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Getting off alcohol

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  • 10-03-2019 8:25pm
    #1
    LegacyUser
    Registered Users Posts: 166,026 ✭✭✭✭


    Hi. For the last ten years I've been over-doing it with alcohol on a nightly and often daily basis. So far I have maintained my job, I'm unmarried, unfriended and mostly feeling like crap. I did go to a GP a few years ago and he referred me to St Patrick's Clinic - and they advised checking in to their rehab facility. This isn't for me. Is it possible to get home-based treatment for an alcoholic who is willing to try?


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    #2
    Big Bag of Chips
    Administrators Posts: 13,778 Admin ✭✭✭✭✭Big Bag of Chips


    Homebased treatment would involve going to counselling sessions, AA maybe but not necessarily. You'd probably be linked up with a sponsor who would be there as a support to you if you felt yourself weakening.

    It is possibly to quit drinking with willpower alone, but it is difficult. Residential treatment isn't for you, so go back to your GP and ask for a referral or a recommendation to a support group, or counsellor, or outpatient treatment.


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    #3
    LegacyUser
    Registered Users Posts: 166,026 ✭✭✭✭LegacyUser


    Remove all alcohol from your home. Stop going to social events where alcohol will tempt you. Avoid pubs and all other places that sell the poison. At least until you're stronger. That's the very basic environmental change you must make. Change your environment, and your reality will follow. A lot of Rehab stuff is unnecessary. Make the decision to stop, and change your environment and fill in your free time with a new hobby or course. Walking? Running? Mix them with mindfulness or spiritual stuff to help you make sense of why you drink to excess?

    I haven't drank in over 5 years and I genuinely don't miss it in the slightest. It's now no problem for me to sit in a pub on the occasions I'm meant to go out. But it's all so boring now, to be totally honest.

    Life is much better now without alcohol, in every single respect. It was hard for me to understand that in my drinking days as my world revolved around it. Easily the most wasted days of my life. Life is too short for that.


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    #4
    .......
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9,057 ✭✭✭.......


    Clifty wrote: »
    This isn't for me.

    Why not?

    Seems like if you really wanted to get off it youd try whatever was on offer?

    Examine your conscience here - are you saying it "isnt for you" to avoid having to stop drinking?


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    #5
    Xterminator
    Registered Users Posts: 4,718 ✭✭✭Xterminator


    Hi Op

    the specialists have learned that taking you out of your usual situation helps break the habits you have formed. They know it has a better success rate.

    And you do want to succeed?


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    #6
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭ [Deleted User]


    Give a few AA meetings a go?..They can work for a lot of people..


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    #7
    Dark Phoenix
    Registered Users Posts: 1,185 ✭✭✭Dark Phoenix


    How much are we talking - how many nights a week and how much? thats going to determine how realistic it is to give up on your own as it will also determine what the withdrawal affects will be on your body and mind. You have a few options - AA is one, another is the clinics you go to as an out patient that provide medication to help with cravings as well as counselling.
    one major thing to understand is that while giving up drinking is going to bring benefits for your physical and mental health its not going to change who you are or remove all problems from your life so its important to have plans in place to help yourself in general - taking up a new hovby for example would be a good way to distract yourself from thinking about drink while meeting new people.


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    #8
    Mr. Incognito
    Registered Users Posts: 9,798 ✭✭✭Mr. Incognito


    I've been to recovery

    No Addict can do it alone. If they could they wouldnt be addicts.

    You NEED the support of the Group. Counselling. A Sponsor and working the Steps.

    It has worked for millions of people. You arent the one person in the whole world the programme cannot assist.

    Not going has not worked for everyone else.

    I hope you find the strength in yourself to put down the alcohol and go. Only you can do it but unless you admit that you are powerless over your addiction and seek help nothing else will work.


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    #9
    jopax
    Registered Users Posts: 451 ✭✭jopax


    Hi op,

    I don't have advice for you, but well done for admitting you have a problem.
    The fact that you did tell your GP does indicate that you do want to face your problem.
    I would follow the good advice from the posts on here.
    The best of luck with it.


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    #10
    KikiLaRue
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,283 ✭✭✭KikiLaRue


    I'll be five years sober on Friday. I did it by going to AA and getting counselling. If you do go to AA, give it a proper go - i.e. do the suggested things - get a sponsor, do the 12 steps, get involved in service.

    I've found a lot of people go to a couple of meetings, sit down the back, don't speak and then they go out drinking and say 'AA didn't work'. It does work, for a lot of people, but you have to put work into it.


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