I haven't had a drink in 27 days, which is the longest I've gone in a while. Left to my own devices, I tend to settle into a pattern of 2-4 drinks per night, 5-6 nights a week (I actually tracked this for a while with a spreadsheet).
It's not like, ruin my life, wake up in a gutter type situation, but it leads to just feeling somewhat crappy all the time, and I didn't like it, so I wanted to stop.
Some things that helped / are helping:
I have an app Habit Tracker. It's a pretty simple app with a list of habits you want do do, you can set on some schedule. When you do them, you tick them off and it keeps track of how many times, so you build up a streak. I made a "don't drink" habit, and check it off in the morning if I didn't drink the day before. It also shows a notification bubble on the app if you don't check it off and I hate that. It's like this little negative reinforcement that I have to live with that bubble all day if I drank the day before. It's silly, but it helped.
Reading the book This Naked Mind and listening to The Huberman Lab podcast episode about alcohol (#86) also helped. Alcohol messes up your body in a lot of ways, even at what's considered "moderate" or "normal" levels of drinking.
/r/stopdrinking on Reddit
Alcohol is an addictive drug and when you stop after using it regularly, you're going to feel cravings. It's not a moral failing, it's physiology. They do get less intense and less frequent after the first two weeks or so.
>Left to my own devices, I tend to settle into a pattern of 2-4 drinks per night, 5-6 nights a week (I actually tracked this for a while with a spreadsheet).
This is where I would settle as well, except some Saturdays when I'd have a bloody mary in the morning then just nurse gin and sodas from noon until 2am Sunday. Just enough to keep a little happy buzz going, I really don't like getting drunk at all.
My daughter started a practice of not buying alcohol for her home. I started doing that and it's actually working quite well. Still will get a beer or glass of wine with dinner when we're out but I don't burn down handles of rye or gin over the course of a week.
> My daughter started a practice of not buying alcohol for her home.
This has been working for me, too. For a few years in my late 20s I was doing 1-2 drinks per day on average, with a fair number of completely sober days in there as well. Never "problem" territory, but as I got into my 30s, I realized I felt way, way better on the days where I didn't have anything at all to drink the night before. So if I was ever waffling on whether to have a drink, I'd choose not to. Earlier this year I ran out of beers in the fridge and I've just not restocked it. We have some wine and stuff, which I drink with my wife when we have a nice dinner cooked, but it's probably one night a week now or even less. That feels OK to me.
It's not like, ruin my life, wake up in a gutter type situation, but it leads to just feeling somewhat crappy all the time, and I didn't like it, so I wanted to stop.
Some things that helped / are helping:
I have an app Habit Tracker. It's a pretty simple app with a list of habits you want do do, you can set on some schedule. When you do them, you tick them off and it keeps track of how many times, so you build up a streak. I made a "don't drink" habit, and check it off in the morning if I didn't drink the day before. It also shows a notification bubble on the app if you don't check it off and I hate that. It's like this little negative reinforcement that I have to live with that bubble all day if I drank the day before. It's silly, but it helped.
Reading the book This Naked Mind and listening to The Huberman Lab podcast episode about alcohol (#86) also helped. Alcohol messes up your body in a lot of ways, even at what's considered "moderate" or "normal" levels of drinking.
/r/stopdrinking on Reddit
Alcohol is an addictive drug and when you stop after using it regularly, you're going to feel cravings. It's not a moral failing, it's physiology. They do get less intense and less frequent after the first two weeks or so.