Burra

So far I am on 10 days. This is the longest stretch for almost a year. Then there are a lot of shifts for two to three weeks. There will not be a chance to drink during this and this is the point of it. After that it is regular shifts.

If I can get through the next 24 hours I will be dry for 25-30 days. This is the longest dry period for over 2 years.
If I can get to the first day of 2022 it will be the longest stretch for 15 years.
The long hours at work are helping me to do this. They are long weeks, 80 hours. Drinking is impossible.
I want to do this but it's important to understand. My desire isn't to be sober, it's to stop drinking. I don't remember what a sober life is like. It's only the misery of drinking that is making me do this. I don't know where I'm headed.

freedomfries

Congrats on 10 days.

Dee74

Hi Burra - congrats on 10 days.

that's a bit of a head scratcher,

​​​​​​​do you mean you want a future where you can drink, just not in the misery inducing way you have been?
or do you mean that you're not enthusiastic about it but you see not drinking is the only way forward?

D

Burra

Hi freedomfries. Thank you.

Burra

Maybe? That doesn't feel important.

Not that either. I could keep drinking, there's nothing stopping me. There's not been any recent disaster or consequence of drinking. My financial situation has been good recently, my health is alright. My values have not changed.
​​​If there is one motivator, it's the disruption it causes. The lack of predictable longer term outcomes. In the past I would have complained there has been no place to think about the future so no reason to care about the present. That hasn't changed though. I don't know, it's like walking into nothing.

Burra

​​​​​​​I don't have a plan for this D. Being a functional drunk is how I've coped with life's challenges or the lack thereof. Drinking has been misery and happiness, where I've put all my emotions. That is what I want change. But I don't directly want to be sober. I can't desire something I don't know anything about.

Triggered

I'm with Dee on this...it seems a bit of a scatter gun approach

If you want to regulate your drinking to a point where you dont feel youre investing all of your emotions in the process then give it a try... if youre completely honest with yourself by the end of your trial period and find it impossible to carry out then you might want to reconsider.

If on the other hand you want to cherry pick the good times out of problem drinking and leave the bad times out of it, I fear that youre not being realistic. In short, if you are too far down the road so to speak, the problems are part and parcel of that level of addiction and you ought to consider a more robust approach and have a plan to those ends.

Either way if I were you I would start keeping a journal to track your progress, you will gain a lot of info from it that could be invaluable going forward.

Hodd

Firstly, well done on 10 days, Burra.

Do you plan to quit 100% or moderate your drinking? There’s a world of difference. I along with just about everyone on this site can’t moderate. We’d relapse if we tried. If you can genuinely moderate, great, but if not, i.e. if you crave for alcohol or feel you need it to relax, I’m afraid you’ll never be able to moderate as you’ve crossed the line into dependency.

Fair play for these 80 hours, and I hope you’re getting well paid for this. It sounds like the workload will ease soon, so you need to think how you’ll fix this drinking issue then. What do you do when you’re not working? If you chill out in front of the TV with a beer, you’re likely to do that again when you’re freer. Bit of a tall order as you’ll be knackered, but do an activity that doesn’t involve drinking.

Burra

I don't understand what you mean Triggered, those both sound like the same thing, with the same solution at the end. I neither see myself addicted or sober.

My plan is to quit completely. I don't crave alcohol or suffer from an addiction/physical dependence. My go tos when not working have always revolved around hard drinking. These days my activities have been online learning and drinking tea. There aren't many opportunities to meet people here or do much socially, and I don't watch TV. I am not exaggerating to describe drinking as the main point of life at least up to now. And I've just spent an entire week off work without alcohol, so I am more prepared for the holidays.

KTB5000

Congrats on 10 days Burra 🙌

Delilah1

Congrats on what should now be 11 days!

Burra

​​​​​​
Thank you KTB5000 and Delilah. I managed to get through last night sober. Now I have to do 3 weeks of shifts. I am working on a plan to get through December without drinking

b0glerd69

Keep going Burra. Things will get better and you'll find more purpose. You are doing the right thing in working on a plan. Maybe you can exercise when you have time off, keep reading, maybe read about addiction and work on strengthening your sobriety toolbox. Keep posting.

Hodd

I’m going to nag now 🤣 You’re doing OK, and it’s great you’ve got the goal of quitting and not moderating. I’d take December out of the equation and think longer term or it sounds like the end of December will be party time. My problem when I previously failed to quit was I’d allow myself little “rewards” of a glass of red after 3 or 4 weeks sober. That destroyed any benefits I’d gained. I didn’t then go on massive benders, but the cravings came back the next day and much more intense. When I finally saw sense and quit properly, the cravings finally faded to a whimper. No middle ground unfortunately ☹️

Triggered

My point is that it seems as though youre trying to ascertain the best way forward. Imo, you cant do that without finding the nature of your problem. And you do have a problem, otherwise you wouldnt be here looking for answers.

The two scenarios I gave are not the same. One is an attempt to establish whether moderating your drinking is a possibility for you. The other is a warning that if things are more entrenched than you realise, you need to forget all notions of skirting around the issue and get real before you allow things to get out of hand. Just bear in mind that addiction does not stand still. By it's very nature it progresses. If we decide that there is a way to circumvent our addiction without putting the work in, it will come back and make a fool out of us. I wish you all the best buddy. I really hope you make sense out of the situation youre in and take the appropriate action, whatever that may be.

Hawkeye13

I could go months between drinks, so I don’t have a physical dependence, but I think that has little to do with whether you have an addiction issue. If I find alcohol use, even periodic, to be detrimental to my life and cannot simply stop using it without a problem,well then, I have a problem. Sounds like you might also if it is “disruptive” and yet you are still doing it?

Daily heavy drinkers and binge drinkers are simply two types of people with the same underlying issue.

You say you don’t see yourself as either addicted or sober—yet alcohol seems to be a (disruptive) problem in your life as well as the center of your life—sounds to me like you are closer to addicted than sober. . .

Heavy drinking is progressive and damaging to the body over time. We also begin to depend more and more heavily on it psychologically. Being honest about my progression was one of the hardest parts for me to accept. “Functional alcoholic” is a stage, not a type. Some of us just last longer in the functional stage.

It’s great you are quitting, but sobriety and recovery are different things to. What is your plan for replacing your drinking lifestyle with other activities and interests? That will be critical for success in the long-term.

Cityboy

It's really impossible for me to think through this type of discussion. Everything beneficial I thought alcohol was doing, it was doing the opposite. It wasn't getting me through, it was bringing me farther down. It wasn't making anything more fun, it was increasing the level of danger exponentially and making me miserable. It wasn't a crutch for social anxiety, it was an amplifier.

If you can drink a single craft beer or glass of wine with dinner once every couple of weeks, fine. I have zero interest in doing that at this point though. Just don't see the point.

The only way forward is to just put it down and be done with it. Stop letting it rob you of life and brain power.

Burra

Over the next several weeks, working 80 hour weeks. Work dries up on the 21st of December. After that nothing. No family or friends to visit for Christmas. Only groups around meeting up are for homeless, all voluntary positions taken. No money to take a trip. Maybe I can walk around or something on new year's. After that January will not be busy for work. Thinking of going back to school or moving around again for the hell of it. That won't start until September. Until then do some multimedia projects to pass the time. Maybe planning ahead is a waste of time. Alcohol has been everything.

Dee74

I don;t think planning ahead is a waste of time, recovery wise.

If you have some downtime coming up, I think it's really important to think about how you might fill your days and not fall back on the default response of drinking.

D

Hodd

Dee’s right. The 21 December onwards sounds like a very risky period. The further study idea is spot on, go for that 100%, but have some ideas for that 21 December date. For multimedia training, there’ll be numerous online course you could start instantly.