anymore.

I know this book has worked for a lot of people but no doubt it doesn't work for everybody. It made something that at times seemed impossible for me seem easy though.

Well, it worked. Then I resumed smoking 6 months later.

"It's easy to quit smoking; I've done it scores of times".

(It was my 9th or 10th attempt to quit too, but my first and only with Easy Way)

I've heard about the book from this guest of Joe Rogan that described what the book did for her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZrA67ohY0I

Very simple book and loved her talking about it. She possibly saved lives just by sharing her story.

Never been a smoker but the take that it's marketed as addictive is something I never considered

So, I just remember that when I want to have a drink. It's going to make me groggy. It's going to make me snore... which annoys my partner. It's going to make me wake up "foggy". Sometimes, particularly when I don't have any responsibilities the next day, or I'm away from my partner, I decide that it's okay, and I'll have a drink. Most times, I won't. I'll have something else instead. Try a virgin drink or a non-alcoholic beer. There's lots of tasty options that don't come with the negative side effects. My go-to is just tonic water with lemon/lime. I don't even miss the vodka/gin that's supposed to be in there. Have them add a splash of dry vermouth or bitters for a little extra special something.

I have found, in the situations where I took control of my desire and rejected the "need" for a drink, I have felt an even better "buzz" from that decision than I would the drink!

Naltrexone works for me

I take a tablet on Wednesday to Saturday before bed.

I don't get any side effects (YMMV) but what it DOES do is basically take away the majority of the buzz from drinking, I lose interest after 2 or 3 drinks

Those weekends I want to go out and get smashed with friends, I just don't take the tablets.

Talk to your doctor, its cheap, low level side effects if you do have them - but its the one thing that works for me, I now have a couple of social drinks on weekends and I never thought I would be that person

I also dont seem to be the only one having this experience, a cofounder of AA (Bill Wilson) had a similar experience with LSD.

Obviously, read up on psychedelics safe use first.

A mushroom trip in Vancouver helped me understand the underlying cause of dependency, what I was running away from. That seemed to be all it took. The need was simply gone and the habit broken. Weekends are more like the energizing productive breaks they always should have been.

When you mention mushrooms during an Amsterdam visit, it makes it sound like it was a one time experience. Is that correct? Have you been regularly taking mushrooms during that 4 year period? Or did you simply never need to drink after one mushroom dose?

If it's the latter...that is truly remarkable and again, proof (even if anecdotal) that this needs to be researched far more thoroughly than it has been.

I've been sober for five years, starting the year I was finishing at university. At this point, I was taking prescription stimulants, smoking weed, and drinking every single day, and never had a moment sober. It had been that way my entire university experience, and I was slowly exiled from every social circle I attempted to join, and had various near scrapes with devastating consequences, but nothing stuck.

The summer before my final semester, I took LSD with my girlfriend. It was during that trip when I realized I needed to stop, or I was going to continue to be miserable. It took about another three or four months for me to realize the thought I had was the truth, but I quit, and have not relapsed in over five years now. That also means I haven't taken acid since that trip. I don't think I'd need to in order to stay sober now, it has just become the way I live my life.

I wound up getting heavily involved in 12-step recovery programs, which I admit, are not for everyone, but saved my skin, and gave me a group of sober people to call and add to my social network. I still go to meetings, but I think my experience with LSD made me realize that was the path I needed to take.

But the alcohol was a one time thing, something just rewired. I never felt that effect subside. I already didnt like it but felt just stuck, in addition to the urge to drink. I had a sip during the afterglow and the idiocy of it was just blatantly obvious. Funnily enough that wasnt the intent for the trip. It was just a really amazing side effect.

I wish i could give a better explanation but it has been 4 years and my life moved on since then. Its not something i think about unless the topic comes up. But it was such an important fork in the road for me that i found it important to mention. See it as an +1 for anecdotal experience.

I also agree with the obvious potential, "How to change your mind" from Michael Pollan is a great book on the topic.

All of these situations are tricky in their own ways. Yours is tricky in that you can go for a while without a drink and it seems you can stop in one night long enough to feel horrible (as opposed to continuing to drink until you pass out and push off the horrible feeling until the morning.)

I skimmed through the comments and noticed a few which perked my interest.

One is identifying with a drinking culture. We're bombarded by references to drinking in all forms of culture. People who drink, may do so in part because they identify with that culture. Drinking culture becomes part of them. In that case, I think just being aware of this and picking it apart in your own life can help move away from it. Then actively manage it within your personal relationships.

Another is being aware of the urges which arrive, and then simply observing them without acting on them. When you have an addiction, part of the difficulty of moving away from it is that voice which tells you that you should get that thing. It can be a convincing and creative voice. As with the above item, just being aware of it and picking it apart can help.

Some do like that "warm glow" feeling of a few drinks at times. That's fine for those people, but the time to stop is when you feel like you want or need to stop. The trouble is that a small drinking habit can spiral into a big drinking habit if the conditions are right. If you're already concerned, then it's good to cut it out completely.

The other piece was combining many different levers: social support, replacement activities, rewards, motivation statements etc. You need as many tools as possible because addiction is tough.

For more on this type of approach check out the book Change Anything... Helped me more than any other source.

A key idea they discuss are "critical moments" - ie that time when you're buying the 12 pack. You need to figure out when and why that happens and design a plan to address it.

I also find it hard to say no a drink. I ended up needing to avoid a group of friends that I regularly drank too much with. Basically if there’s a regular time that you get together and drink, just make sure to plan something else instead. Ideally something constructive.

It’s a little sad to avoid your friends like that. But on the other hand I have made new friends, improved my health, and spent more quality time with my family because of it.

I know you said you want to cut it out completely, but this past weekend I met up with the old group of friends for the first time in a while. We had a lot of fun, drank way too much, and I felt like crap afterwards. It was good to catch up, but now I feel like I’ve gotten it out of my system and can get back to healthier pursuits. No regrets.

Got easier and easier as I got older and stopped hanging out with people who drank heavily.

I eventually made it a rule to only drink when I'm in a social engagement (and don't make a habit of going to events where alcohol is served more often than not), and limit myself to two drinks max, and that seemed to do the trick for me. I've gone as much as six months without having or even thinking about having a single drink.

I don't even desire it anymore. I enjoy when I have it, but I can't even remember the last time I went "man, I could really use a drink". For me a drink pretty much always just means diet soda or coffee now.

I actually have beer in my fridge and wine from before the pandemic that I still haven't drunk, and some leftover alcohol I brought to an event three months ago I haven't even touched since, so I'm pretty sure I don't have a problem anymore.

Lol well said

1) Dihydromyricetin - This is a supplement which helps your body digest alcohol that which can lead to less hangovers. For me specifically? It completely removed any craving I had for a drink within a week. Without hangovers the next day, I was left feeling just tired and crappy but without feeling horrible. This was a full game changer for me.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CX60CMA/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...

2) After you actually stop drinking, there's another hurdle of dealing with the social setting where everyone else is drinking and you are not. Unfortunately most non-alcoholic options out at a bar are pretty limited -- selzer w/ lime, cranberry juice, just a soda. However, at home, a ton of options for mocktails are popping up. For me, these fully fix any remaining craving to sit down and enjoy a beverage. Would recommend Seedlip or Three Spirit

https://www.seedlipdrinks.com/

https://us.threespiritdrinks.com/

Definitely don't hate yourself when you fail. There's a huge industry interested in getting you to drink alcohol and its the only drug you have to explain why you're not using. It has an odd hold on us.

Good luck!

You have two problems: 1. Desire for instant gratification 2. Lack of other things that alter your mood positively

You can work on both in parallel. Exercise solves both at the same time.

The last meta thing to keep you focused on longer term healthy routes of solving this problem is to realize that:

1. You’re weak minded if you keep giving into instant gratification and should strive to be a stronger person 2. You have a deficit of things that give you positive emotion which is decreasing your quality of life

There are a lot of good ideas in this thread on what could replace drinking for you but you need to seek what works for you.

Or, your meat-friendly gut bacteria had all died off.

Unless it's too easy for you to meet friends at the pub every day, it should suffice.

There are many sources, but I recently saw this one from Dr. Andrew Huberman, which seemed more comprehensive than a lot of what I've read before.

[1] What Alcohol Does to Your Body, Brain & Health - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkS1pkKpILY

1.) I realized that drinking was a symptom of bigger issues in my life, and I was self medicating. Resolving those issues wound up with me giving up my excessive drinking with almost no effort.

2.) When I do recreationally drink, I limit myself to evenings only, I give myself extra time to sleep it off, and I force myself to consume single tall drinks only.

3.) I maintain awareness that I tend to self medicate, and reflect on the problems in my life that I can control.

Cutting drinking out completely is likely going to require a person to hold you accountable, and swapping in a different hobby to divert your focus. I find that when I'm idle, I tend to wander in the kitchen.

Good luck!

It was pretty hard to change my habit at first. What made the biggest difference was working out. I have a long history of fitness, and could recall that in my most fit era, I rarely drank. Like maybe once a month I'd have a beer.

It's really hard to be in great shape and average 10 beers a week, even if it's limited to 2 per event. Knowing that it's a limitation to my goals is very powerful in reducing my intake. I really just love beer and all its variety, so I miss it, but it also makes it much nicer to enjoy when I have it.

I started climbing with my son a few evenings a week and felt that even just a bit of wine for dinner affected recovery. Nowadays I rarely drink but still enjoy a beer or a glass of wine, maybe once a month.

You can find a therapist who specializes in addiction recovery to help keep you accountable. You can go to an AA meeting. Find a group of friends who don't drink and do things with them.

Actively remember life and having fun before you drank. For me that was high school.

Throw out all of your booze and don't buy any. If you like beer buy non-alcoholic beer. That will short circuit the pleasure response circuit that is responding to the alcohol. So you will find after your first NA beer that the pleasurable feeling doesn't hit so your body learns that the beer isn't the thing anymore.

I am 3 months sober and it really took two weeks to settle in, the first day was the hardest.

I'll add 1. Put any friendships that revolve around drinking on hold and 2. Find healthy natural highs--taking a bad habit out of your life is an excellent opportunity to find healthy things you enjoy doing to fill that void.

A couple of years passed since then. I'm now in an environment where alcohol usage is increasingly encouraged, and not drinking makes other people uncomfortable. So what I'm doing now is just buying small amounts of alcohol, usually better quality.. but I still don't feel any internal drive to drink.

So.. perhaps trying out one of these psychedelic substances once could help.. there is also some research suggesting that they have anti-addiction effects.

It's almost impossible to stay sober with all the social pressure. In our culture, every event has to have alcohol in it. Every occasion is a drinking occasion. Which is fine, except that I already drank my share for life and now just prefer enjoying life in other ways. So now I show up in full gear, put my helmet on display and have a nice evening without any nudging and questioning.

Drinking is a cyclical activity, chemical wise. You get anxiety so to escape the anxiety you drink, the first few drinks you feel great - because the anxiety is gone! As you drink, though, the anxiety comes back so you drink more. The next day your anxiety is raging due to a hangover + your normal anxiety + whatever happened the night before. Shame and guilt set in, if you're trying to quit, and then rinse and repeat.

Alcohol is also a dangerously addictive substance for reasons most people don't realize. Withdrawals are lethal, which makes them special on their own, but alcohol is also available, advertised, and accepted everywhere. There's seductive ads on TV and in your grocery store; it's marketed as a lifestyle choice and a luxurious one at that. It's available in gas stations, grocery stores, and convenience stores. At any given party there is a high likelihood of alcohol presence.

I don't have any answers for you; my partner keeps herself busy with hobbies and work. She's got some totems around that remind her why she quit (or that she quit, in general). It's every day work.

My story with alcohol was far more simple. I was depressed and when my depression hit a high I would start to drink. There was no such thing as, "I'll have one beer" in my house. I hit rock bottom and I had one of two choices to make. The path I chose involved eating better, doing physical activity, and studying. My hobbies eventually ate over all the opportunities I had to go out with friends and booze casually. At some point it occurred to me that I hadn't drank in years; these days I can have as many beers as I want and stop when I want, but more generally I just don't drink. It's just not that fun to me anymore now that I know a life without alcohol.

I tell my story separately because I don't really fit the mold of an addict, yet I certainly destroyed a period of my life with alcohol.

Yes, there are questions and "But wine?", "But a good beer?" social pressure, but being in my fifties probably helps a lot to preserve my "I don't care" attitude towards this.

One insight into successfully walking away from addictions is recognizing that this thing (e.g. alcohol, cigarettes) is unambiguously poisonous. "When I [take/do] this, it will take more than it gives."

Hard to articulate, but it happens when the scales that painted the substance with redeeming qualities falls from your eyes. Sorta like discovering you've entertained a damaging relationship for too long. However much worth this person has, being in a relationship with them is not good for you (or others, usually).

It probably means though that I didn't have any chemical addiction and it certainly helped that I had a things to do that benefited instantly from my decision – my work at that time.

It probably also helped that I was raised up by parents who didn't allow me to blame others when things went wrong with me – "You can't change to world no matter badly it behaves, but you can always do better yourself."

You may have breaks in your quitting , but that's ok get back to the quitting state as soon as possible.

Having kids does not solve substance abuse issues, mental health issues, relationship issues or any similar problems. People may believe that having kids will fix whatever problem they're facing, but instead find that it just adds tremendous amounts of stress, burden and additional hardship on them.

But you’re right, this isn’t a substitute for any improvement of any other serious issues in my life. It’s a positive relationship which helps me navigate those serious issues better, but it isn’t a solution. When my mental health is in bad shape, it can deteriorate the relationship the same way it does with my friends.

I agree but don’t want to emphatically agree with your point, because finding actual positive bonds whatever they are is part of how people stop reproducing negative cycles for themselves. It’s not enough, but it’s not always inherently selfish and negative either.

Drink water, and more water along with the alcohol.

Alcohol promises a great time. Alcohol delivers a hangover and regrets.

Junk food promises a great time. Junk food delivers poor health and regrets.

Going to the gym promises hardship and struggle. It delivers health. I've never once regretted it.

Reading a book promises struggling and boredom. It delivers wisdom and inspiration. I've never once regretted it.

If you compare what you think you will happen with what you know will happen from experience, it's very easy to see how often you are misjudging these things.

Sure, but simply ignoring the time in between where alcohol effectively does deliver a great time, and which is for many people the addictive aspect of it, isn't exactly easy. Or at least not quite as easy as downplaying the hangover and regrets, as addicts often do.

And since your core advice is basically not to misjudge, it's extra weird to me to leave out parts. At least in my opinion you should look at the whole issue. But then judge by assigning value to it: is the great time really great, or is it just you hanging in a chair, head spinning and almost too drunk to be able to make conversation? Is it really great, or is it just you so drunk you sometimes fall over while dancing? Was it really a great time coming up with philosophical insights into mankind, or was it all just bullshit?

Going to the gym promises hardship and struggle. It delivers health. I've never once regretted it.

This suffers from the same issue, but the other way around. Sports can result in blessures, especially the more extreme ones. You shouldn't imo just ignore that. Instead be honest to yourself and call it what it is: it's addictive, it makes you feel great, it delivers health, and all of that is enough to make the occasional (depending on what you do) pain (physical, but also mental i.e. getting depressed because not able to work out) worth it.

You had a good time at a party once. Great. Are you really still enjoying that good time? Not likely.

You climbed a mountain another time. You were tired and it was very difficult. Are you still exhausted months later? Not likely. But the accomplishment remains the rest of your life.

You’re acting as if exercise never has any drawbacks - like the other commenter said. It definitely does. Getting injured is part of it and is a routine issue for many people - you try to avoid it but it just happens.

I’ve had issues with my patella tracking for years now. My fingers don’t act the same cause of a minor incident while skiing. I’ve got wrists that make funny noises and aren’t as strong because I nearly broke both (but only broke 1) while playing ultimate 15 years ago.

Do you think I forget that shit? I don’t cause I have to live with it everyday.

In retrospect, boring modest training would have gotten you a lot farther.

Going to the gym and doing boring modest stairmaster will be a lot safer than climbing actual mountains. Yet you seem to recommend the accomplishment aspect of climbing mountains.

If it does matter to you, then having tried and failed is arguably better than having been safe and taking no risks and then dying anyway because death knocks on your door no matter how much you try to avoid it.

Perhaps we shouldn't get out of bed in the morning, we could be injured. There's a non-zero risk that can't be denied. Ammirite?

I'm a decently strong climber, and I would never discourage people from trying it. But I think an honest presentation should include the risks

There’s a guideline here to choose a charitable interpretation of other’s comments. Not the worst possible.

1. Drink alcohol to calm down

2. Stay anxious and stressed

The options are more like

1. Drink alcohol to calm down and impair your sleep ensuring you'll get stressed more often and need to have a glass of calming juice again soon

2. Wear yourself out at the gym to calm down and improve your cortisol regulation and reduce the need to calm down

3. See a therapist and learn better stress coping strategies and reduce the need to calm down

4. Remove stressors from your life and reduce the need to calm down

5. Eat healthier and sleep better and improve your cortisol regulation and reduce the need to calm down

...

N. Stay anxious and stressed

That said if you're having trouble calming down in the evening, assuming you see a doctor for routine physical examinations, you can discuss options with them. They will know this list and more, and occasionally they can convince your insurance to cover the cost of something. It's better than developing a substance habit.

Sometimes you push hard, and a good glass wine is exactly what you need.

Sometimes you push hard, and you had enough wine the week before.

Therapists are overrated, no scientific backing in learning how to deal with high stress situations.

I recommend everyone working out, but when you had a stressful day or week, a gym workout might just add more cortisol.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2015.0015...

Because it makes you feel good? You certainly don't need it. It's a crutch. For socialization, sure. But to "wind down" or "de-stress"? That's not healthy in the long term.

> I recommend everyone working out, but when you had a stressful day or week, a gym workout might just add more cortisol.

Huh?

Huh. I've had a lot of success with therapy in this regard. Wouldn't recommend something I haven't tried.

The good therapist discouraged me from worrying too much about using a drink at the end of the day as a tool to unwind (I was considering quitting alcohol to try to help my anxiety).

Therapy can be great, but it's not a commodity. Success is highly correlated to a strong relationship between patient and therapist, and finding that is very challenging for me and others I've discussed that with.

I also started cold exposure and breathing exercises. Now I was skeptical of that stuff for sure at first but I think you can increase your stress tolerance and also train and reconnect your bodies nervous systems. It's a neurobiological thing.

I do the breathing exercises when I get stressed and that takes 5-10mins of effort. After which I've forgotten what I was stressed about. So it breaks the rumination cycle for me.

https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/55/21/1233

My doc told me I should train for an hour a day but not two hours a day.

I drink alcohol at least 2 or 3 times a week. I can't remember the last time I had a hangover. I just don't drink an excessive amount.

Junk food promises a great time. Junk food delivers poor health and regrets.

I eat junk food a few times every month. I'm above average on most health metrics.

Going to the gym promises hardship and struggle. It delivers health. I've never once regretted it.

I don't go to the gym. I do lead a reasonably active lifestyle though.

Reading a book promises struggling and boredom. It delivers wisdom and inspiration. I've never once regretted it.

I give up on books that aren't interesting within the first chapter. There are lots of books I regret wasting time on.

There's no simple 'rules' or 'logic' to having a fun lifestyle that means you get the most out of your time on Earth. You can be fit, healthy, and enjoy things while drinking, eating some junk, and never going to the gym. Life is made up of many, many variables, and what works for one person doesn't necessarily work for the next person.

Do your own thing. Figure out your own life. Let others figure out theirs.

People are made different. Some are more binge oriented, seems those also feel the most guilt after consumption and then they restrain for a longer time, then they fall worse. I'm like that, when I do something I'm all in, seems like a awesome thing when I'm into good things, but otherwise prone do get addicted to bad ones.

I noticed others who are more detached, don't feel that guilt and can stop when they want like you. Seems the better way to approach things is in "smaller bites".

Anything good in too great measure can become bad after all.

I don't know, I'm struggling with youtube of all things. Blocking extensions seem to work for a while...

What have you experienced in your life which might make this easier for you than for others?

This is what accounts for the stark differences in outlook. If you've practiced this, it feels easy, and it can be difficult to even relate to how others struggle. If you don't, it feels impossible, and it can be difficult to relate to how others find it so easy.

It can be a surprisingly quick process. If you have some impossibly tempting snack you're struggling to resist, if you just grin and willpower your way through it a couple of times, rough as they may be, it takes less willpower each time. By the 5th or 6th time you've done this, it's maybe still effortful, but already noticeably easier. By the 20th time, you may not even feel the temptation at all.

... depending on what's got you hooked, obviously. Substance addictions may linger for a longer time, but the principle is the same. Even if you still crave cigarettes two months after you've quit, it's nowhere near as bad as it was 5 days in.

It's not without reason almost every culture has had rituals of fasting or abstinence. It turns out this is a pretty good thing to practice every once in a while, even if you don't have to become a desert ascetic or go full Jocko Willink in the process.

My own middle path has evolved out of many things, but I imagine the three most prominent are:

1. Delayed gratification as part of childhood upbringing 2. Training to silence the internal dialogue 3. Appreciation of the miniature bonus: 4. Bach

I suspect these things have kept me from the alcoholism that is rampant in my family. I truly enjoy a few strong drinks a week, though sometimes I forget about alcohol for months or years.

I realized that I occupy very little space in other people's minds. Not just me though, this is true of everyone.

I'm not exceptional or famous or rich. People may see me but they don't care. I don't mean that in a self-effacing "I wish they would care though!" way. I just mean that everyone is living their own life, fighting their own battles, and not really spending a lot of time thinking about other people. We think we're being judged harshly by those around us when we do things we perceive are bad, but the reality is that we're not. Other people aren't thinking about us at all.

Consider this - if you go to a bar and see 300 other people, you might notice half a dozen and think "Hot", "Fat", "Even hotter", "Ugly", "Drunk", "Slightly less hot than the first one". You don't really see the other 294 people. And after 5 minutes you've forgotten them all. Even the hottest one. Everyone is like that. Why put any stock in what they might be thinking when the probability is very high that you aren't in their thoughts at all?

I can live my life the way I want to because I don't really care about what other people think of me, because I realized that they just don't think about me.

I will add that I do care about what my partner and my close friends think, but I'm also able to accept that they'd tell me if they thought something about me was 'wrong'. I don't need to worry about their opinions because I can just wait until they share them if they want to.

I suspect the reason I'm able to think this way is that my partner is a therapist and talking to her for a decade has given me some useful tools for introspectively understanding what's going on in my head.

Thank you for sharing some of those tools here!

People repeating the boring mantra of "Eat well, stop drinking, go to the gym, read improving books" are just trying to exert control over the lives of others, especially if they do it in a preachy "You'll regret it if you don't!" way. It's an unimaginative lifestyle with no room for joy. Everyone can enjoy life and embrace bad things on occasion without doing irreparable harm to themselves. If someone choose a shitty diet that is their decision to make. It's not up to you, me, or anyone else to tell others how to live.

The level of simplicity being applied here suggests to me you've never been an alcoholic nor spent much time with alcoholics. This advice is at the same level of "just think positively" when addressing depression; it's almost laughably out of touch and unhelpful.

It's great that you find it easy to exhibit such control over your behaviors, but it's important to remember that the reason alcohol is the most widely abused drug in history is because to the vast, vast majority of people, an 'easy' internal examination isn't enough to permanently change one's behavior.

It's important to understand that resolve is something you need to practice, it's like a muscle. Every time you give in to a temptation, your resolve weakens. Every time you resist, it gets stronger.

Practicing like this quite literally rewires your brain. Strengthens the ability of the amygdala to regulate behavior. If you give in to every impulse, you teach your brain to exercise less impulse control.

You may as well be a patient in a drug trial, one of the let's say 30% that responded well to the drug, but afterwards you go out and claim that it's a cure for everyone... well no, it didn't work for 70% of people.

I will also share the experience that addicts in general are experts at self-deception. They'll have long lists of reasons why their addiction is uniquely impossible to break, and most will dismiss trying anything as a waste of time, not from reflection but as a reflex.

I'm not sure if it is a result of getting older, change in diet and it doesn't really matter. I like a good wine, beer, whiskey or rum, but in the last six months I started notice that I don't sleep very well after drinking. I can have one or two beer or one glass of wine, but not much more. After that it starts to interfer with my sleep, costing me hours of sleep. Given the choice I'd always put a good nights sleep before a cozy evening with wine. I could just have the one drink, but to me at least, it's simply easier to just not drink at all.

If you're in a settings where you're almost expected to have a drink, you can just use my reasoning, that you don't sleep well after drink alcohol, it's honestly something most people seem to understand.

Small note on the: "just hating yourself when you fail" that's not productive. Recognize that you failed, that it's okay to fail, and examine why. Then start over and try to learn from you mistake. E.g. maybe don't have alcohol in the house, replace it with something else, for me its tea and sparkling water. (Having a replacement beverage for the time when I'd just relax and normally have a drink have helped a lot)

One beer?

Also

Alco often delivers crazy social interactions that may be very desired

>Reading a book promises struggling and boredom. It delivers wisdom and inspiration. I've never once regretted it.

I wish, a lot of books that ive read were mostly waste of time e.g dragon book

I'm not your mom. I'm only offering a framework for making better judgements. If that framework tells you just one beer is beneficial, then cheers.

Actually, yes. If you are someone who only drinks one beer, then your low tolerance means even that single drink will leave you leaving crummy afterwards. Not a full-on "oh dear god please don't mention eggs around me" crummy, but just groggy, headache-y, and so on.

This is me. I only ever drank maybe a glass of wine or one beer every couple of months, and finally realized it was easier just dropping down to effectively zero.

> I wish, a lot of books that ive read were mostly waste of time

Hear, hear! People fetishize books way too much. Most are, indeed, crap.

That's not true. As long as you compensate with a bit of water, and you drink quality spirits rather than shit, one or two drinks are absolutely fine even for the low-volume drinker.

Source: am one.

What makes a real difference is that, if you're super-fit and super-lean, your body will struggle harder to deal with alcohol, so you will have to over-compensate by drinking a lot of extra water (and hence piss more).

Source: I occasionally drink, but it's rare enough that doctors' offices tell me to answer "No" to that question.

The "for who" was "for me". The "for what" is what I said: any amount leaves me a bit groggy or sleepy afterwards. My theory is that because I rarely drink, it's a mild system shock each time I do. Maybe that's not it, and my body simply doesn't handle alcohol. At any rate, the tradeoff of that great wine with my steak making me want to take a nap the next two hours, I decided it wasn't worth it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

"But, but, but what if I drink only a thimble-full?"

I've always described drinking as “borrowing happiness from tomorrow, sometimes at a high interest rate”.

But like any debt that might actually feel like a good deal at the time, and might actually be a good deal sometimes. And even if it isn't a good deal, if you are someone with a dependency or addiction realising this isn't simple (and even if you realise, taking action (or not) based on that realisation is often far from easy).

Regrets in hindsight are not very effective at moderating behaviour once a physical addiction or phycological (including social) dependency has set in.

Actual addiction is much more pernicious, your long-term reasoning faculties are suspended and short-term takes over. "I know this hurts me long term, but one drink isn't that big a deal".

I wish addiction could be kicked with "I thought about it and decided it wasn't good for me, so I stopped", but I don't think it can.

I'm not saying it is easy, but re-programming your thinking by interrogating your assumptions is very much possible (and essentially the core mechanic in cognitive behavioral therapy).

It's also important to note that if I examine how you think, that basically does nothing. You need to do it yourself, earnestly, if it's to have an effect.

Can you go into the details a bit more? It sounds interesting.

But it's also very boring.

And maybe not everyone needs it, but letting go, breaking your own & other moral rules, at times can be a very benificial thing.

I think SO many people overlook this very fact. Most people don't need alcohol to have a good time however it's called a "social lubricant" for a reason.

Sometimes people just need a tiny push to become less self conscious or less introverted. Life is short. You can spend years trying to be healthy and perfect but you need to ask yourself whether you're happy while doing that. If the answer is "Yes" then great. If it's "No" then you should reevaluate your path.