How to Stop Drinking?

[Anchorchain]

I've been sober for 21 years after about 25 years of getting drunk every night. I quit about 1/2 a dozen times but never got past 2 weeks until something more important came up.......a responsibility for someone else that nobody but me was there to do. It saved my life as a side effect.
If I was going through the quitting process again I'd go to meetings and be asking for help. If nothing else they'd be something to do and a place to go besides getting drunk at home. I would really have liked having someone to call up and say, "I'm still sober and it's driving me crazy and I'd kill for a vodka right now". But I quit alone, like I drank alone and I quit in secret like I drank in secret......or I thought it was secret........that was easier if the people who know you and know what you're doing every night pretend they don't know.

 

[LumberJack]

I would really have liked having someone to call up and say, "I'm still sober and it's driving me crazy and I'd kill for a vodka right now".

Well congrats on making it 21 years. I just wanted to mention that I do have a couple people I can call when I feel like that and it is invaluable to me. That was sorta my night last night, I really am going through a rough patch rn, although it seems to be gradually improving.

 

[I Love Tomorrow]

I have nothing to add really except that I try to restrict my drinking to twice a week. Unfortunately this means that I spend much of the week looking forward to getting drunk at the weekend. I'm not even a social drinker, but get drunk on my own at home. It seems to be the only time I forget how unhappy I am.

I know exactly how that feels.

 

[I Love Tomorrow]

This is a great question Unenthusiastic, and is something many people struggle with whether depressed, suicidal, or not. In my fight with the vices(smoking and drinking), the first step was coming to a realization that many vices are learned behaviors, as in you learned to use them as a coping skill at some point; and if it was learned, can it not be unlearned or masked by something more positive? After many years of saying to myself, "This is it. I'm going to do this indefinitely." I had to learn first that I could change, that it's possible to change before I could actually start to.

I've done the back and forth with the vices over the years, sometimes being sober for years, and other times going back to everyday. I currently smoke and drink a couple times a week, but at a drastically reduced amount than what I used to do. It amazes me how much better I feel healthwise when I don't do bad habits, but that emptiness is never that far behind at the same time. The toughest part for me about leaving vices is you have to find something positive to take up all that alone time, something that replaces that temporary happiness that is bad for you in the long term, with something healthy that gives you the same amount of happiness. That said, I haven't found that replacement happiness myself yet. But I keep punching, I keep trying.

Everyone's a little different on the level they're at, or how they can positively deal with. The bottle is one of the oldest, most common, and hardest things to beat in the world for a reason. I think the point is to just keep trying something instead of doing nothing, even if you don't achieve complete sobriety. There's been a lot of good advice in this thread also, thanks to others for sharing.