Earlier quoted context omitted.
No they didn't?
“Me and all my friends are alcoholic” is a bit ambiguous.
Add the "I just can't have fun without alcohol" and it is not ambiguous.
Ask HN: How do you have fun without alcohol?
181–190 of 208 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you have fun without alcohol?
#182I`m 41 now and sober for almost 5 years. When I started drinking at around fourteen we were always a bunch of people going to partys, festivals, disco and such things it was fun at the beginning. We continued drinking, and I think I never had a whole month without alcohol or getting drunk after I was 20, until around my 35th birthday. Then I just stoped everything, smoking cigarettes, drinking, all the "fun" stuff.
Because I realized we didn't go to partys anymore or were visiting festivals, we were just sitting around at the weekend drinking beer, playing videogames and watching some HeavyMetal bands from the 80s/90s(when we were young) on youtube and complain about how life sucks when you get older and how we would do things different when we only could go back in time.
I realized that I was doing this my whole life, I was always complaining that I couldn't "go back" to change things instead of just trying to live a better life in the present. So, like I said I stoped drinking, started to teach myself programming and math to maybe one day find a job that I like and just live a "normal" life. I'm still unemployed and often times I doubt that I can find a good job, because I wasted 25 years, and it's getting harder every year. But still, quitting alcohol was the best decission of my life. So yes, at the beginning drinking is fun, but in my opinion it's not worth the price that you have to pay for it.
Re: Ask HN: How do you have fun without alcohol?
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
>You need a new group of friends, firstly. This is absolutely horrible advice. Alienating yourself from all of your friends simply because you don't want to drink the same things as them is not a good idea. If you don't want alcohol, then just don't drink it? I have been to many, many, many music festivals, parties, etc. and not drank anything. I can't imagine just exiling myself from all of my friends instead of sim…
I think it hugely depends on whether a particular group of people are your support framework, or your enablers. I don't read the advice as "remove all your support framework, friends, and family and go at it alone". I read it as "find supportive people who can enable your goal". For me, it's absolutely trivial to not drink or not smoke in groups of friends. But that's because I'm NOT a drinker and I'm not a smoker. F…
exactly this. i had no problem hanging out with friends, many of which liked to drink beer while i wasn't. i was never pressured, and nobody got drunk and we all had fun. but if they had tried to pressure me, i probably would have left.
keeping a habit is a lot easier than changing one. change needs encouragement and if that encouragement doesn't come from friends you already have, new friends are needed. that doesn't mean to give up old friends, but it means to get an additional circle of friends.
new friends can be found by joining a new activity or picking a new hobby, or to go visit new locations...
Re: Ask HN: How do you have fun without alcohol?
#184My guide to having a sober life. 1) Focus on good conversations and not drinks (you can get high from a good talk) 2) Excercise! A lot! 3) Focus on the music and dancing and not the bar 4) If people pressure you to drink, day you will do later ( they will forget anyways) or say you the driver 5) Have a sober partner 6) celebrate each Sunday not hungover with sports, sex or what you enjoy 7) If you are drinking to go…
> Focus on good conversations and not drinks Where do you find this. Bars provide me with a building full of people who are likely more sociable and open to talking with randos at the time, though the conversations tend to be dumbed down a bit. The disinhibition is powerful. The only other places I have “good conversations” these days are in niche online spaces, with people I won’t find irl.
OP is college-age, and most colleges have a variety of seminars, which are a great place to start. The people who attend these seminars usually are interested in talking about the same topics informally afterwards.
If you're not in college, any course with content to study where you see the same people multiple times in-person is a good place to meet people interested in talking. If you're not sure what interests you, check out the continuing education catalog of your local community college. If you don't have much practice striking up conversations with sober strangers, it may take a few sessions before spontaneous conversations start up, but by the midway point of every wilderness or language course I've taken people were very chatty.
Re: Ask HN: How do you have fun without alcohol?
#185Books. Books. Books. Books. Books.
A little bit of computer gaming. Some travel. Some more books.
Re: Ask HN: How do you have fun without alcohol?
#186If neither you or your friends can have fun without alcohol, you probably need a new set of friends as well as a therapist to talk through that issue. If you're instead asking what other illicit substance you can substitute alcohol for while your friends are all drinking, that's different. My favorite for that is MDMA. It's an empathogen so it helps you open up in conversations and form deeper connections with people…
While MDMA is nice and can be used as alcohol substitute (Alexander Shulgin called it his no calorie martini) I don't feel like it is safe for regular consumption.
I do it maybe a couple days a year for special occasions or if I really want to go hard at a club/event, but I would be very worried about it's neurotoxic profile if I did it regularly.
Probably an unpopular opinion but cocaine is a lot safer for regular use, atleast when it comes to neurotoxicity. Addiction profile is definitely higher than MDMA though anecdotally speaking such a problem has not been an issue with me or any of my friends (really the only drugs I've seen people really seriously struggle with is opiates).
Re: Ask HN: How do you have fun without alcohol?
#187You need a new group of friends, firstly. It sucks to say, but people who need to drink to have fun will always drag you along that path. It doesn't matter if it's a night on the town, or a board game night, they will always want booze around. Also, they will probably pressure you to drink, because that's what gives them permission to. So find new people who don't drink. Do the normal things you would do, but without…
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There are several cultures (eg. some immigrants) where drinking isn't big. But that would come with its own difficulties of finding something fun to do together.
Re: Ask HN: How do you have fun without alcohol?
#1881) STOP DRINKING IT 2) Get new friends (seriously). If you continue to associate with the same friends, you'll have the same problem and point of view. 3) Let yourself go through the withdrawal of the "fun" 4) Get on with life, figure out what you consider without including alcohol.
This isn’t necessarily true. In college, I only drank very occasionally before I was 21. All of my friends drank. We still had a lot of fun. You don’t just sit around in a circle drinking. I’m currently doing a dry January and I still go out with my friends. There’s plenty of tasty non-alcoholic beverages.
As someone who doesn't drink, I've never minded when friends have a drink over dinner or bring a bottle to game night. But if folks keep pouring all night, there eventually comes a point where I leave early because staying there sober just isn't any fun. Some people often stop after a couple, and some people seldom do.
Re: Ask HN: How do you have fun without alcohol?
#189Weed helps, makes anything boring fun, but im not sure you are in need of an actual replacement, more likely you need a new group of friends.
Re: Ask HN: How do you have fun without alcohol?
#1906 years sober here. Most of the advice so far wouldn't have been much help when I first stopped drinking. It's honestly hard, and the first year or two won't be great. Boardgames and cafes are boring as fuck compared to getting drunk. Sure, rafting and cycling and other examples might fill up a Sunday afternoon, but they don't work for Friday night. Over time you adjust. I've made a few friends that don't drink. I ha…
This is sober and mature advice. There is simply no easy answer to the question: how do I break a bad habit and keep the benefits? Vices have benefits.
The OP took the first step already: admitting that getting drunk is a bad habit.
Breaking a bad habit is like choosing to learn to walk all over again: lots of bumps on the head, and a not a few failures, but eventually you learn to walk again.