Oooph. Gonna just stream-of-consciousness type my thoughts here and not edit anything.

I did NOT want to stop originally. Didn’t think I had a problem cause i wasn’t starting any shit, wasnt hurting anyone, just got hammered and played video games mostly. I could easily admit to myself that doing that every night wasn’t good for my body, and I was spending TONS of money on booze, but that was the only problem I saw initially.

My ex and my parents had a mini intervention, and since my ex and I had already split and they planned on moving in a few months, it was either “you’re going to rehab or we’re taking the corgi, what’s it gonna be?”

I still tried to weasel my way out of quitting drinking for a while, but eventually…i don’t remember if I caved, or what happened in my brain, but I shortly wound up in a state run rehab facility. I was there for a week, and it fucking SUCKED. That said, I warmed up pretty quick to group therapy and started taking sobriety seriously.

One of the most helpful things I did in there was fill a notebook with thoughts about how drinking impacted my life. Cannot recommend something like that enough, but you have to be honest with yourself. Still have that notebook, but fortunately i haven’t felt the need to open it since leaving.

I also fully recognize that I’m lucky as fuck in that I didn’t have any physical WD symptoms and didn’t need to detox at all.

So yeah, I dunno. All i can tell you is that it (not drinking) isn’t as bad as your mind makes it out to be. It sucks to give up something that makes you feel good, but i don’t miss the hangovers, and once I start working again, maybe I’ll actually be able to build up savings for the first time in my life.

Kind of a shotgun blast of thought here, but hope you find something helpful in this post! If you ever wanna chat more or want an accountability buddy, happy to keep talking!

Any advice for someone who should really start down the path but hasn’t yet?

Be the child of an abusive, sadistic alcoholic and stop drinking when you see yourself turning into them. Well, that is what worked for me.

Depends on access to resources. Obviously, not everyone can afford a rehab clinic.

It also depends on your relationship with drinking. For me:

• I was using alcohol to suppress feelings of social anxiety at parties where it was appropriate to drink (and some where it wasn’t). This didn’t result in a lot of crossed lines, but it did result in some. Feeling that shame of crossing boundaries without necessarily tying the feeling of shame to drinking (which can cause more drinking, in a fuck-it sort of way) can reduce drinking.
• I was drinking out of intense boredom. Being long term unemployed in a country where it’s possible (not at all comfortable) to live on welfare, but not really having enough money to participate in society much meant that alcohol became a way to delete time (that, and video games). It also doubles as a calorie source (albeit one with no other nutrients). I don’t want to go towards using “work” as a moralising force, but getting up and doing something every day leaves less time and energy for drinking. The best things are a mutually enriching and engaging social environment that chews up time and energy, where everyone feels respected and safe, but access to that is limited. Even things like “I know I have to drive later, so I won’t drink now” help a little.
• I was drinking in response to stress. $15 of ignoring an issue that you can’t resolve anyway (say… Your landlord hounding you for debt that you cannot possibly afford) is hard to turn down. Still kinda do, working on that I guess.

Each different relationship to alcohol you have requires addressing or reframing in different ways. Filling your time with “more productive” hobbies won’t help tamp down your social anxiety at parties except in a very tangential way. There are a bunch of commonalities though:

• Cold turkey is statistically not very effective. It’s kinda like “abstinence only” education. The argument for doing it is a moral claim on anyone who fails (which will be a lot of people). But even outside of cold turkey, there’s a mindset that creeps into all other methods. Its important not to beat yourself up for “failing”. You do have to be compassionate to your past and future self (and your current self, if you’re standing at the checkout with a bottle of wine) for the most healthy outcomes. This also goes for how people treat you and your drinking if they know what you’re going through.
• Set clear goals, why you have them, and a very rough plan (e.g. I’d like to be drinking less than 10 standard Drinks a week in 6 months, I’m tired of how much time I waste hungover, I don’t like who I am while drunk).
• Engage with a community (IRL, an online person’s ability to slowly dole out drinks to you at a party is kinda limited) and be earnest with them about drinking and your relationships with it. A few drinks is fine, be wary around free drinks, ask people to be gentle when policing you about how many drinks you’ve had tonight. But also reflect on if you become belligerent while drunk (I don’t). Obviously, they will want to protect themselves and if they feel like you’re a threat when you’re getting up to get another drink that is something you’ll have to address. A thing I did that was an escalation was directly assigning someone as the “drink getter” that I had to convince to get a drink. You’d have to trust them and ask for a limit like… 2 standard drinks per hour or something. If they’re puritanical about it, you’ll not assign them again.
• For physical health, the real killer is the day to day grazing of alcohol. Sitting alone at home drinking and playing video games for a week. If you have a job or some other duty to fill, this happens less (but can still happen in the evenings). For me, I recommend Naltrexone. It almost completely killed the desire to start drinking day to day (also reduced hunger cravings during hangovers). Access to this is dependent on the healthcare in your country, but that worked for me. Some practitioners won’t prescribe this if you’re still drinking in the last few days, though I didn’t notice anything wrt withdrawals, drinking while on it, or anything.
• Group therapy, accountability partners etc. So this works for some people and keeps a system of accountability outside of directly engaging with a counsellor or psychologist (who you might see once a week, and are typically not drinking or drunk directly in your sessions). I found it intensely awkward. Everyone else felt wildly different to me. What I think would be best is a healthy engaging community that already exists that you’re a part of who all simultaneously quit drinking together, slowly. But that is predicated on a lot of things that don’t exist.
• Reducing the size of drinks. A 5 L bag of wine is very efficient in terms of alcohol to dollars. A single bottle of wine is less efficient, and means you have to get up and go to the bottle shop again to re-up. This reduced my drinking a little, but switching from bottles of wine to beers at the pub didn’t actually help that much. It’s just a fairly common strategy.
• Plan drinking nights. I used 2 standard drinks an hour, and I’d buy a six pack of Asahi that came in 500 mL (exactly two standard drinks). One can per hour. I’d never get hugely drunk, and I could stay at the event for six hours. If I found I couldn’t hold myself to this, I’d tell other people. If the informal policing didn’t work, it escalated to having someone release a can to me once an hour. Including your community/party-goers in this also lets them know that you’re aware of the issue and you’d like to engage them in your journey out of it. A lot of people will be like “Why don’t you cut it out entirely?”, but hopefully you can trust them enough to explain the statistics on cold turkey and what you’re going through. Also, frankly, I enjoy being drunk. I would like to be drunk. (if other people don’t enjoy me being drunk, that is another reason, but fortunately or unfortunately I am a medium energy social drunk that most people don’t have a problem with and can have pretty cogent conversations with)

Things that make it more difficult:

• No community. Ideally, you’d want to have people you talk to every day or every couple of days in a safe and mutually respectful environment about flimflam. For a long time, I thought this was my gamer friends. A lot of AMAB people struggle with this. These people would have your back if you needed help moving or you wanted to slam out a co-op game, but allow for little vulnerability and there’s this constant jockeying in an imagined hierarchy. This is a bastard form of community that won’t help. Also if your community is heavily steeped in drinking. Jokes about Eastern Europe, but also college campuses etc.
• Long stretches of doing nothing/lonely free leisure activities (e.g. pirated video games). Boredom is painful, alcohol soothes the pain.

I hope this helps. Obviously, there are also local services and therapy as well.

Nobody ever regrets quitting drinking.

It may take many attempts, but the important thing is to not beat yourself up over it and just hop back on if you fall off the wagon.

I found it helped to talk to people on r/stopdrinking, the ONLY good thing that ever came from reddit