Miss P - that sounds awesome about the job and I relate to your enthusiasm. I don't hate my primary (academic) job by any means but have been doing it for a pretty long time and am now very seriously looking for a way out or at least a change in topic and environment. It is really very exciting when good opportunities seem to come together after a long period of dilemmas. I have been working on this for about 2 years now and it's a long process when you have tons of responsibilities and are leading a team, but I have also made a lot of progress with mine during this COVID period, so can't say that this year has been negative for me. I wish you all the best for finding what inspires you next and I also admire you for being able to hold a job you hated - I know I would not be able to do that as I am so self-motivated, if that's lacking, nothing works and my so-called sense of responsibility goes out of the window. I had a job like that a long time ago for a couple years and everything went downhill pretty fast, including that was also the time when my drinking escalated to alcoholic levels. Of course the job was not to blame, but it contributed to it because I had little healthy stimulation in my life during that time.
Doriss - when I first decided to seriously embark on sobriety in January 2014, it wasn't my worst period at all. I had tried to cut down prior for several months and was clearly drinking less frequently, but I almost found that more painful as I was actually trying to quit but constantly failed for what felt like a long time. It really undermined my self-esteem. But, more objectively speaking, I had much worse periods years before I even considered sobriety, both practically and mental health-wise. My alcoholism wasn't a linear progress in those domains. It was more linear on my physical health and endurance, but even that improved a bit when I was drinking less frequently. Cutting back that way didn't give me any satisfaction though, as I said it actually made me more conflicted and hating myself and the whole situation. 100% sobriety was the only solution. I did have a relatively brief relapse two years later, which lasted about 2 months and didn't really have serious consequences on my life but, again, the psychological effects were awful enough. I very quickly got back to exactly where I was for years with my pattern and quantity of drinking and sense of despair and failure. Anyway, I do not believe that we need a sort of "rock bottom" to quit, at least not everyone.
I am very grateful that I did not suffer major losses and one of those horror stories out there, before I resolved it. But maybe that's relative too as, subjectively, it was horrible enough in my mind and the binges routinely made me very sick for a couple days at least. I would describe the effect of my drinking more as a perpetual living way under my potential during those years, sometimes more other times less so. Lots of dismissed good opportunities, too. There is never a good reason to wait a single day with quitting for good. In many ways, I kept drinking so long because I could still kinda maintain or, more precisely, fake a certain level of functionality... but it just made me unhappy because I still constantly felt the huge space between my values/potential and what I was actually doing with my life. It took a while for me to find my bearings in sobriety but it was actually not that hard because I still had my original values, sense of self, and didn't need to build up a life again from ruins. I do find it has to come from within though as, in my experience, no amount if preaching, support, constructive criticism etc can help someone who is not making hard efforts to change.