This is a thread for ILXors ON THE WAGON (and for the Wagon Curious)

We do have the "I'm an alcoholic" thread, but the word "alcoholic" can be off-putting and not sufficiently inclusive of all the various reasons for and approaches to Going On the Wagon.

So this is a thread about Not Drinking Alcohol: thinking about it or already there, long-term or short-term, drinking problem or no drinking problem, all welcome, don't be a jerk.

I personally find it meaningful to hear from other people who are Not Drinking for whatever reason. My own reason can be summed up as high-functioning-problem-drinker and I availed myself of plenty of help to quit.

What's your relationship with The Wagon?

oh hi, thanks! yeah I'm not drinking for the foreseeable future while I get my shit together, but it's not the primary driver of the problems - it just greases the rails and numbs the pain. So this thread feels appropriate.

2 weeks today, gonna go for at least 3 months and then see what's up with the other issues.

I found things got significantly easier after 3 weeks.

Not drinking has been tremendously helpful to me for dealing with the issues driving the drinking. I really couldn't have worked on them with any success while still drinking, though I god knows I tried!

thank you, that is encouraging

this Naked Mind book recommended in the other thread seems kind of new agey in a creepy Marianne Williamson way, but I will give it a fair shake even though the author talks about her mysterious back pain that no doctor could fix that she cured with her mind, rmde

That book can be irritating, yes, but it does make some good points despite the weird tone.

The Recovering by Leslie Jamison is better written by miles, but is a totally different ball of wax.

I have tried alcohol on a dozen or so occasions, never much cared for it, at most I got annoyed at how loud and incoherent I felt like I was getting (on 1/3 or so of a beer). So practically speaking I don’t drink, don’t have an interest in it, and never hear anyone talk about drinking in a way that makes me feel like I’m missing out.

This is not the thread for you then

See I read quincie’s op and it seemed like it was, is this a recovery thread or about not drinking alcohol

cmon dude, “on the wagon” is unambiguous

hi, i am a not particularly functional serial binge drinker of 30+ years standing and no amount of attempted moderation or self-control doesn't lead me swiftly back to wildly self-destructive binging, and i know really i must accept i have to stop, proper stop, forever and that is terrifying because the pub goer is about all i feel like i have left of who i am

Noodle Vague's predicament is kind of mine, too. I had a really quite destructive period in my mid-late 30s (mid-40s now) which was part of a larger crisis of purpose. I've since changed career - a move that meant I essentially couldn't drink as much and function at the level at which I need to be - and my relationship to booze has been much healthier. I'm getting to grips with the job now though and, well, I can see old habits creeping back in. And I get long(er) holidays, where I tend to make up for things and this summer in particular, was fairly boozy. Short version: my mental health and relationships suffered.

All of which has meant me taking the last 10 days off and I feel immeasurably better.

I have cut back significantly after fairly heavy drinking for the best part of two decades. It took nearly getting sacked from two consecutive jobs and real and active concern from my partner before I got help. Unfortunately I've kind of replaced that urge with a fondness for prescription painkillers that I need to shake. There's always something but I'm marginally more in control now and optimistic, sometimes

I'll be a boringly functional but killing myself slowly alcoholic till the death I think. My addiction doesn't cause any crisis's so I can happily plod on with it till the death. Or least until my ailing health becomes a crisis, but that is what it take to persuade me to even consider stopping.

This is totally a thread for silby per the original thread intent; people abstain from alcohol for numerous reasons.

I use the term "on the wagon" frequently and casually to mean I am currently not drinking. More because it's a signal to friends that I don't want them cajoling me to go to a bar or to offer me drinks when we hang out. I often have long periods of not drinking (I likely won't be drinking for the rest of the year) because I find it difficult to eat and exercise to the standards I want to be at while drinking even a little.

Booze does have a significant knock-on effect on a whole bunch of things - diet, exercise, sleep, wallet, mental health (to varying, difficult-to-gauge levels). I did 100 days at the start of last year and initially felt great for it - I read more, was generally more 'level', exercised more etc - but I missed the culture around drinking (seeking out new beers) and the way it gave shape to my weeks. I also missed something more nebulous along the lines of the camaraderie of drinking together with people.

I stopped drinking entirely between December 2018 and June 2019 aside from maybe 3 beers over the course of those 7 months, mostly because my drinking habits were manageable but constant; my kids were constantly asking me if every drink I had was a beer and it concerned me that that had become their default impression of me. As a side effect, I lost 15 lbs of weight I'd been whining about but never motivated myself to get rid of.

I'm back to drinking much more moderately now and am very conscious of what I'm doing when watching tv or playing videogames.

Good point about kids. Mine are of an age where they need to see me being responsible not acting like a dick.

I also want to acknowledge calzino's post, but I don't know what to say. Will a nod across the bar suffice in any way at all?

for several years now i've hardly drunk at all, it seems i went from being a social drinker during grad school - occasionally to excess - to having the rare drink with friends. for part of that time i have been a lot more skint, but also once i was drinking alone - which i always rather liked - and the next morning i looked like shit, and figured i was getting too old to be drinking much. i think i probably last imbibed a year or so ago? and similarly in the year before that, etc. this is surely a byproduct of my dead social life. recently i thought i might pick up a little wine or something to have with dinner (was never much for wine), inject a new variable into my routine.

this is the same thing i posted in the other thread

I don’t have a reading rec but this summer I didn’t drink for 2 weeks bc of a health issue, which I realized was the first time I ever attempted complete teetotaling for that long. During that time, I played 2 shows, my dog died suddenly, and I had to go on an overnight retreat w my coworkers — all situations in which I’d have gladly been drinking — and it was definitely hard! I drank inconceivable amounts of flavored seltzer and noticed that I did indeed feel different after about 10 days. Much less depressed, for starters, in spite of the dire circumstances.

Since those two weeks, I’ve been thinking that maybe alcohol just isn’t very good for me. Not terrible, but def not good. Not-drinking is way more appealing than it used to be.

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Monday, August 26, 2019 6:50 PM (two weeks ago)

I think that generally, if you are feeling bad AND drinking, stopping drinking is a very good start to feeling better (mentally, physically, etc) If it's difficult, that teaches you something too.

I concur. I didn’t even realize I met DSM criteria for generalized anxiety disorder (despite being in a profession in which I routinely screened others for such) until I went into treatment for SUD. 4+ months later and I no longer meet criteria nor feel anxious much at all! It’s been like a silver fucking bullet. Of course it has been a giant pain in the brain to get to this point, but dear god so worth it.

I find it near impossible to go completely sober so my version of On The Wagon means no drinking at home unless friends are over. This usually results in me going out to bars more regularly but honestly that's a net plus because I'm otherwise too much of a shut-in. I wish I could adhere to this policy year-round but usually can only do a few weeks at a time, 2 or 3 times a year. I definitely notice and enjoy the mental and physical health improvements when I'm not going through a 6-pack plus a few whiskeys every night.

four weeks

Nice! Is it easier now than at week 2?

not really, maybe? no physical craving, just "fuck I really wish I could have a beer right now" about 2-3x a day

well done!

drinking a lot of Topo Chico (thanks brimstead) and Cock N Bull ginger ale

and the new black currant shrub I made which is extremely delicious

it's only five weeks since my ablation -- which has a 12-week recovery period, except i just spent one of them back in hospital with heightened heart rate and atrial flutter :|

i've already given up coffee, and i think i'm going to give up alcohol also, at least till the end of the 12: the hospital stint wasn't alcohol-related but why not give everything a bit of a rest from that kind of extra beating?

and yet you tweet

i will never log off

3 weeks and no real cravings as such (I'm not a big drinker, really, but can be destructive when I do). Usual things are apparent for me: generally steadier mood, reading lots more, sleeping better, more continuity of thought.

I liked to get drunk when I was 19 or 20, particularly if I was at a show. Always beer — hard liquor never held much interest. But I got bored with that after a while, because I got more and more serious about writing and I absolutely could not write drunk. So by my mid-20s I was basically down to a beer or two here and there, usually with a meal. Then, in my early 30s, I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and my doctor told me that if I drank alcohol, I should stop, because it would interfere with the oral medications I was taking (and still take). So I stopped. I've been "on the wagon" for about 15 years now, and while I'm sure I could go back to drinking if I wanted to — I'd be able to calculate the effect on my blood sugar and regulate accordingly — I don't actually miss it at all.

Ask me to give up caffeinated beverages (I chug unsweetened iced tea and Coke Zero by the gallon) and I'd have a much bigger problem.

Ive gone from heavy drinking 5+ days a week (I'm sure Ive talked about it before on ILX) to now doing light drinking 1 day a week, maybe 2 if I'm extra-good. I've still indulged a day here and there, and I'll continue to keep trying to reduce the amount and regularity.

What finally kicked me into gear was a sudden rapid increase in real bad LFTs. And in only 3 months, I've got them way down and closer to normal, so its working!

Xmas/summer hols is gonna be hard :/

NO one told me about the fecking sugar cravings though. I never had a sweet tooth. What is this fresh hell.

Go for it Trayce, taking care of yourself is a powerful thing to do

2 wks.

The sugar craving is real! I went from not having of a sweet tooth to requiring daily dessert, sometimes more than one!

I don't have a sweet tooth either but I remember when I didn't drink for several years and was focused on working out and eating well, I was obsessed with ice cream for the only time in my life.

from the old to what extent does your life revolve around alcohol? thread

used to be a daily drinker to a greater or lesser degree but i barely drink at all now

the anti-depressants i'm taking at the moment make drinking a lot less fun - if regular drinking feels like putting the output of your senses through a fuzz pedal and playing a glorious windmilling pete townshend power-chord, then drinking on anti-depressants feels like fumbling a jazz chord and getting drenched in pints of piss hurled by an angry audience

― for sale: clown shoes, never worn (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 10 August 2017 13:27 (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

two years on from that post and i'm now off the antidepressants but i barely drink at all - i guess i just fell out of the habit and, since my wife barely drinks and i have a 15-month-old daughter whose sleeping schedule doesn't lend itself well to managing hangovers, i've never picked it back up again and i'm on the wagon by default ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Habit is a powerful force huh. Well, I’m on the wagon tonight in solidarity with y’all.

Sounds like a better place than 2 years ago, BG

4 weeks in, Friday night booze introspection: when I'm drinking, Fridays are when I have a few beers and sit about eating and listening to music. Without the booze, I'm more inclined to let the evening drift and don't have the same urge to get myself 'up' for it and am way less sociable (just ask my wife) - to the point where I can't really separate the sociability and the booze and I wonder if that part of my personality is really just the booze. Like, I can't face social occasions without the thought of drinking.

Short version: I worry about becoming a dullard.

i quit about a decade ago and have brief dalliances every now and again but have mostly sworn off alcohol as the least interesting of drugs.

was working in clubs and bars and restaurants and got into the habit of loading up at the end of the night as it was generally free or cheap but had one-too-many nights of throwing up on the subway or ending up at the wrong house trying to get in or just generally being an asshole. grandfather died of drink and i have definite obsessive personality issues so it seemed better to err on the side of caution. I will have a beer if that's all there is to drink but I find everytime i have one drink, I have six. it's just not a good idea for me.

and don't worry about being a dullard; i find most people who think drink makes them interesting are ignoring that it's more of a depressant and that it is, in fact, suppressing your real personality which is undoubtedly more interesting than you on booze.

3wks in and found the post work conference drink hard to navigate. Prevalent "it would just be the one" thoughts as I stood at the bar. Managed to get a tonic water without anything harder but didn't stay long with everyone who was throwing stuff down and have had similar introspective time since then thinking about sociability. Hard to come to terms with realising that there's been two of me for so long one of which is an obnoxious boor. Thanks for the useful perspective ulysses.

5 weeks today, gonna go sell records in a bar all day long

ymmv with this tactic, but something i did early on while quitting, as i had to spend a lot of time at or near bars: I would start by approaching the bartender at a quiet moment with a fiver on the bar and saying "Hey, I'm really trying to quit drinking, can you make sure I only have a cranberry and soda in my hand all night?" Bartenders are people too, they tend to respect if you tell them up front what the deal is and tip them immediately.
Also: candy helps to deal with the oral fixation elements. I would go through a packet of tic-tacs a night for awhile.

yeah I am all about bitters and soda. I spend a fair amount of time in bars anyway and I went into this knowing that. My wife's still drinking as well, none of that seems to matter - proximity doesn't seem to be an issue thankfully.

I haven't had a drink since March. It's amazing how the cravings died down. I never considered myself an alcoholic, but looking back I would always look forward to the "relief" of a drink, like its absence was felt internally as tension and deprivation. Now that feeling is gone. So weird.

Since March for me too. I have fond memories of drinks and drinking, but it's just not something I can ever do again, healthwise. I'm really into the whole "not dying" thing rn.

Have to remind myself that it gets easier after 3 weeks and by month 3 the wagon is on autodrive.

Thanks to some difficult family stuff and some associated, very heavy, resentment that I’ve accumulated over the years, I’ve recently leaned into AA. Have been a casual attendee on and off for ~ 10 years and had a slip-up almost exactly a year ago. I know the program is not for everyone but if you find a good group, it can be a great support network. I have a sponsor for the first time and he seems pretty cool and hands-off so far. No nonsense, just do what he recommends and see what happens. That’s his plan and he seems happy to have a sponsee who’s a little older and been sober a while but is new to the program. Maybe that’s rare.

I was ill over Christmas so didn't drink much, but had a couple of sessions between Christmas and New Year where I felt so awful the next day I thought, you know what? it's time for a break.

34 days today and I feel so much better. My diet is better, (broadly) I'm sleeping better, I'm meditating daily, my mood is stable (ish) and I'm reading lots. The biggest thing for me is the continuity: booze - hangovers in particular - causes lacunae, almost like reified breaks in my neural networks. Admittedly, I was at the end of the longest term of my life in a new job, but I read stuff I'd written in the middle of December and couldn't remember writing it, or what I was writing about. Everything is currently much clearer and sensible and am enjoying it very much.

Boredom always gets me. Always. Fingers (and neuronal pathways) crossed I can stick with it.

good luck, hope it keeps opening up for you!

Great job chinaski!!

Thanks map and tobo!

How are my fellow wagon riders (and wagon-curious folks) doing?

Because clearly there was never a better time, or a worse time, to be AF AF.

One year on Wednesday.

(If you're into that sort of thing, it is Ash Wednesday. The anniversary of my liver transplant is Good Friday, and Easter the anniversary of my being able to speak and breathe on my own. Coincidences, but fitting enough to be mildly amused by.)

While it has worked out pretty well for me, I can't say that I recommend the "almost dying" method.

Bitters and tonic … a friend of mine who is older and wiser said that’s his go-to, and I have been going to it recently.

Things are good here. 3.5 years since I've had a drink and no real temptation to go back to it. Quitting booze coincided with moving to a new town so the social aspect of it is the hardest. Making friends in a new place as a 48 year old parent is hard enough without social lubrication.
In the past I would be a little nervous before a gathering but as I drank I would relax and get into it. Now I'm ready to leave after 15 minutes and being around people who are tipsy for the most part is a total bore.

Soda water and lime, constantly.

I've bored on elsewhere about my battles with what you describe Cow_Art.

I have various periods of abstinence and am currently on day 63 of my latest (not that I'm counting). As you say, social situations are the hardest. I didn't realise for SO long how much booze enabled me to get through. There's another element to that, of course: enjoying the drug aspect of booze - what it enables me to be. I crave *that*. Part of dreading social situations now is knowing I'm not that version of myself, the version everyone knows and responds to. Standing around feeling bored of myself (and others). Working on finding a social self separate from booze feels precisely that: work. I don't have the werewithal to find it, mould it, whatever the verb is. Easier to go the tried and tested route of dear sweet booze.

So anyway, there's my current dance. Good luck to everyone!

hello there wagon! *steps on*

i have a lot going on right now, to the point where stopping drinking is actually like item #4 or #5 down the list of crises, big changes, things i'm working, fears, etc.

i don't mean to minimize it. i have problems with drinking, and some of you on ilx have made that clear, too over the years. but also, i have already made big changes in my drinking over the past 2 years - cutting down to about 2-3 times a week, eliminating the "just a couple beers before bed" daily routine. in two different months, i stopped drinking entirely, and it wasn't that difficult for me (weed helped/helps me).

but also, each time i've stopped drinking, i've known and even told other people that it was a pause, and that really where i want to get to is a state where i can have a healthy relationship with alcohol, where i can enjoy a glass of wine when i'm out with friends, or a couple beers at a gig when i'm nervous and socially anxious. i think that's just fine, and i see how other people in my life can engage with alcohol in that way. but what i know from experience is that, even when i settle into that kind of pattern, when i get a weekend by myself, a couple days off with few responsibilities, i still find myself headed to the gas station to get that 6-pack, or compromising on a couple tall boys, and just downing them like the old days.

the most impetus for getting on the wagon is that, during a very difficult time (that is ongoing) in which people around me have been getting personally involved in the most important relationship of my life, something that was mentioned was that sometimes in public with my partner i interrupt them and i'm too loud, "especially when you're drinking". i try so hard - i really do - to not talk loudly and interrupt people, and i've been working on getting better at that for so long. it's so frustrating for it to still be a noticeable problem to others even when i really am thinking about it so often. but i believe it, and i esp believe that drinking makes it worse. out of the long neverending list of things i'm working on, cutting out alcohol is an "easy" one for me right now, a straightforward action that is more than just words or a promise to myself or others.

there's mucn more to say about me and alcohol. but when i made the decision to stop drinking i had already been dry for 5 days, and now it's been a couple weeks. my journey on this has been different than many others, we're all different, but i expect that it will be less like a straight line and much more like an undulating struggle, like most things.

sorry to hop in and tell my life story but i'm sure context is important for this thread! will be rereading, and if anyone has a "highlight" they'd like to...er highlight, out of all these posts, i'd love to read some of the more powerful insights that i'm sure this thread has provided so far. thanks quincie for inviting me too <3

*pours you all a seltzer*

As a loud interrupter myself, I think some of that is cultural and/or psychological and it isn’t an inherent problem. Most of my close friends are also loud interrupters as are several members of my family. But, if people you care about don’t appreciate this, and you don’t want to be like that … then do what you feel will get you there.

As in, we are like this sober…

Great job z_tbd. Long-winded sharing can be extremely therapeutic and can lead to all sorts of unexpected benefits.

This morning was sunny and warmer and more spring-like than I anticipated. Biked to a favorite AA meeting and was reminded for not the first time how nice it is not to be hungover.

Good stuff z_tbd. I think 'gentle feedback' about things like being a 'loud interrupter' is generally pretty good for us as humans. Being aware of that stuff is great for social situations. I say this as someone who 100% takes things too deeply but... the key is not to take it too deeply, not to see it as some marker stamped indelibly on one's soul. It is simply that: an observation from people who care about you and like being with you. If you can acknowledge it and maybe make it part of your discourse then that's good, right?

And amen to not being hungover. Every weekend morning is still quietly astounding in that regard.

i think it's been like 6 years now. it's funny to me that i never kept track of my sober anniversary.

i am "california sober" tbf. i might be a tad dependent on weed but no real problems so far so.

the biggest step for me in feeling more whole lately is a meditation practice. i'm pretty devoted to it. it's wonderful.

i'm an interruptor. i've always had difficulty locating switch points in conversations and, like, smoothly entering. burning thoughts jump into my mind right after someone shares something and i have to relate it sometimes. but being sober, i'm more judicious about when i allow that to happen. i feel like part of the deeper reason why people don't like an interruptor is that it communicates that the person isn't really present to the reality of everyone else in the conversation. i feel like sometimes what factors in to being an interruptor is a kind of social anxiety, which i definitely have. the practice of being present along with the more spiritual aspects of that are starting to make it a little easier for me to relax in social situations. i still get anxious and my old self-isolating coping mechanisms are still mostly in place. but loosening. who out there doesn't need to be a little looser?

i wouldn't have mentioned the talking over/interrupting thing, except that it happened to be the straw that finally broke the camel's back. i do think drinking makes it worse and more prominent, and it is something i'm working on and always will, but it's way down the list of my problems to address. sarahell otm about cultural/family/regional influences. certain parts of my family, deep longtime friends of mine, it's just in their fabric of being. and of course, elsewhere - i was watching “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl", set in Zambia, and an essential part of that movie is just all the voices, the talking, the talking over, the interruptions. it's a large family and they all have a lot to say!

however, i do think that side effect of drinking - taking my tendency to talk too much and too loudly, and making it more pronounced, in a way that effects others negatively - is similar to another more important thing i'm working on, which is being aware that when i'm going through intense emotional conflict, constant negative self-talk, worrying about what others think so much, etc etc - it's spilling out onto other people and hurting them, without me even realizing it. drinking is not the root cause of that but it makes it worse, it prolongs it, it leads to me not being able to exactly recall the ways that i hurt people (but still believing that i did, leading back to more negative self-talk, cycle continues)

negative self-talk and the kind of hole in the soul underneath it is something i've always struggled with too. and yeah, when it's going on, there's nothing i can really do to hide it and it spills over onto other people. therapy has helped somewhat in the past. but really the only thing i've found that has actually made it better for real is meditation. i feel like with all these kinds of things--negative self-talk, existential dread, self-involved ego trips, drinking to ease the pain, etc.--there is a wound that underlies it all. and meditation is the only thing i've found that takes care of the actual wound. i mean it's great to stop drinking. there's the old canard that drinking is a symptom and not the disease. aa is probably a path to a similar kind of "thing to fill the hole" in the same way meditation is.

heard that map, and i do think meditation can be excellent and so helpful for certain people.

right now i'm kind of grappling with being told by a few people that they think i might benefit from looking at ocd treatments. i've learned a lot about ocd in the past week, i haven't seen a professional yet, and tbh i don't exactly see myself as an ocd person, at least not yet. but also, i've learned that there is no typical ocd behavior, and that people with ocd have symptoms - fearful obsessions, compulsive reactions - that change throughout life. i haven't been thinking about my fears of finding out that people dislike me and are making fun of me behind my back (something that is almost always false but which unfortunately is sometimes true, both on slack a few years ago (part of what set me off, along with drinking) and in my personal life the past few weeks) as ocd obsessions, but i think it is true that these fears are unwanted and consistent and they just come up again and again (but not as frequently and life-disruptingly as in clinical ocd, i don't think), and i do have compulsive behaviors, thoughts that i end up relying on distract me from that.

after reading a bit about ocd and thinking about how it might apply to me, pretty much immediately i saw it. i was in a really emotional discussion with my partner and finally, for once, i could almost get some distance and see how i was acting - my language sped up, i started talking about 5 different things at once in the hopes of bringing them together into some sort of full circle point which was never made, i talked to loud, i made myself anxious just by speaking, etc. a typical z_tbd post, in other words, but for some reason this time i could really see it from above, like a near-death experience, and it just made me curl up and completely break down.

...and now that i'm doing it again, a bit, just the first parts of it, and i'm seeing how it looks, again, i'll stop there and do the ocd stuff somewhere else (seeing my psychiatrist later this month and will probably be upping my lexapro, along with more therapy)! but yes, drinking does not help anything like this

and map, sorry to completely forget my point there, but i think i wanted to say that meditation is awesome, but right now i feel like a lot of my troubles are completely in my head, both on unwanted thoughts and also the mental things i do to try to escape (often playing out as discussions in my head; talking to myself). so right now meditation seems very hard haha

Hey I'm doing a lot better with enjoying my days (and nights) of sobriety! I have more of them and my ability to sleep has definitely improved. I start yawning around 10pm now! Amazing. I still drink (and smoke) some days, but this past week I got it down to about every-other day only.

Sometimes I gently push myself by just not making that trip to the wine store. Bad weather helps, when I don't want to go out.

Emotionally I recognize that somewhere in the middle of the day/early evening I feel pressure to have wine on hand in order to relax and to have something to "look forward to" at the end of my day. But if I can get through that, I find myself in a cozy evening situation where there's tea and maybe I cook an actual dinner and eat it while watching tv (rare for me), and then I go to bed early and do breathing exercises and enjoy being relaxed. Feels a bit better in the morning, maybe not that much (I got scarily good at processing about a bottle of wine a day and not feeling "hungover") but I might try for more than 3 days in a row and see if brings cumulative benefits.

xp my partner has adhd and meditation isn't really something he can do either. no point in doing something that just feels hard to the point of hostile. meditation as a 'thing to do' can be daunting because if you look it up there are like these things you have to do to "do it right". i feel like anything you can do where you are not super distracted or doing other shit and just being with your mind for a few minutes, observing it, breathing, can be really helpful and you don't have to call it 'meditation'. my partner likes to walk around the park and listen to buddhist stuff on youtube.

xp One thing I notice is that if my evenings are disrupted by unexpected happenings or unrestful people, it's difficult to be quiet and calm down the way I need to, in order to be tired and relaxed by bedtime. That invites reflection on how drinking has helped me self-soothe and find rest when my life was more chaotic or I had problematic people or situations adding anxiety that I couldn't otherwise disperse.

I also read or heard something recently that reminded me that drinking increases dopamine production, which offers some insight into the behaviors of my ex who would drink compulsively if his ADHD was cut off from other strategies. It was a huge problem whenever he had "down" time with lower stimulation levels (like while visiting my family who are very quiet and good at parallel play like reading or playing music or doing hobbies at home). He was incapable of restfulness and incapable of being quiet.

I've been resting a lot in the past year, more than normal in my life. It's nice.

Z, I mentioned this somewhere upthread but I'll say it again because it was a big turning point in realizing that I was better off without alcohol. If I had a stressful day, I felt like I needed a drink to chill out. And that felt good. Over the years, especially after having kids, I noticed that it took less and less for me to feel like it was a stressful day. At some point it clicked that I was training myself to have bad days because I was rewarding myself for it.

I spent a few years trying to mitigate my drinking or only drink this much or at certain times, but the rules would alway erode and I would go back to drinking whenever I felt I needed it which was most nights. One of the best things about not drinking was ending the internal conversation about my drinking habits. "Have I had too much? Is it okay to have another? I won't drink tomorrow. Well, maybe one." The constant second guessing of myself was exhausting and I didn't realize it until I was done with it.

Yeah the intrusive thoughts/ocd-adjacent stuff is what makes meditation not a thing for me. I have had to do deep listening exercises in the past, and at best, I end up with cool creative ideas that I want to explore asap … even though we are supposed to keep listening/meditating for longer … and I end up feeling resentful unless I do a strategic polite exit.

In terms of the reward/relaxation thing … I take baths now. It’s really great in summer.

just dropping in to say I love my neurofeedback sessions, which also help with addictions. the book "The Body Keeps The Score" describes neurofeedback as "meditation on steroids" which is apparently what I need rn

At some point it clicked that I was training myself to have bad days because I was rewarding myself for it.

yes I appreciated that insight as well!

i haven't opened the us politics thread since november, does that count for anything?

solidarity to everybody here. i am 4 years completely sober, occasioned by a bad liver staging that scares the bejeezus out of me. i should be eating better too, but y'know. every morning i wake up and look in the mirror for signs of jaundice.

in the decade preceding the diagnosis, i don't think i ever drank more than a couple of (single) drinks per week. so, it was easy to move from that low frequency to zero. only regret is that i had is that i started getting into single malts just a bit before i quit, and i had to give away a cool library of scotches.

i guess this means i've been mostly-sober for 15+ years.

in my 20s, though, i had weird bouts with alcohol abuse and random-ass pills. nothing consistent, no pattern to speak of. big gaps between, and short in duration. usually started with whatever meds or booze were around, no preference. it was lazy and accretive; i'd have a little of this, which would lead me to a little more of this, and then some of that, and quite a bit of a third thing and all of a sudden i'd realize i was in a bad way and hadn't been straight for a couple of days, and i'd and stop for months in horror. this is when i posted on the board a lot, ca. 2000-2010. it's probably easy to tell. and it's easy to look back from middle age and say 'yeah, there was something self-destructive about my youth' in kind of a detached way. but actually it wasn't destructive per se, or explicitly suicidal/depressive. i think it was more like self-reduction. binging/purging of the mind.

as a young guy, i had too much noise in my head. somebody else might call it manic, anxious, neurotic... just a whole cluster of stuff that could be pathologized, if i didn't find that reductive and paternal. in retrospect, i'd call it 'electricity' or 'static' ... just an untamed brain that was always lurching from thing to thing. and i felt i could reduce it - and the exhaustion that came with recursive thought-patterns - with booze. this is what i was chasing when i was using: a cessation of internal distraction. it's why i used to like slow day-drinking with friends: i'd idle down to a pace that was closer to 'mindful' than during the rest of my life.

age and maturity (i hope) have brought, somewhat naturally, the same effect. the benefit is that age doesn't come with the same self-loathing.

when i was at my worst, having binge-y episodes that lasted a few days, with sober intervals of a few weeks, i thought of my life like an ekg pattern. sober sober sober sober, get high, feel low and repent, sober sober sober sober, repeat. i think my attitude at the time was that i should seek to extend the sober intervals. sometimes i felt that a big-enough drink would 'cure' me for a bit. but what i didn't consider, for a very long time, was that i had still committed to the rhythm. for every interval had some kind of end, n days in the future.

sometimes i felt that a big-enough drink would 'cure' me for a bit. but what i didn't consider, for a very long time, was that i had still committed to the rhythm. for every interval had some kind of end, n days in the future.

Other than two halves of (very nice) beer at the start of April, I'm still sober. I'm sort of letting myself off because it was a highly pressurised social situation and I eventually capitulated, five hours into the night, and didn't really drink the second half anyway. I know it's cheating, but I'm counting 114 days because, if anything, it affirmed my current course. How is everyone else doing?

If it's of any use, I listened to this yesterday and found it useful: https://maudsleylearningpodcast.buzzsprout.com/277019/episodes/16981498-e120-how-why-i-stopped-drinking

Friday was the anniversary of my liver transplant; at this point even if I wanted to drink I still wouldn't. It's become like a squared circle, like sprouting wings and flying. Just laughably logically impossible.

I had to have a very very difficult and potentially explosive conversation with a family member yesterday. She is also in the process of getting truly sober (I’ve got about 10 years but am just now ‘working a program’). We almost fell off the rails a couple of times but damn I am very glad that we both had the tools of sobriety. We kinda nailed it. It would have been a very different outcome if this were a couple of years ago.

I’ve had some slips, but they were useful and hell no I do not reset to Day 1. It’s MY wagon and I’ll drive it my way.

100% \m/

I dig that quincie and will be stealing it to pass off as my own. And good work, tobo. Stay strong.

Hit 7 months today. Being sober isn't getting old, so I'm going to stick with it. How are folks getting on?

starting a break as of yesterday, for multiple reasons (one is financial, NGL)

I thought sobriety would be dreary; it isn't.

Weedibles remain helpful because I still crave having a vice in my life. Need the option of SOME form of vacation from being me. I'm pretty exhausting (even from the outside - just ask my wife) and I just can't do it 24/7/365.

This September will be three years, still happy to be done with it.

nice! yeah ymp i feel the same about my edibles, also caffeine. i rarely even think about how i don't drink anymore.

Same here. I went stone cold sober for almost a year and I could feel myself calcifying into my father. My wife and therapist were both fine with me being CA sober. Everyone is happier that way.