FIONICH85

Hi everyone, I've been on this website briefly over the years. I do not want to completely quit alcohol, what I want to do is form a more healthy relationship with it. Currently the relationship is anything but healthy. I have a trip coming up in 2.5 weeks that I would like to be able to drink responsibly during, however I would like to 100% quit starting from today until my trip. This will not be easy as I've been drinking daily for a while now and the cravings are strong. But I think a 2.5 week reset period will be good.

I am actually right around 24 hours now because I drank yesterday in the morning and have not done so again since (on purpose, with effort).

Ideally after my trip, I would like to forever quit drinking while at home and only drink during occasions when I am out with family/friends and vacations. I do not go out very much and all of my seriously heavy drinking at this point in my life is done at home, by myself.

So if I can make no drinking at home a rule- most of the drinking will stop and I will still be able to enjoy a couple glasses of wine while socializing and or relaxing on vacation.

These 2.5 weeks will not be easy and then no drinking at home after that will not be easy either. I plan to write here when I'm feeling tempted so I can get my thoughts out and make sense of them.

I'm not going to count my 24 hours, since I did technically drink yesterday. Day 1 will start today. I'll tell you one thing, one of the reasons I am finally making a change is because my sleep has been complete garbage every. single. night. lately due to the booze.

Well last night I slept better than I have in months and it was clearly because i wasn't drunk before bed for the first time in a while! I'm going to go food shopping today and buy healthy meals for the week. I also plan to exercise every day because that helps with my anxiety. I know I can do this, I just need to stick with it.

entropy1964

Well as you probably know this is an abstinence site so you'll probably not find a lot of people that have successfully moderated. But hey, if you can do it, more power to you.

I've been at this for quite a while. Everything you describe, the efforts to control, the rules around drinking etc etc. I have tried. The constant management, obsession, control blah blah blah. It was simply no way to live. No normal drinker does these things. So for me abstinence is the only way. And addiction is progressive. If left untreated it will get worse. How quickly is hard to determine.

Good luck to you.

tomsteve

heres a thread you may want to read, particularly the very first post.

Cosima11

I didn't get out much either when I was drinking alone at home.. then I got out A LOT once I changed my rule to "Ill only drink with others on social occasions". Sadly once it reaches an unhealthy level it seems your life will change accordingly to maintain your relationship with alcohol, not the other way around.

FIONICH85

Hi Tomsteve, I didn't see a link. Am I missing it?

biminiblue

I agree with Fricka. I tried every moderation trick you'll ever hear of and some I probably made up myself. It is a fool's errand and much easier to just not drink. Sure - sometimes I could have one or two when I was out and had to drive, but that led to six more or twelve more at home. I couldn't predict when that would happen. I tried the, "not drinking alone at home," too. It worked! For about a month.

This is a sobriety (abstinence) website/forum. I hope you'll get to the point we all did and decide there is no reason to drink.

We all wanted to drink without consequences. It just doesn't work and the mental gymnastics are horrible trying to make it work.

Mac4711

Fioni, if I were to take a guess, this is the link tomsteve forgot to post:

https://www.soberrecovery.com/forums...etermined.html (New. Determined)

Dropsie

Its just too hard to go through all the hoops to keep drinking.

Stopping is childs play compared to the constant stop start nonsense.

At least for me.

I wish you well.

Andante

If you discovered you were allergic to peanuts and suffered ill effects when you ate them, you'd just stop, right? You wouldn't search desperately for ways to continue eating them in moderation?

All you have to do is re-read your post, replacing "drink alcohol" with "eat peanuts," and it will be revealed just how warped your thinking has become and just how strong of a grip your addiction has gotten on your brain.

I went through the same thing -- I think everyone here has -- trying to find a way, any way, to continue drinking when the answer was right in front of me.

Stayingsassy

I will say this: its been good knowing during my sobriety just how hard I tried, and exactly what my life ended up being like, when I moderated.

I successfully kept my drinking to three days a week most weeks. However, those three days of drinking...should I say 72 hours of drinking? Were darker than you can imagine.

Your addiction plays catch up. It doesn't like days off, so it will "get its fill" when you finally drink and that **** gets really damned scary.

Dee74

Hi FIONICH85

like most people here I tried to change my relationship with alcohol.

What I didn't realise was I had no control over this relationship. Drink enough and alcohol changes your brain, forever.

it's always the first drink that starts the madness, not the last.

I don't have the first drink and everything is fine
D

D

fini

i spent decades trying to change my relationship with alcohol.

then i knew i had to end it.

sounds like you knew that once, too, and then forgot?

least

The only way for me to truly change my relationship with alcohol was to end it completely. I'm much happier now and wake up feeling good most mornings. I wouldn't go back to drinking if you paid me.

doggonecarl

So you want to go from here:

To here:

If you could be happy with a couple of glasses of wine, that's what you'd be doing. That's what normal drinkers do. Not morning drinkers.

You can't have a couple. So you probably shouldn't drink.

At all.

Pulaski

Fionich,

I won't repeat what others have said. What I will say is that the difference between having a couple of drinks whilst socialising and having none isn't a lot. You can still have a good time. The small 'gain' of being able to drink socially over quitting isn't worth either the added difficulty of cutting down compared to quitting or the very high risk that you'll fail to cut down (like I did).

What I'm really trying to say is that it's a lot easier to stop than to moderate. Not easy, but easier.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

ScottFromWI

That's what we all wanted Fionich. Unfortunately once you cross the line in into an "unhealthy" relationship with alcohol, there is no going back. It does seem like there should be a way to "figure it out" and do so, but history and the overwhelming evidence shows that it is not.

If you've been around SR for a while you've likely read what i've just written many, many times. I did too and for years I thought I was somehow different - that I could figure out how to moderate my drinking, and I tried countless ways of doing so. There are even official "moderation" recovery programs, but none of them work if you are indeed an alchoholic like me and most of us. You don't even need to use the term alcoholic if you don't like, but you have to accept the premise that alcohol is not an option without severe consequences.

Lots of good info has been shared here already, I hope you can take some of it in and learn.

NYCDoglvr

"change my relationship" sounds like controlling my drinking.

If you're an alcoholic you can't control it. When you finally get that in your gut you get serious about finding a way to stop.

Grungehead

The only problem I ever had with controlling / moderating my drinking was that first drink. Being an alcoholic, every time I took that first drink the phenomenon of craving kicked in and I had no idea how many drinks I would stop at. I think once or twice I was able to put together a few weeks of what appeared to be moderate drinking but it always ended up right back where I started. I also remember being pretty miserable trying to moderate because I always wanted more.

So there I would be out with friends or with the wife just having a couple of drinks...miserable and preoccupied with craving more alcohol instead of enjoying their company.

Midwest1981

have you heard about kindling? it is where each withdrawal leads to worse withdrawal symptoms. It is scary!

It is best to put it down and not look back.

MindfulMan

What you're describing is NEGOTIATING with alcohol.

I'll only drink when I'm out (you go out a lot)

I won't have more than 2-3 (then you go home and do a shot or two).

I won't drink on weeknights (that changes to only drinking on days that end with a y)

Etc etc etc.

It is not fun at all. "Normal" drinkers don't do it. They just drink when they feel like and stop drinking when they feel like, and it rarely if ever leads to a blackout or a bender, except maybe at college.

I changed my relationship with alcohol. I broke up with it and left no forwarding address.