When you have simply had enough.
I am a long term problem drinker with a daily habit, now sober for a week. Booze hasn't wrecked my life, though it has challenged it. I have done OK on the whole, but I am sure I would have had a happier one - a lot happier - if I had not developed the problem. I certainly would have had a calmer, more peaceful and less harrowing one for sure. Last year I was sober for close to 11 months and drank again a few weeks after my dad died last October, though I would not attribute my drinking to that. No doubt there was a connection though.
I am an atheist and left AA last year in large part because it stopped making any kind of sense to me. The programme is full of contradictions and inconsistencies to my way of thinking, but so be it. It has helped millions apparently.
I am done with drinking. I really feel that. I have had relapses galore. More, I would say, cycles of getting to the point of despair with alcohol and somehow dragging myself away from the precipice. I have done that over and over until finally this last time I was in a more terrified, anxious, fearful and downright general state of illness of being that it was, perhaps, some sort of rock bottom.
Given that this area of the forum is about secular approaches to stopping and given that I have a secular view of the world, I wonder what people here feel about the idea of simply stopping and quitting because one has simply had enough of the whole damned thing.
I should add that I have a plan and support, including addiction counselling, in place, so it isn't totally solo. I am also active here.