I stopped drinking on the 18th of March 2023. Because of where I live and how my culture socialises, this was a huge step. But to be honest, in hindsight it was just something I’d been putting off for a long time. The hangovers did just become a nightmare to deal with, plus I didn’t feel like I was doing well with my personal relationships because of it. I’m glad to have all that time back, although I miss part of the social aspect. I’m working on creating a sober social life but it’s very early days.
How has your sobriety journey been for you?
I absolutely loved using r/stopdrinking as a resource. Now that I’m not on reddit so much I’d love to find a new community here! Has anyone created a sobriety community on the fediverse yet?
I stopped drinking 3.5ish years ago. I didn’t have a choice, drinking always made me super sick and vomit. In uni I thought it was normal to “puke and rally” everytime you drank. As I got older I wouldn’t even be able to get very drunk anymore, because I’d vomit before I could even get there.
The final nail in the coffin was I had a heavy night of drinking and was vomiting for a MONTH after. So I finally stopped. 6 months later I had a single shot and vomited for a week.
Since then every now and then I’ll try having 4 (literal) sips of wine, and I’ll have gastric distress every time.
The first year or so was very difficult because I missed social drinking and didn’t really know how to be social otherwise.
Now I’m just used to it. I don’t even miss it anymore. I’ll just chill with friends sober, or high. My friends don’t give me shit for it, and when randos do I’m just super rude and blunt and tell them “it makes me shit myself” and maintain aggressive eye contact until they go away awkwardly.
Congratulations! Quitting drinking was one of the best things I’ve done for my life, too.
I just wanted to mention, for anyone else following this thread: I had help from naltrexone.
It may still be considered an “off-label application” for alcoholics, depending on where you live in the world. But it worked for me, after many previous attempts and relapses.
For anyone who’s interested in learning more, here’s a case study to get you started: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2565602/
Congrats to you too!! How was your experience on naltrexone? Did it help with withdrawal symptoms or does it work a different way?
Naltrexone is not a detox drug. If you’re physically dependent, naltrexone probably can’t help with that - inpatient detox is still a vitally important step for some alcoholics.
In my case, I was already able to choose to take a day off drinking without suffering DT. My problems tended more towards runaway consumption, when I did choose to drink.
I finally found this intervention that worked for me in 2015.
My psychiatrist prescribed me the stuff and said “for the first month, just take the pills each day and drink when you want. Keep notes if you can, about when you drink and how much. We’re establishing a baseline here”
By the end of the first month, my rigorous note-taking revealed I was already choosing drink less often, and that the runaway drinking that I was prone to seemed not to get out of hand quite so regularly.
Naltrexone seemed to tone down some circuit in my brain. The inner voice yelling “MOAR” felt … less imperative. The satisfaction of “a good drunk,” to me at least, became inextricably associated in my mind with the sad hollowness of the next morning’s hangover.
It helped me retrain my reward circuits. And it’s stuck ever since.
Congrats! That’s a huge step.
Alcoholism kind of runs in my family. Frankly, alcohol caused enough problems in my life long before I ever had a single sip of it myself which turned me off from drinking for a very long time. I’ve occasionally drank as an adult, but recently a close family member went through some serious health problems because of alcohol and it was just the final straw for me. I don’t know exactly how long it’s been since I’ve had a drink, but it’s been a few months and I just don’t have any desire to change that right now.
I never had problems controlling my own drinking, but I don’t want to risk going down a bad path by turning it into a habit. Seeing the people I love get affected by this poison just makes me question why it’s such an acceptable substance to abuse in our society.
Yes, I stopped in Autumn, 2016. I was an alcoholic in my late 40s, from a long line of alcoholics in a culture that is infamous for heavy drinking. I spend a lot more time alone now, but that’s okay- the whole reason I drank was to make socialising tolerable.
I will be honest, I used psilocybin to start me off on my sober life, and it worked. I wouldn’t say it’s for everyone who wants to stop, but it worked incredibly well for me. I lost the urge to drink completely and it has never come back.
I stopped! I grew up around heavy drinkers and for most of my childhood and early adulthood, I just didn’t know anybody who wasn’t one. I don’t really feel like it was a conscious decision to start drinking as much as I did as a teen, it was just expected and part of everyday life. I had a lot of fun at points when I was young, but, the fun ratio had pretty much gone down to zero by my mid 20s and it was just something that felt exhausting and anxious. Around the pandemic I started to come to terms with some memories, and realized I didn’t want to be around it anymore, and more importantly, that I didn’t have to if I didn’t want to. There was no obligation. It was the right choice for me, and the pandemic/some unrelated health issues I developed made it easy for me to just bounce and not interact with those people or environments anymore. It has been a bit tough to try to find or meet new people (for lots of reasons, not just alcohol ) but I do know that the friendships I had which were only propped up by alcohol weren’t real friendships, and I’m glad it’s out of my life. I feel a lot more emotionally even, calm and just better about myself. I feel like drinking was just assumed from so early in my life, that I never got the chance to decide for myself about whether or not I wanted to drink. I’m really glad I got to finally think about it and make a real choice that’s actually mine.
