Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?

I still drink on occasion but now I can go months without when I used to drink 3-4 nights a week. Sometimes I'd put down a 6 pack on those nights.

Honestly, I got tired of being tired. LFPs were normal but my cholesterol and stuff was off indicating that I was doing some kind of metabolic damage. I decided to say "fuck it" and told myself I'd do exactly one week of not drinking. The first weekend I woke up sober I was bored but I noticed that I wasn't tired, or extremely hungry, or anything. I just felt right.

Then I kept that feeling up, setting challenges along the way. "Use my sober time to my advantage". Improved blood work dramatically (back to normal), lost weight, and kept a bunch of good habits. Now, occasionally I'll indulge if I'm out or being social, but I've basically all but stopped drinking on anything remotely near as often as I did. I discovered a lot about myself by reflecting on what made me drink so much (I was much more social drunk) and how I can remedy that.

What works for me may not work for you. AA doesn't work for people, a lot of techniques don't work for people. There's no magic pill. You need to have a reason to do it, and a reason to stick with it. Something you can wake up every morning and remind yourself. Moreover, accept you will slip. It's not an end to your sobriety despite how AA treats it. You are human, what matters is that you learned from your slip and try your best not to do it again. To get to the point I am at I had go cold turkey for a year, and then slowly introduce it back and test myself. If I ever even come close to even two days a week now I'm back on the sober train for another year.

As for the experience of getting sober I never had to do DTs or anything. Though I did drink a lot. I found the first two weeks to be hardest, then the first two months, and then it got to be easy after that. In the first 2 weeks to 2 months you will face all sorts of challenges like having to cope with going to places you usually drink and not drinking, etc. If you can make it two months you have a good chance of sticking to it.

I'm sorry that may not be helpful, but I simply did. Alcohol tastes terrible and I never felt the urge to not be able to think properly. I like being in control. It felt pointless to spend money to damage my cognition, inhibit my risk-taking mechanisms, and feel awful the next day.

For me not to even get started, however, it was helpful to get into exercising as I was growing up. It was one extra motivator not to drink. I enjoyed exercising more than I enjoyed any possible "social benefit" of drinking.

3 things stand out to me in your description, based on similar experiences of my own (though not with drinking):

- It does not seem entirely clear to me why you want to stop, other than a vague idea that you might be better off that way. Figure out why first. How does not drinking make you a better person, concretely? Write that down. Share it with other people. Live your life around those important ideas. Make them a part of who you are.

- Stop being hard on yourself. It will only make the problem worse. We all make mistakes. Acknowledge it, try to figure out what caused it, fix the causes as close to the root as possible, and move on. Not drinking isn't a goal you fulfill and then you've done it. Not drinking is a process that you partake in every day. Just because you didn't one day does not diminish the value of doing so in the next 1, 2, 7, 30 days.

- Get external support with the two things above. Talk to a therapist or other people in your situation. When you're going in your old ruts, it's very hard to create change. It takes a lot of persistent work. It's helpful to have someone else sometimes remind you of why you are doing it, when you forget yourself.

No idea if following would be of use to you. Just thoughts based on my own experience.

If you do not have strong dependence - be aware of not liking side effects of alcohol, and disassociate good time with friends from consuming alcohol.

If you have bad memories about yourself being drunk - maybe idea of disliking yourself that is drunk would be of use (and being aware of that dislike at the moment when you decide if you are going to drink that first bottle of beer that evening or not.

If you are ok with just rarely drinking some small amount of alcohol - do not obsess/fixate on idea of not drinking ever. It will likely be easier to not drink alcohol if this topic is not tangled with internal conflicts and bunch of feelings/emotions.

i got covid - and then murderous acid reflux which i'm on medication for. I used to have a beer after work (just one) nearly every day. Since June - i've not drank once until i got over covid (2 months later). Here we are nearly 4 months later and a single drink just feels aweful to me now. The liquid just sits in my stomach taking up room like it's not supposed to be there, and i'm getting no joy from it whatsoever. My night is pretty much ruined now if I do have a single drink, and reflux gets worse too.