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Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?

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Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?

#141

Post by serial_dev »

It is not the same, but I quit smoking recently. Some things that worked for me:

* Find the reasons why you started this bad habit: I was a lockdown smoker: the best part of the day during the lockdowns for me was when I went out to our balcony with my wife and we had a coke and cigarette. What is the reason why you enjoy drinking? Can you get similar results without drinking? My wife and I started going for a walk whenever we wanted to smoke, this helped us relax, spend time with each other without the negative effects of smoking.

* Recognize the circumstances under which it is extremely difficult to stop: For me, it was hard to stop after an extremely frustrating and unproductive meeting, before and after job interviews, etc... in short, under stress. When do you tend to "fall off the wagon"? Once you recognized this, you can attempt to mitigate. I attended meetings with my running clothes on, and if I felt frustrated after the call, I went for a run.

* Be honest with your loved ones about your struggles. I told my wife and sister that I enjoy smoking, but it makes me feel physically sick and it destroys all my ambitions for the day. They could help you in many ways.

* Do not make the bad habit easy for you: I don't have cigarettes or beer at home, this way when I get the urge, my laziness might save me (who wants to go to buy cigarettes when it is cold outside?)

* Don't beat yourself up over small setbacks: guilt is a negative emotion that usually just triggers more of the bad habit. Recognize that you are human, forgive yourself and move on, feeling guilty will only work against you.

* If you had a small setback, do not make it big: if I badly desired a cigarette and I bought a pack, I smoked one or two, but after my "uncontrollable" desire was satisfied, I threw the other 17 out.

This list worked for me, but it might not work for you. I came up with it, there is no research behind it.

Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?

#142

Post by frant-hartm »

DavidPeiffer wrote: post #108

Everyone has different experiences, my path was admittedly much easier than many other people. I haven't had any alcohol in about 2 months. Prior I was consuming 1-3 drinks per week, almost exclusively beer, and almost never 3 drinks in a day. I got sick with COVID, found a podcast episode talking about the effects of alcohol and thought I'd give it a listen. [1] The long and short of it is that alcohol is harmful to…

1-3 beers a week is not what's usually called drinking. It's not even clear if 1 beer (500 ml 5% alcohol) a day is more harmful or beneficial to a healthy adult.

Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?

#143

Post by can16358p »

Substitute with something productive that makes you feel good.

A side project? Photography? Reading blogs while on the go? Podcasts? Playing an instrument? Doesn't matter, anything would work.

I know it's much easier said than done but it's also probably easier than you think once you break the habit for a few days.

Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?

#145

Post by sam_lowry_ »

Create a culture of drinking out of a simple, mindless process. Visit the Napa Valley, do whiskey tours in Scotland. Learn how to do proper testing and how to evaluate wine, whiskey, porto, beer or whatever your preferred drink is.

Try to distill alcohol yourself or brew a beer. You can brew make beer the Cantillion style even in your bathtub, if you can withstand the smell.

Be resourceful.

Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?

#146

Post by ffwacom »

cassonmars wrote: post #91

I used to put away a liter of vodka a night. I kept it up for years, accumulating a solid decade of heavy drinking. I was miserable. It was souring my relationship. The stress from work, personal life, and declining mental state of course made me feel even more compelled to drink. I was becoming a shell of my former self, and my dreams were becoming strictly that. I had a confluence of events that changed my course:…

Amazing.

I’m coming up on my second year sobriety anniversary, if it’s not too personal could you talk more about this:

“A real kind of personal work that most people will never have to put into themselves”?

Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?

#147

Post by randomsearch »

chatterhead wrote: post #113
casparvitch wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same transition process from omnivore -> vegetarian and vegetarian -> vegan. It was hard at first, largely because of ingrained habit, but it gradually became revulsion as you describe. You have motivated me to try sobriety, thanks.

It's odd. I'm reaching a point where meat is not appealing. Fish and eggs are my staples; but, ground beef can be hard to look at sometimes and handle. It's strange how one transition leads to others you didn't intend.

I’ve been veggie for 25 years. I accidentally ate some meat a few years and ago and, after vomiting through the night, it took me three days to recover. I actually lost my voice! My body rejected the meat, it felt unnatural to eat it.

Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?

#148

Post by sonofadrunk »

I come from a place where a lot of men start drinking when life ends up turning into a different direction than they expected as young. They use it as a replacement for a therapist, because therapy is relatively new there and people are generally looked down upon if they require it.

I am recently bereaved of my father, who was an alcoholic of about 20 years. His death wasn't immediately due to the drinking but undoubtedly it was one of the causes. For most of this time he had it under control, and it manifested itself as long evenings of watching TV drinking quietly and going to bed late in the night. I wasn't fully in the picture for most of this, and had cursory glimpses during rare visits.

Over this period I watched him get more and more embittered. He had cancer treatment and multiple strokes - the former I suspect were related to alcohol. His second wife and step-children tricked him out of the house they had bought together and sold his car. I suspect they wanted to distance themselves from the drunk he was, but I can't bring myself to discuss it with them now. Slowly all his friends turned away and in a desperate move he returned to his home town to get in touch with childhood friends. Here he couldn't get a job and his friends (old men with separate lives) didn't have time for drinking with him. He decided to retire early.

I started to support him full time about six or seven years ago when his pension wasn't enough (if it ever was truly) to support his addiction and pay the rent.

At first on his own he looked interested in getting a hobby and trying to learn new things. Due to his previous passion for computers - one of my fondest childhood memories was playing on Amiga like computers at his work in the early nineties - he started learning PHP and built a small course material in our native language. We has proud for a while that people were using his website to learn themselves. I was hopeful for a while and helped him with the computer, internet and answered his questions.

However things got worse. His balance wasn't very good because of the strokes and combined with being drunk most of the time it led to multiple accidents. The cancer had taken his sense of smell and he almost set fire to the apartment he was living in when cooking and falling asleep.

My mom and I visited once in a while, as I couldn't bring myself to see the ruin of my father in the rare times I returned to my country all on my own. She helped tremendously first by convincing him to go into a home and then, when he gave up on being sober and deciding he wanted to be back on his own by finding a person to help him with taking care of the house.

Finally, he died this summer, all alone. I didn't go to his funeral, it was my mom again that had to go across country and take care of everything instead of me.

The reason why I'm writing this is not to give you a cautionary tale. I partly blame myself for being an enabler for my father's addiction over the period when I had the power to force him into rehab. I suspect most people would do that for their family. I couldn't. They say hitting rock bottom can be a trigger for an internal desire to fight the alcoholism, but I always had a pillow there and my father never hit it hard enough to matter. For that I am sorry.

You read like a young man, so you can probably make it work for a long time. However, it will never get better by drinking, the only way it will go is worse and lonelier. If you have dependents, at least make sure they won't regret outliving you.

Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?

#149

Post by marginalia_nu »

I've found it easy to stop a great deal of such behaviors by examining not what they promise to deliver, but what they actually brought. I.e. don't look forward, look backward when making decisions.

Alcohol promises a great time. Alcohol delivers a hangover and regrets.

Junk food promises a great time. Junk food delivers poor health and regrets.

Going to the gym promises hardship and struggle. It delivers health. I've never once regretted it.

Reading a book promises struggling and boredom. It delivers wisdom and inspiration. I've never once regretted it.

If you compare what you think you will happen with what you know will happen from experience, it's very easy to see how often you are misjudging these things.

Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?

#150

Post by foobarbecue »

Spindrift!

I've, luckily, never been a heavy drinker (avg 1 drink per day at my peaks), but I wanted to get some abs and found that if I reached for seltzer water or three instead of a beer I was just about equally satisfied. Some of that new non-alcoholic beer looks alright too, keep meaning to try some.

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