It's funny that a lot of you are saying you ended up at hard liquor. About a year prior to my "awakening" I was starting to make mixed drinks from my wife's vodka when I would run out of beer. It was usually on Sunday nights (liquor stores are closed on Sundays in Minnesota) and I noticed that when my wife would make a drink she would put in about a fingers worth of vodka in a 16 ounce glass and I would put 3, maybe 4 if she wasn't in the kitchen. Then about 3 months prior I came up with the brilliant idea that if I just made mixed drinks, Manhattans and Old Fashions in particular, I would cut down on drinking because, hey, you know, I only have like 2 (very strong ones). That's when things came crashing down because there is not way I could quit my beers because if you know the craft beer world there are always new ones popping up that YOU HAVE TO BUY! So here I am drinking the beers early then making mixed drinks after the kids go to bed and then I'm sneaking pulls from the bottle, which I always kinda did but not to this level and frequency, waking up hits from the bottle type stuff. The spiral was starting and I bailed.
On day 16 now. I have no urge to relive those days. That's the hard part of drinking for me in some aspects. Most of it was fun but then it got bad and I jumped ship. Not bad enough where I was losing jobs and losing my family and friends, heck I have no DWI's or no real major consequence from my drinking. I was pretty much a weekend warrior with extended weekends at times. But then, as I said with my prior stint in rehab, I saw the signs. When I first made my decision a year ago I always had some sort of hope that I could go back and maintain it and still have fun and when I decided to give that try it started back up where I left off and it got more sinister. I saw red flags everywhere. It is what it is. I am an alcoholic and no matter how much time passes I will always drink like that because that's how I drink. I crossed a line where I can't turn back. The good old days are over.
Do you know what I like. No hangovers. A moment of warm bliss from booze just isn't worth sacrificing a whole day or even a morning of comfort.