I was told by my doctor to stop drinking or die. In case you're wondering, doctors do say those words exactly. I drank hard and fast nightly with no breaks for ten years. There was no slow buildup just burning bright and burning out fast. My blood pressure was in the 180's when resting.
The health stuff didn't actually make me quit. I stopped on June 27th because the daily hangovers became unfathomable. Undoable. Unrelenting. Trying to maintain a daily life of work and then binge drinking every night had become impossible. With how I felt everyday if someone said "you are going to die one one week" I wouldn't have blinked. Fearful? Yes. Surprised? No.
I also did not even get buzzed anymore. I would almost go as far to say that I did not even get drunk anymore. I would get uncoordinated and sloppy but there was no enjoyment and no relaxation. I would also black out sometimes still but it was like I skipped any drunkenness and just went right to black out. It was really weird in the end because there was no amount of alcohol that made me feel good anymore. Alcohol truly stopped working for me.
The only way I can describe it is if you switched and OxyContin addict's pills with sugar tablets. I was terribly confused as to why I didn't and couldn't enjoy drinking anymore. It was as if somebody is switched alcohol to floor cleaner or just something poisonous that had no enjoyment. It was very strange.
I couldn't live with drinking and I couldn't live without drinking. I was one miserable, miserable soul. I basically had to choose between being miserable sober or being miserable drunk. I figured being miserable sober would not kill me and it would also cost a lot less money. So I gave it a shot.
The only way I can really explain it is that I couldn't drink anymore. I don't know if this happens to people after that 400th blackout or the 2000th hangover in a row? When does this happen? All I know is it happened to me. When I joined here in 2010 I was at daily blackout drinker but I still loved drinking and it made me feel great when I was doing it. Boy did that change by 2014.
I never gave up on alcohol. I never gave up wanting to drink. It gave up on me.
My body did not process it anymore. When I was drinking you could've set me on a beach in a lawnchair with the fifth of vodka and 2 L of Pepsi and said "drink away. drink as much as you want!" And it would have done nothing for me except given me one of the worst hangovers known to man the next day. Would have I tried to drink it? Yes. I would have drank probably the entire fifth. I most likely would have just sat there and cried as I drank.
That's when I simply could not do it anymore it was a mixture of impending death and barely able to live because I felt so horrible every minute of every day.
The reason I stopped on the exact day I stopped which was June 27, 2014 is because I had shooting pains in my back and pains in my right side and pains in my left side and I really thought I was going to die that day.