Banjoist

Thanks for asking. My situation is that I had ~4-5 drinks a night (mostly wine, sometimes mixed drinks), pretty much every night. My vacations were spent drinking slowly throughout the day, accelerating it at night to "knock the edge off." It pretty much started when I began having debilitating anxiety, and I was self medicating. I could drink only 1-2 drinks at work events, but chose not to limit myself at home.

I developed IBS and some throat pain/problems beginning last year. Knowing that drinking contributed to it (or at least thinking it might), I decided to stop for a bit just to test the theory that it was a major contributing factor. Those "quitting" stints lasted 1 night at best. I just couldn't or wouldn't quit. I enjoyed it too much. That made me realize that I may just have a problem...and didn't care about it enough until a few nights ago when I yelled at my wife and berated her. If I'm hurting my own health and making my wife feel bad, I'm not at all where I want to be. I don't mind being bad to my own body, but I refuse to be somebody who crushes his wife's spirit in a fit of alcohol-enabled anger.