Probably aimed more at the heavy drinkers on here and not so much the OP, but adding my voice to the "replace it with exercise" camp.
Once exercise has become a critical routine you start feeling terrible for killing your performance because you were too sluggish from drinking the night before. You begin questioning your life choices. At some point you get over the mental hump and can start dialing things back. Maybe even outright quit depending on your goals.
I started weight training 3 years ago and as of this year hit that sincere performance stride where I'm seeing genuine gains. I haven't outright quit drinking yet, however, these days I'm only downing a limited amount about once every 1-2 weeks as opposed to getting shitfaced 3-4 days per week.
The moral of the story is to engage in something that has its positivity stolen by alcohol and gets you angry enough about it to quit.
It may not work for everyone. It takes a lot of personal discipline to get started with exercise, let alone consider quitting alcohol. It could be a mental hole too deep for some people suffering from alcoholism to get out of, at which point I'd say try the numerous other options mentioned in this thread.
Once exercise has become a critical routine you start feeling terrible for killing your performance because you were too sluggish from drinking the night before. You begin questioning your life choices. At some point you get over the mental hump and can start dialing things back. Maybe even outright quit depending on your goals.
I started weight training 3 years ago and as of this year hit that sincere performance stride where I'm seeing genuine gains. I haven't outright quit drinking yet, however, these days I'm only downing a limited amount about once every 1-2 weeks as opposed to getting shitfaced 3-4 days per week.
The moral of the story is to engage in something that has its positivity stolen by alcohol and gets you angry enough about it to quit.
It may not work for everyone. It takes a lot of personal discipline to get started with exercise, let alone consider quitting alcohol. It could be a mental hole too deep for some people suffering from alcoholism to get out of, at which point I'd say try the numerous other options mentioned in this thread.