Thank you so much for this post, and an opportunity to relate and share experiences. Now that I know what AV is, I had a real strong one yesterday between 2-3 PM, which was my previous “let’s have a drink” time. That one drink would turn into one bottle.
This time to combat the cravings at around 2, I had a low sugar soda, came to this awesome site and read, started cooking (even though cooking is a trigger for me), and played a couple games with my wife and kids (really helped). All these things helped to separate my thinking from my cravings and after about 4 PM, the cravings were gone. I have been much more conscious about drinking in front of my kids. I used to try to hide it from them. That didn’t work either. Part of the trick yesterday was to engage with them through the games so that I knew if I was drinking , they would obviously know, which I don’t want them to see anymore.
I mentioned cooking is a trigger for me because I would cook and drink. Apparently my food came out really good, I just never remembered eating it! But this time I did other things while the food was cooking, which diverted my attention from the cravings I guess. I love cooking so I don’t want to give that up. I just have to train myself to disassociate cooking from drinking.