Interesting. I'm now 55. I started drinking age 12. Quit age 24. By then, I was very seriously mentally ill with schizophrenia, and my body was a lost cause from my years of drinking and post-polio complications.
To be truthful, I wouldn't have made it to my mid-fifties. I would have died drunk on the streets, and if not that, then a mental ward for the criminally insane, or federal prison was another option. I don't talk about this much anymore, but I often in my last years of drinking considered jail the safest place for a guy like me to survive, and being a cop killer the best deal to take to jail.
Serious stuff, eh? Yeah. I know it.
I quit age 24 because I really was dying, from the inside out. I could barely discern what was real anymore. They pretty well wrote me off in my last years or so of drinking. It was pretty well accepted I was going to suicide sooner rather then later.
However, to do your question justice, let's say I did quit at age 55, with not much going for me in an obvious sense. What would I do?
So having just quit, I would still seek out the real me sans-alcohol, and worry about whatever way forward as I progressed in my new life. I would change up my game to always be moving away from my drunken life and into my sober life and learning about myself as I changed and adapted to this new sober life. I wouldn't define my sobriety until years of experience proved to me I knew what I was talking about. If being of service helped me help myself and at the same time helped others, I would again take that same path into service for others, and chase down my own worldly success later on.
Everything in its season, yeah?
When I see others quitting at my age now, I don't see hopelessness before them or surrounding them. I see tremendous opportunity for these same people to help others help themselves become themselves sooner rather then later as they too become their better selves. Its really never ever too late to be ourselves. The right time to do so is always today.
I'm sorry. It sounds like so much talk, I suppose, but, I really drank as long as I could. If I could have drank longer, I would have, seriously, I just was completely gone by age 24 with 12 years of drinking/drugging already toasting me completely.
I really believe we quit for real when we forever quit, and before that, we're just taking breaks in our drinking.
Thanks, bemyself. Your name says it all, yeah?