Great idea for a thread. Me and my wife have been sober for 339 days according to my badge on
r/stopdrinking. First year anniversary is coming up soon. The biggest positive factors I see are : health (no more dizziness, better digestion, more energy, better sleep, etc.), money (alcohol was about $5K a year for the both of us) and cleaner head for my child (I'm more inclined to go outside, to be creative).
Here's my story :
- me and my friends drank a lot at parties in my early twenties
- I then got into a habit of drinking a 960ml can of beer with peanuts or chips every other day after my part-time job
- this continued to pretty much everyday and then it was a six-pack or a 4-pack of those tall cans
- then I met my wife and since we had alcohol as a common ''interest'', we continued to drink about 3-8 units almost everyday (but now with wine and beer mixed up)
- we had our son 5 years ago and while we stopped or geatly reduced in the beggining, it came back up to 6-8 units almost daily,
- it started affecting our health and while we tried tapering a lot of times, it was never fulfilling enough
- my wife once told me she wanted to quit, but I wasn't ready, so I basically became her enabler for another year
- in the end I had enough so I bought the book Strop Drinking Now by Allen Carr, I read it, followed the 'instructions' and haven't had a drink since
I realize I was drikning due to boredome and out of habit. It was actually easier to stop than to taper, because when you drink, even a little, someone like me always has alcohol on his mind. Once you take the alcohol option out of the equation, you're essentially ''free''.
I get tougher days where I feel left out of the social aspect of drinking, and that triggers me a little, but I never wish I still drank for real. I don't envy it. I don't want it. I'm lucky for that I guess. So in a way, even if I drank almost daily for 14 years, stopping was pretty easy for me.
The subreddit really helped, and the Allen Carr book as well (even if in the end it's a pretty simple self help book).
Good luck everyone!