jfv wrote: For those of you who have successfully quit drinking alcohol for a significant period of time, temporarily or permanently, how in the fuck did you do it??

For me I tried to back off, chill out, etc and when I found out how hard that was it scared me. I tried a few things that didn't work for me (like being "California sober" which is weed instead of drinking/powdered drugs) and attempts to quit completely at that point and had a weird emotional experience w/ an ex coming back into my life and was able to ride that high instead of drinking. I holed up at her place and stayed away from party people and just played a lot of Mario Kart if I remember right. Then slowly got back into things where I found the roughest parts were the firsts: first time having dinner with friends and not drinking, first time practicing sober, first time playing a show sober, first time going to a family event staying sober, etc etc.

When things got rough I just made little agreements with myself about putting it off as long as I could. "Maybe I'll drink tomorrow, but just for today, I can make it the rest of the day" or when it was even more difficult, "maybe I'll drink after midnight, but I can make it until midnight" or the next hour, or next five minutes, etc etc. As it turned out, you can amass a lot of clean time that way.

I had things to do and stayed busy, did a lot of cleaning, worked on a lot of projects, stuff I put off because whatever. Made sure I kept myself without a lot of time to sit and feel sorry for myself or get too in my head.

And yes, I did eventually turn to AA and meetings for quite a long time. It helped me even if I found myself shedding off 95% of the stuff that didn't really click w/ me, there was the occasional nugget of pure gold in that remaining 5%. I was lucky that I didn't have to detox, but for me the sickness was flipped: it came with drinking and so quitting drinking brought me back to feeling good pretty quickly.

jfv wrote: Mon Oct 23, 2023 9:00 am Embarrassed myself pretty bad this weekend relating to my alcohol consumption (nothing serious, thankfully). But going on the wagon... again... starting today.

For those of you who have successfully quit drinking alcohol for a significant period of time, temporarily or permanently, how in the fuck did you do it??

One thing I would say is that many “nothing serious” events can eventually add up to a serious one. We’ve cut families out of our friend group over time—ghosting them, basically—because we simply didn’t want to deal with the family alcoholic. He might not have ever done anything quote-unquote “bad,” but his presence always meant that he drank and drank and drank and just put us on edge. We didn’t want to babysit.

One thing that may motivate you: ask your partner how often they are reluctant to leave their car and go into their home when you’re there. Because if your partner has to ask his or herself, “Will XXX have been drinking today? How much? And what kind of mood will he be in?” . . . Well, you’re being given a sign here.

Wood Goblin wrote: Mon Oct 23, 2023 11:47 am One thing that may motivate you: ask your partner how often they are reluctant to leave their car and go into their home when you’re there. Because if your partner has to ask his or herself, “Will XXX have been drinking today? How much? And what kind of mood will he be in?” . . . Well, you’re being given a sign here.

Me becoming a stupid idiot drunk is not even close to being a daily occurrence, so wife saying to herself, "Will XXX (referring to me) have been drinking today?" and hesitating to get out of the car doesn't happen. I can *almost* always control my drinking at home.

She does, however, think twice about whether it's a good idea if I go to an event with her, with other people, where drinking will be involved. That's when stupid idiot drunk Jason has a higher probability of appearing.

Wife is, thankfully, very understanding of my predicament, herself being an alcoholic but dry now for 2+ years. You'd think because of this that she'd be a great resource for me to help me figure out how to quit, but I've tried things that work for her, and they have not worked for me.

She decided one day to just up and quit and she has not had a drink since. It was after she claimed to have hit "rock bottom"; the day before, she got into a big argument, while stupid drunk, with my eldest daughter, and the following day felt absolutely horrible about it.

I keep trying to say that something is my "rock bottom" and that's what's going to motivate me to quit. It hasn't worked so far and I don't want to wait any more for something to happen that could actually be really bad.

I want to thank everyone who has responded so far.

I've found myself in this place (trying to quit drinking) at least a dozen times before, and every time before this has failed sometime between Day 2 and Day 30.

Why I'd fall off the wagon on Day 2: feel so great after having a good night's sleep, waking up without even a trace of a hangover. I immediately want to start drinking again because I feel invincible.

Why I'd fall off the wagon on Days 3-14: fucking depressed as shit as I'm really going to try to give up this time. Lost a best friend. Have a headache because I'm *not* drinking, might as well get rid of it with a drink.

Why I'd fall off the wagon on Days 15-30: wow, I made it this far. Maybe I could just get by with having a drink every now and then?

I hit 5 years dry a couple weeks ago. My advice is have a friend that knows what it feels like and lean on them. Even just sending each other stupid shit, that daily contact was crucial. You know who you are.

Beyond that, and this worked for me but doesn't make me sound as compassionate with myself as I am with others - I was fuckin hard on myself. A complete emotional wreck for like 4 months. Set hard lines, boundaries. Endured a lotta criticism from people for not crossing those lines. Withdrew from a lot of social activities and worked on what was important.

It sucks because it comes off as bootstrap mentality, which I hate. I cannot overemphasize the support I got from other people and the times they let me cry or wallow around on the floor after I almost but didn't relapse.

5 years ago today I was detoxing in a Chicago hospital. Haven't had a drop of booze since the night before. What a life

jfv wrote: Mon Oct 23, 2023 1:32 pm I want to thank everyone who has responded so far.

I've found myself in this place (trying to quit drinking) at least a dozen times before, and every time before this has failed sometime between Day 2 and Day 30.

Why I'd fall off the wagon on Day 2: feel so great after having a good night's sleep, waking up without even a trace of a hangover. I immediately want to start drinking again because I feel invincible.

Why I'd fall off the wagon on Days 3-14: fucking depressed as shit as I'm really going to try to give up this time. Lost a best friend. Have a headache because I'm *not* drinking, might as well get rid of it with a drink.

Why I'd fall off the wagon on Days 15-30: wow, I made it this far. Maybe I could just get by with having a drink every now and then?

This kind of analysis won't help you that much. It's OK to have done it, human nature, but focusing on why you fail isn't going to help you be sober.

People hate on AA because it's so basic (only 12 steps!) and it requires you to admit you have no power over your addiction. No one want to admit they are powerless.

But you really don't have any power over an addiction, while you're using. It's not even fundamentally your fault! But only you can fix it.

You do that by taking a series of steps--simply not drinking is woefully inadequate for almost everyone, especially if you've already tried doing it and it hasn't worked.

Your recourse is to stop drinking to starve off the addiction while reorienting your thinking about yourself and what you are doing. Then you never give the addiction anything to chew on ever again. You don't use and you continually self-correct mentally to keep it from creeping back into your life.

The only way for most people to do that is to go to some kind of group therapy and get a fuckload of backup from people who have been around the block, so the mind games you're talking about above don't knock them off course.

Those mind games are not you. They are hatched in your mind, but they are not fundamentally part of you as a human being. They are manifestations of addiction, a byproduct of an addiction trying to perpetuate itself. It's like having a virus--it doesn't give a fuck about you either way...it just wants to stay alive.

You have to want to quit, really want it, first of all.

You may not want to stop yet. A lot of people know they should stop and just don't wanna do it. My sister is in this position, and it's very possible her body will give out before she gets there. There's absolutely nothing anyone else can do to help her that they're not already doing. It's on her.

A lot more bad shit might have to happen before you want to quit, and it's going to get a lot harder if you wait until worse shit happens. Harder physically and mentally, with more wreckage to sort through. People will give up on you. You'll lose things--your jobs, your friends, your health. That's not a scare tactic--it's just what happens.

Alcohol seems like your friend now, on a very primal level. I know what it feels like to fall in love with it. But it's really just using you. It's going to fuck you one way or another every single day until you can't manage it anymore, at which point you either quit or you die.

If you're lucky, you won't fuck up your life too bad before you really want to quit.

Once you get to that point, you will need to go to rehab or at least AA/similar.

Even if you go to rehab, afterwards you still need to go to AA or one of those other programs that are basically 12-step with little tweaks to make people feel like they're not going to AA--I'm sure they're fine.

Everyone says they don't wanna do that, it's creepy or a cult or quasi-relig or whatever. Almost...everyone...who...stays...sober...ends...up...at...meetings.

If you don't go to meetings and try to lone-wolf it, you very likely won't make it and will have to start again at some point.

If that's what happens and you still want to stop, you just lather, rinse, repeat until it takes. It will eventually if you want it bad enough.

If you don't want to stop, though, it'll never work. Doing it for other people never works.

Lastly, I believe that basically all alcoholics are genetically predisposed to alcoholism. Certainly a lot of them are.

Two traits are common to people who seem to have genetic predispositions:

1. Lower resting level of dopamine in the brain...you get a dopamine hit from booze, and if you have less dopamine to begin with, it has a bigger impact than it would for most people.

2. Livers that produce more of the enzymes and shit that metabolize alcohol. What does that mean? Built-in tolerance.

So it makes you feel better than it does most people and you can do more of it. Nice.

"Building up" a physical tolerance to alcohol takes a long time--I never drank enough to get there, but I could still drink upwards of three dozen drinks over the course of a night without getting sick or losing motor control or even slurring. This is fucked up, but I never questioned why I could drink up to the point of a fatal dose of alcohol without getting sick. When I read about this trait in connection to being predisposed...a little bell went off.

I only mention that because there's nothing you can do about your genes. You can't think in terms of moderation or anything like that if you have the bug. You can either keep drinking and fuck up your life until it's over or you can do what you gotta do to stop. There's no middle ground for people like me and sounds like maybe you as well.

^ I really appreciate your reply. Thank you.

It's embarrassing reading my old posts back, knowing that I've been all over the place with alcohol since then. For the moment, I've given up on giving it up and am just focused on being less stupid and less unsafe about it.

Kudos to anyone who's managed to give it up and stay sober, no matter the circumstance. FM PASTA, that's a hell of an accomplishment.

PASTA wrote: Wed Feb 21, 2024 4:33 pm 5 years ago today I was detoxing in a Chicago hospital. Haven't had a drop of booze since the night before. What a life

That's the stuff.

This past Feb. 19 was my second month being alcohol free, and I'm soon to be coming up on my second month of no smoke, tobacco or otherwise. I've also been going hardcore on intermittent dieting since I gave up the giggle juice last December. Not to make light of how difficult quitting can be, but so far it's a lot easier than expected. I've also publicly went through this before while shaking Tina, so quitting isn't much of a new experience. Committing to completely stop the most harmful thing while still engaging in relatively innocuous behaviors was my tailor made form of harm reduction. And if I wasn't so shallow or overly concerned with finances I could very well still be tippling, but for now I just don't feel the desire to engage in activities that have absolutely no benefit. Zero. As of today I'm also down to 191lbs so having a goal in mind no matter how shallow that goal helps.

I also realize how carelessly lazy my approach might seem. I went through meetings (definitely not for me), started therapy (have yet to met thee one), and am just powering through, which, as I've already mentioned doesn't feel that challenging. Going to the gym helps, as well as feeding my creativity, writing songs, jamming, etc.

Reading more and more about the effects of alcohol made me quit for about the last year (made a few exceptions here and there, and regretted them all). I think we're taught that a moderate amount of drinking (which, let's be honest, most of us exceed) is not only probably fine but can be beneficial: stress management, sleep aid, digestive, teeny amounts of resveratrol or B vitamins in certain things, what people do in so called Blue Zones, etc. And all of it is bullshit. It disrupts your sleep rhythms, your seratonin and baseline dopamine, fucks up your gut microbiome, whatever antioxidants may be present are too low to be beneficial, and so on. My partner who has also mostly quit (more social pressures in her life) does a lot of heart rate/fitness/sleep tracking stuff and a night of "moderate" drinking has devastating effects, more than a fucking flu. There is no good amount of drinking, but there are ways to do it to minimize the damage. But even that is too much work and sacrifice for the minimal payoff to me, and I think I'm done for good.