ivehadenoughnow

I've been to this site quite a few times and have had some successes and many relapses. I'm very successful, exercise eat really clean, am an avid runner, etc. I even was involved with triathlon for awhile. Nevertheless life is stressful with three little ones and a wife that is stressed out and I turn to wine to cope with it. It is really a short window from about 7pm to 10pm, but I make up for it with volume. I rarely have less than a full bottle, sometime on a bad night as many as two. It frustrates me that I want to numb up as my first line of defense of the daily stress of life. I know most are here to remove alcohol completely from their lives. For me I want to learn how to cope with stress in other ways. I had a plan to workout after the kids go down which I started to follow a bit. Other times I'd just go take a bath and relax. I would like to follow a plan to not only limit the number of times I drink during the week, but also the amount. If eliminating it completely becomes a good fit for me than I'll consider that option as well. My early goals are:

1. Learn new skills on how to handle and cope with stress.
2. Eliminate drinking Monday, Tuesday, and Thursdays as a first goal.
3. Never have more than one bottle in the house at any given time.

If I can handle those goals then I plan on putting in more elimination days and limit further to two glasses at any given time, possibly none. I'd love to hear stories on how you handled stress and how you replaced the time that you used to drink. I know that I need to spend significant amounts of time here on SR throughout the day to prepare and meet my goals. I don't want to just come here an "vent". I want to be specific and learn new skills and make the most of what is available.

least

Good luck with your elimination task. I tried that too but was never successful. If you can do it, more power to you.

Saliena

I tried these rules and hundreds of others... Never worked for me... Good luck

MyTimeNow

Good luck from me too.

It sounds like hard work to me - planning your drinking and the amount... I'm all or nothing though, I could never be happy with one glass of wine.

Why not try nothing for a week and see how that goes?

ScottFromWI

Moderation seems to be the holy grail of many a drinker. Unfortunately it is almost universally unattainable for someone who is truly an alcoholic.

Have you tried cutting back before Ivehadenough?

ivehadenoughnow

Yes, sometimes successfully others not so much. I had it dialed in for about 9 months but the last couple months when the stress dialed up I started increasing my consumption. Nevertheless while I figure out my path, I still need to learn skills to eliminate many of the things that put me in a place where I want to self-medicate. You need skills in your job, to play sports, in marriage, as a parent, this is no different. I believe people can change, look at all of you here. For most people, I don't think they get up one day make a vow, change there behaviors overnight. They learn new skills, things that help them.

AnvilheadII

actually many do one day up and quit and stay quit. usually after beating themselves to a bloody pulp trying everything else first.

so curious...why not just quit? rather than going this complex convoluted machination of trying to keep the beast caged??? using your wife and kids as an EXCUSE to drink is kinda.....<<fill in the blank?>> dont' ya think?

veryready

Good luck. Sounds complicated. I have 3 little ones. I understand the difficulty and the stress. At the end of the the day, the alcohol only added to the stress. I tried all the options for controlling it that I could think of. The last option was to quit for good. Also, I am a runner and pretty fit. That does not mean that my liver was not being destroyed by the amount I was drinking. Good diet, good job, runner or otherwise healthy, the liver does not care.

lessgravity

Your "strategy" and your lifestyle sounds EXACTLY like mine.

I tried that for years.

For example, I did an Olympic triathlon the morning after drinking two bottles of wine to my head.

I explained it to myself for years - I have a family that I take care of, I work hard at a stressful job, I cook, I should be ALLOWED to drink bottles of my wine at night!

I tried the same strategies - I'll just drink every other night. I won't drink until Thursdays, either Fri or Sat but never both. Even the hours of drink were the same for me - 7-10 or so.

But it never worked for me.

And in fact the drinking increased over time. It got earlier on weekends. On weekdays I never drank at work but the amount got greater - I wanted to add a shot or two to the bottles I downed.

I say this only b/c although I am far from out of the woods on my sobriety yet - I wish I never got this deep in those woods.

Best of luck to you.

Doubtful

All or nothing for me too. people that have a problem with alcohol continue to have problems with alcohol.

hypochondriac

This is an interesting concept. If you can eliminate the things that make you want to drink then you will be able to drink moderately?

There may be a chance that you are falling for the classic trap of blaming external factors for your drinking. If you believe that you drink to help you cope then on some level you believe that drinking helps people cope... in which case you can blame your drinking on anything, you had a stressful day at work, the kids were playing up, your car broke down etc... these really are just excuses for drinking. There is nothing that really justifies drinking. Trying to change what we do in the evenings and finding other ways of coping with stress are both admiral things but I wonder how useful they'll be when something really stressful comes up, especially if you still harbour some belief that drinking helps you cope...

lessgravity

Everything about this mentality will keep you drinking.

ivehadenoughnow

There are no excuses, nor did I make any, but there are reasons, right Anvil? I drink to unwind from the stress of the day and end up doing it too much, which is why I'm here. That is a behavior that I intend to change but I'm not gonna just "wing it" just like I don't run my company by "wingin' it." Stress is my trigger, there is no doubt about that, so I'm putting plans in place to remove it. If you disagree with my strategy then we can have that discussion but I don't subscribe to the Nike "just do it" strategy. May I ask any of you what your specific plan was to deal with temptation, the well known "witching hour", stress, etc.

doggonecarl

Stress is a normal psychological and physical reaction to the ever increasing demands of life. Emphasis on NORMAL. What's to handle? Stress kept the caveman alive. When did it become something we had to "handle"?

What you need to learn to handle is your current stress management tool. Wine.

And your strategy sounds stressful.

ReadyAtLast

Hi,
I tried that so many many times. Counting drinks, limiting drinks,only having one bottle in the house, only drinking on Fri,Sat & Sun, only drinking after 6.00pm, only drinking if I'd had a bad day, only drinking if I'd had a good day, only drinking on a day with a 'y' in it....

You see how it goes.there will always be a reason for us to drink. For me,I have a drink problem. The problem is drink-I want to drink,need to drink, obsess over drinking, overanalyze drinking, limit my drinking etc etc etc.the number of times I had tried to limit it, cut down,moderate call it what you want went on for years. Normal people who don't have a drink problem don't think this way. They just have a drink or they don't,no big deal.

As I read on here early on 'When you think you've got a problem you probably have' People who don't have a drink problem don't think about it at all

welcome to SR.I hope you find help here

lessgravity

Exactly.

Olive1

What are the consequences of your method of de-stressing?
If it is that you drink too many glasses of wine, then just drink one glass. If that is not possible, then I think you need a non-alcoholic method.
Me? I take the dog for a walk. Benefits both of us.

veryready

First let me say it gets progressively easier, but there is no way around just needing to grit your teeth and fight it early on. I think some people look for the magic answer, but it is just hard. Fight it.

That being said, in the beginning I seriously spent the nights reading and posting on SR until I was tired and went to bed. I would sit at the computer and finally look at the time and think, ok I did one more day. After a few weeks I started reading again. I used to read the kids books with double vision. Now I really enjoy it at night if there is nothing else going on.

Be patient and eventually positive things will fill the void. One day at a time. It's worth it.

ivehadenoughnow

I hear you. I guess I am a big believer in having a strategy and that includes in changing my behavior. From 10pm to 7pm I have zero concerns of cravings or issues, it is just one small window and I want to be prepared to deal with it. Reading SR until bedtime is a great strategy, I like it, that is the kind of advice I was hoping to receive. My other two "go-to's" are taking a bath or getting on my treadmill . I have noticed that getting even to 8:30pm, puts me in a safe-zone. My trigger, not excuse, is when I come home to complete chaos, with my wife at her breaking point. Her stress makes me stress, and it is an instant reaction to want to pour a glass of wine. When we had late sports practices pickups and homework nights most nights I wouldn't drink at all, no time.

SoberHappyHour

I think most of us here have tried cutting down and thats why we've opted to eliminate alcohol altogether. The way I look at it, if you feel like you need to cut down, arent certain if you can, and are here to get advice then you probably should quit altogether. But that is your choice to make, and if youre able to do it, that would be wonderful. Let us kno how it goes for you.