This too shall pass

LegacyUser

I've been searching online for days now looking for support/new thinking and I came across this hopeful Persian proverb: 'This too will pass'. I surprise myself how many times I've said it to myself to keep me resilient. It has not yet passed, however, so below is how I still feel.

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I'm sitting here feeling I need to write something as a means to resist well-entrenched habits and start a new life. This change is long overdue, but I'm finding it incredibly hard to stay strong. I need to give up alcohol entirely, to lose 30kg in weight and generally change almost every health/dietary habit I've ever had. I can't do both at once, not yet anyway.

Drinking first. This is my battle today and for the foreseeable future. I want to win that battle as soon as possible. My excessive drinking has seriously affected my productivity and I have, to be frank about it, wasted an incredible amount of my life drinking. It's the wasted time, the wasted years, which are really sinking in now, finally. When I think of the things I've achieved, they all came about at a time when I gave up alcohol entirely and focused. And they were delayed because I was drinking too much. How could I have been so blind, and for so long?

Yet all I can think of now and for most of the summer - I had my last drink on Monday night, but have had far fewer opportunities for drink before that this summer - is going on a binge. Why do I drink to excess each time? Because it relaxes me in a way nothing else that I have found so far does. In my heart, I still associate GAA matches, bbqs, fleánna cheoil and weddings - all particularly strong in summertime - with alcohol. The Gravediggers, The Cobblestone, Kehoes, Mulligans, Grogans - the specific pubs with which I equate happiness. I am still (unfortunately) at my happiest drinking in such environments. I feel 'free'. I am, needless to say, distinctly unhappy this summer. I intend to change this reality presently, but currently I'm stuck.

Yet despite excessive drinking still being how I determine a 'good time', rationally I know the tide has well and truly come in on this period of my life. Rationally. I want to achieve three major things in the next five years and there's no way I will do so unless I give up drink entirely. I don't do moderation, and this could will be a plus for achieving those aims once I get over my association of alcohol with mental relaxation/happiness. But, at the moment, if I were a robot I'd be sent back for fundamental reprogramming: I need to reprogram the way I think about alcohol, about happiness.

There is no future in my current mentality, and having recently got married I have an added emotional motivation responsibility to change my life. The last time I gave up alcohol was two years ago, when I had an important year career-wise. It was much easier than this time (I should have written a diary then). It feels like this time the equation of happiness and alcohol is stronger, or the self-destructive button is stronger. Or both. It is harder to stop thinking about alcohol, though.

Rationally I know that this, too, shall pass, but would anybody have any ideas on how I can make the desire, and equation of happiness with alcohol, pass sooner rather than later?

LegacyUser

Congratulations on giving up the drink!

I suppose it comes down to making a new set of happy memories which are not alcohol-related. It won't happen overnight, but you can begin by being happy, cherishing your wife, and spending time with her and other loved ones. Each day spent happy and lived well will contribute towards your new sense of self and of your past.

LegacyUser

You may find - as I have - that there is a joy in waking up each morning with a clear head, a calm stomach, and a sense of pride that you've managed another day without alcohol. I know exactly what you mean about equating happiness with having a drink (or many), because I'm currently fighting the same battle you are. I think we've learned to do this - look at children - they can be perfectly happy without drinking - and we have to re-educate ourselves to be able to experience life the same way.

A while back, I read Allan Carr's 'Only Way to Stop Smoking' (bear with me here, I know he wrote a book on stopping drinking too, but that didn't resonate with me the same way) - his main premise is that each cigarette causes the subsequent craving, it doesn't satisfy it. It's the same with drinking, I think - each time you drink, you reinforce the idea that it makes you happy - but the truth is that what it's actually doing is setting you up to need a drink in order to be happy the next time you go out. Stop the drinking, stop the association - and start to celebrate your freedom from this self-taught 'need'. The more often you can have a good time without involving alcohol, the weaker the association of good time/drink becomes.

Again, like you, I need to lose around 30 kg. Some of this will happen due to cutting out the useless calories in the booze - but I think it will help (and I'm only at the thinking stage right now, still need to put this into practice!) to start doing some focused exercise. I'm going to start walking, because it's gentle, it's on my doorstep, it doesn't need special equipment or planning - and it's free! Maybe after a while at that, I might move on to the 'Couch to 5k' programme. Perhaps it would help you to do something where you can see and record your progress - investing time and effort in something makes it easier to resist a relapse to your former ways, plus it has health benefits and mood benefits all of its own.

One other thing that's helping me is that I declared my intentions to friends, and make a public post every day - Day 1, Day 2 etc. I've found people let you know that they admire your 'strength' - which in itself is positive reinforcement - and it makes it a LOT harder to have a 'sly one' on the side, I feel I'd have to confess to being weak, and I won't do that willingly!

There was life before alcohol, there will be life after alcohol - and it will get easier as you build up a bank of happy times that didn't involve a drink. Wishing you all the best with your efforts - it isn't easy, but most things that are worthwhile aren't easy. You can do it.

LegacyUser

After listening to what you said in your post OP, i too was a heavy drinker, the life of the party type guy that everyone rang and wanted to come for a drink with them. i had to stop, for myself and for my family (not married my imediate family) I was going nowhere with a dead end job and a heavy depression partly because of that, I cut out the drinking july last year after a family dinner i made a complete ejit outta myself- twas after that i decided to sort my life out! I applied for college in september and stopped drinking to only go out maybe once a month - thats it and i am still only doing that right now and i am staring college in september this year, My anxietys almost gone and the feeling of clarity in my head now is an unreal feeling as to what it was over a year ago- My advice to you is cut out the drinking or limit it and set yourself goals for the rest of the year of what you want to do with your life - im serious! At the start of janurary this year i set myself goals to accomplish ive completed half of what i set out to do and intend to have the rest done by the end of the year - Give yourself a chance

Beetlebum

Can't really give you much in the way of advice as you've basically described only that I'm a girl. I love all the pubs you mentioned too and guinness is my best mate!!

Your post was very well written. You're clearly an intelligent eloquent man. Don't be too hard on yourself.

Best of luck!