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I wish you luck. One data point: my story. Not a recipe, but maybe something helpful. I drank hard from high school through grad school and into mid life. I was high-performing and functional, and I am told that I was nicer when drunk than sober. I could never stop at 2 drinks. I tried and swore to stop many times. Never held. One day 12 years ago, I had my last drink. It was a bender. The next morning I swore I'd stop, similar to many times before. I cannot explain why I stopped that time and not earlier. Day 1 sober was easy. Day 14 was hard, but I didn't go back. But I did count the days, and had pride in collecting sober days. It was an internal counter I had early on. I also knew that 1/2 measures wouldn't work. I would need to reset back to day 0 if I had even a sip or just one. I really didn't want to reset my counter. At some point I stopped counting days, and was counting weeks, and then months. Now I count years, and expect to count decades. Slipping is not a character flaw, and it's not helpful to beat yourself up. Acknowledge it, sleep it off and move on. Quitting was not a matter of willpower. I did go cold turkey, but I cannot claim it's because I'm strong or anything special. I'm lucky. I believe my wiring changed that night, the balance never tilted back to where it was for me. Maybe the right combo of neurons got pruned. I don't know. I don't really know what was so different about that night for me, but that was it. And it absolutely was not willpower or mind over matter or anything like that. I just changed. And because of my experience, I believe the "willpower" argument is destructive and insulting. People who offer such advice don't understand. I'm lucky. I changed. That's it. My willpower had nothing to do with it. Over time I discovered that habits matter a great deal. I discovered I needed to develop new ways to fill time since large blocks of weekends were no longer booked with me rendered mentally useless. I also had to develop new social skills, since I could no longer rely on the "nice" me. I also eventually realized how lucky I was that nothing really bad ever happened to me. This is an issue with both mental and physical health implications. Asking for help is a good start. Again, I wish you luck. |
The only small difference in the end for me was to stop counting entirely at some point. I realized that at that point counting was almost counterproductive for me. I feel like counting sort of gives a negative hint to the psyche that I’m missing something from my life for N years now
Today I can’t even tell how many years it has been. It’s a bit of a blur. More than 15 probably. But I don’t miss it a single but.