Originally Posted by
ZIP 
Good read, Ciowa.
Correcting bad habits, and finding a healthy environment clearly helps in achieving---and maintaining---sobriety.
Sitting on the sofa wishing you didn't drink often won't cut it.
Got to mix in some genuine effort and genuine change.
Nice work, by the way.
Thank you. I had "taken breaks" several times but never made the decision to quit entirely. I woke up and knew I had to make some drastic changes if I was going to be able to stop. I also knew I was going to have to say goodbye to a type of lifestyle and that included where I lived. I had too many years of building drinking into my environment and I had to let go of it all even if was scary to do so. The alternative was worse, to continue on until I lost everything. I made a conscious decision to let go of that part of my life. I wasn't going to try and recreate it, but just not drink. I couldn't hang out in the bars and drink water, visit the liquor store owners for 10 minutes and buy a soda, meet up with friends at one of the restaurant patios at 10pm and order just chips and salsa, that type of stuff. All those settings in my neighborhood were built around drinking. I could continue on and be the old guy at the bar hanging out with people 20 years younger than me until my health collapsed and I died or ended up in a homeless shelter or something. It was time to close that chapter in my life and move on. And that literally meant, moving on.