How many days are you free from booze?

Very similar to yourself @Ruairi C, this day 3 months ago I had my last drink. Decided to knock it on a head for a number of different reasons.

Have tried before but usually lasted a month before jumping back on, this time round there's a lot more conviction to knocking it on the head for good. There has been days I could murder a pint, but the conviction stays.

The weekends can be a tough one alright, but I put that down to me drinking for 33 years, and the pub being a go to location at the weekend, takes a while to break long ingrained habits.

I do think there are a lot of benefits to knocking it on the head for good, just wish I had of came to that conclusion earlier 😊

I'm doing dry Jan just to see if i can do it.I'll decide then if i'll continue or not. Feeling great at the moment though. Getting great sleep and none of that awful hangziety the next day.

I'll be honest i do hold a romantic relationship with booze and as time goes on it's hard to remember how difficult life was when i was on it and i just rememeber the warm fuzzy feeling heading out for a few pints. I'm tyring to "play the tape" though and remember where it always leads to. Kicked the cigs 20 years ago but the drink is a lot tougher. Best of luck everyone.

I’m off it 1 year and 8 months now, my biggest problem used to be thinking of what I’d be missing and what a dry sh1te I’d be giving up.

The only way to do it is to really know why you want to stop, understand the reasons and if it’s the case (dunno in your case) admit it’s causing problems.

There’ll always be a wedding, a night out or a Sunday afternoon on a stool watching a match. As I’ve found out, there’s a different way to do those things now.

With the bit of time behind me I see that was just another excuse to justify me carrying on.

I also couldn’t fathom how people said life was much better without alcohol, but again, the monkey is off my back, I’m not hiding, worrying, anxious or ashamed of myself anymore, I can actually just be myself and get on with life.

The benefits definitely compound over time.

Hi Everyone

Feel free to move this but i just need advice on where to turn . Im definitely not what would call a big drinker , I can go a couple of weeks without a drink . The problem I have is I will go and get in a mess no matter how much I try not to, I will always walk a tight rope of ruining my life and relationships on that night , and I will be depressed for weeks later until it happens all over again . If I wake up the morning after drinking and I can remember everything and haven’t done anything too bad it’s a total relief .

Im after being stupid again at the weekend , some something I shouldn’t have and I hate myself and I am so anxious and depressed .

If I told my partner I think I needed help she’d ask why and I’d have to admit what an asshole I am when im drinking that she doesn’t know about . I don’t want to be that person that my family doesn’t know , I want to be the one they love and trust .

Would AA help me ? Im desperate . Thank you

I can relate. The number 1 thing you need to do is get your head on the pillow sober tonight, nothing else matters. There's a reason why it is 1 day at a time. By all means try AA, it works for many.

OK, great. Now what do I do with my time? Well in your situation what I did and what I suggest you do is to read as much as you can on this non drinker subforum, and then the stopdrinking subreddit on reddit, I cant post the link here.

You could literally spend years of your life reading the stories on there, so ti's a great motivator and time filler. There is no magic bullet solution. It takes persistence, that's all. You sound motivated to stop now, that's good.

Best of luck to you.

Anyone struggling with the off-switch, I can massively recommend the medication Naltrexone from personal experience. It works on reducing cravings and rewiring the reward pathway alcohol gives our brains.

I used to not be able to stop once I started, regularly in and out of really bad cycles of sober time, cravings, **** up again.

Blacked out frequently, mainly due to how quickly I'd drink after the 2nd or 3rd. Shameful **** as anyone who's been there knows. Wondering what happened. The shame etc

I've been in and out of AA and addiction services (since I was a teenager), in my 30's now.

I have literally gained the off-switch I never had

I take one tablet 60-90 mins before I choose to have a drink, and over a few weeks (for some it takes a few months to a year) I gained control back over what used to be beyond me

I can choose to have a drink now, or not. It's become take it or leave it. Seriously amazed at it myself really.

Anyway, it's a well-studied medication, safe, tolerated well by the majority of people. I had no side effects beyond the third day. I don't need to take it every day (though it is usually prescribed for daily use normally)

GPs can prescribe, but some aren't very familiar with it. HSE drug and alcohol services should be able to link you up with a GP who would prescribe as I had to do.

If I had found this 25 years ago my life would have been very different in a lot of ways 😑

Any questions I'm happy to answer where I can, I'm involved in a very active group which actually has access to some of the doctors who research this treatment in the USA

I can't explain how passionately I feel that anyone dealing with problem drinking, or full blown addiction, should have access and the option of trying Nal, that it can actually change lives.

Here's hoping it becomess more accessible and widely used in Ireland.

There is unfortunately do way to say if AA will help or not. Statistically it fails more people than it helps. But WHEN it helps it is absolutely indispensable. The issue with addiction or abuse of anything - and it sounds like you err a lot more towards abuse than addiction but definitely have elements in both - is that you have to try ALL the fixes/cures/solutions to see which one works for you. And you have to give them each a good go before you decide it isn't working. You can not just try AA once or twice and give up. You have to give it a good few weeks/months to find out.

The big key with these things in my experience though, especially alcohol, is to identify two things. A) The triggers that make you wanna go drink and B) the things you get out of it when you do. And then go and find something or things - be it AA or a martial art or pottery or running or fishing or live gigs of music or archery or whatever it turns out to be - that A) overlap your triggers so they either replace the trigger or will take over where your trigger is and B) replace the things you get from your addiction.

I was a big drinker myself in college and I am hardly one today. ONE of the things that got me out of it was Jujitsu. A trigger for me was I just wanted to be out and about with "lads". A testosterone dump. So wrestling big dudes on the mats was good for that. What I got OUT of drinking was it dropped by shyness and connected with people and was less up in my own head/ass about myself. And Juijitsu does that too. You can not be shy or in your own head while rolling around on the floor for survival with big lads.

Another trigger was when just too much was happening around me or inside me. Alcohol allowed me to shut it all off and silence the storm(s). I found archery and fishing and horse riding did that too.

YOUR triggers and what you get out of drinking might be similar or totally different. But you can find things to overlap/replace them for sure. And it COULD be AA. Or it could be something else. The trick is to TRY rather than just ask or ruminate on what MIGHT help. You will only find out by trying because what works WONDERFULLY for someone else might not work AT ALL for you. And vice versa.

What also works for SOME but in my experience NOT MANY is just "stopping" and doing nothing else. Some people have the strength for that. But - it creates a vacuum. And something has to fill the vacuum. And if YOU do not fill it then all to often alcohol comes rushing back in.

As for telling your partner you "need help" and your feeling this partner will not understand why. You can ALSO do this under the rubric of what I said above. Instead of saying "I need help with alcohol" which you think they might not understand - tell them you need helping finding a new thing for yourself and a new thing in your life. Tell them you have been yearning to add something to your life. A new path or a new skill or a new dimension. And EVERY time this yearning gets strong you go off and get drunk and "put it off". And you do not want to do that any more. So you need their help. Not to avoid / get over alcohol. But to help you find thing new thing in your life that you can get on the path with and get after - without letting things like alcohol get in the way of. You do not HAVE to tell them you have an alcohol problem if you do not really want to (though I usually recommend people do) but you CAN tell them you want their help to stop using alcohol to put you off being scared/hesitant/lazy about getting after something new.

Feel free to reply or just drop a line if you wanna go over more. And like the opening line of your post, I hope my reply fits with the thread and the OPs move it/us if we are going a bit far off topic.

Not sure if I made it clear in my last post but "problem" and "addiction" is still what many psychologists would call "alcoholism". Which of course is NOT what most of us think. We think an "alcoholic" is the person who can't go X amount of time without any drink. The "hide the wine vinegar and the detergent" guy. The people like yourself and MYSELF who are the "I can go weeks and months without drinking but if an ounce of it touches my lips then do not call me until thursday" types are alcoholics too. We just don't usually call ourselves that.

"waking up the next day sober" though can be one of the most wonderful experiences in the world. I had a family experience recently where I wasn't drinking. But OF COURSE since it was family - everyone else did. Instead of waking up to their children jumping on their heads at 8am - they woke up around 0945 to me and all the kids outside having a big football match :) I rounded up the kids and left the drinkers to their sleep.

Leave THEM to their fear :) And the REAL "power move" is to watch one of the parents come out hung over and shout something like "you're in goals!" :)

All in good fun my friend. But as I said: The best way with alcohol is identify "When/why" you start drinking and "how/why" you keep doing so. And find substitutions for that. Not even Substitutions. "Drink" has been what you have been using to fill in for what you actually wanna do :)