Download an alcohol tracking app and log every drink. I drank what I would call an average amount so I just did it out of interest. After seeing how much and how often I drank I just decided to stop almost completely.
Having a log and a graph and being forced to log every drink made it obvious.
Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?
251–260 of 600 posts
Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?
#252I've cut back by switching to non-alcohol beer. I've found that I enjoy the taste of beer, but I don't enjoy how shitty alcohol makes me feel. NA beer tends to solve that for me. Lots of good options coming out. * Just the Hazy by Sam Adams is top tier. * Athletic brewing is solely NA beer - lots of different varieties. * Heineken 0.0 is great * O'Douls amber is surprisingly passable as well I suspect the options wil…
Its a bit absurd that heineken sells their 0.0 beer for just as much as their regular beer. Also, you seem to have quite the selection of na beers near you :)
Why? It costs more to produce.
Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
How often did you drink a liter of vodka a night?
They mean every night, as in each night. About 20 standard drinks in a bottle of vodka, so takes 18-20 hours to process all the alcohol before starting again. It's just about doable with a day job if you start as soon as you get home from work and don't have to drive in the morning. I know because that was me once. This is why people with serious drinking problems find the "I drink a beer every night I must be an alc…
Someone drinking really regularly fires up their MEOS which also reduces/oxidises alcohol and can significantly speed up standard drinks per hour. Like, in the realm of double.
That’s why you or a drinker may have started to get the shakes 24 hours after you first drunk - they haven’t had any etoh in your system for 12+ hours
Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?
#254I'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'v…
Alcohol promises a great time. Alcohol delivers a hangover and regrets
Sure, but simply ignoring the time in between where alcohol effectively does deliver a great time, and which is for many people the addictive aspect of it, isn't exactly easy. Or at least not quite as easy as downplaying the hangover and regrets, as addicts often do.
And since your core advice is basically not to misjudge, it's extra weird to me to leave out parts. At least in my opinion you should look at the whole issue. But then judge by assigning value to it: is the great time really great, or is it just you hanging in a chair, head spinning and almost too drunk to be able to make conversation? Is it really great, or is it just you so drunk you sometimes fall over while dancing? Was it really a great time coming up with philosophical insights into mankind, or was it all just bullshit?
Going to the gym promises hardship and struggle. It delivers health. I've never once regretted it.
This suffers from the same issue, but the other way around. Sports can result in blessures, especially the more extreme ones. You shouldn't imo just ignore that. Instead be honest to yourself and call it what it is: it's addictive, it makes you feel great, it delivers health, and all of that is enough to make the occasional (depending on what you do) pain (physical, but also mental i.e. getting depressed because not able to work out) worth it.
Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?
#255Liver function check and then a DNA test for me.
Drinking was always beneficial to me, I guess. I suffer from depression and drinking has always good a good way to clear my head. Knowing that I could get drunk at the weekend and feel okay would help me get through the week...
I found I had raised liver enzymes then a DNA test showed I have a fairly uncommon polymorphism that means alcohol does 7x more damage to my liver. Basically, if you have this polymorphism and you drink long-term you'll almost certainly blow out your liver. And when I say long-term, I mean like ~10 years of moderate to heavy drinking is often plenty.
So it might not help you stop drinking, but if you're a heavy drinker I'd highly recommend you get tested to understand how at risk you are. You might even find something worrying enough to make you stop.
Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?
#256I was the typical teen/early 20's for the UK at the time (~2000) and while I didn't drink during the week I drank to *oblivion* at the weekend - every weekend.
I went out one weekend (6pm saturday) when I was 27 and got so drunk that I didn't remember anything from 9:30pm til ~5PM on the Sunday - Scared the shit out of myself and resolved to never get drunk again - everyone who knew me said "yeah right, see you in the pub on Saturday" but I stuck to it.
I didn't have a drink at all for the next decade and these days I have 1 or 2 a handful of times a year (and raise a glass of scotch to my grandfathers every Christmas) - haven't been drunk or had a hangover in 15 years.
> Any tips on cutting out something completely and how to get out of just hating yourself when you fail?
Failing is part of life, the trick is to accept your failure and then move on to not repeating it - otherwise you get into a loop of "try, fail, be dispirited, continue to fail, try " - basically be kind to yourself and remember that everyone struggles with something.
Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?
#257I'm a German living in one of the heaviest wine regions of Europe. Social drinking is a way of life here, there are constant festivals, and it's normal to drink moderately when with friends. Honestly, as horrifying as that may sound to other cultures, it works quite well. However, there are some mostly unspoken rules that must be met for drinking to 'work' well, from my experience:
Not having a drink when together with drinking friends must be fine and accepted by everyone. You must be able to NOT drink when you don't want to. Your consumption must not unacceptably interfere with your life or the life of others. You must be able to enjoy a drink in moderation without escalating further. If you drink excessively, make sure it's only once in a while and in a safe environment.
In your case, there is apparently a fine line between using alcohol to slightly enrich your experience on the one end and feeling "like garbage" on the other. If you can't ride that line because your consumption always escalates, it may be best to cut out alcohol completely - at least for a while - by reasoning about the inevitable outcome when you're still sober. I have two friends who never drink, for that exact reason.
Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?
#258Everyone 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.
It seems to be fairly clear that even small amounts of alcohol are unhealthy.
For example https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323252 (2018).
Quote:
In August, we covered a large-scale review that drew an unequivocal conclusion: it’s not, in fact, safe to drink any amount of alcohol.
Senior author Dr. Emmanuela Gakidou referred to the idea that one or two drinks are safe for health as “a myth.”
She said that her and her colleagues’ research found that any level of drinking is tied to an increased risk of early death, cancer, and cardiovascular events.
Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?
#259I stopped drinking at 19, basically as a test for myself. I never liked most alcoholic beverages and absolutely hated the feeling of loss of control that came with alcohol. Saying no consistently can be annoying, depending on the people around you and how they view that decision, but over time people seemed to become more accepting. Which they absolutely should be. No one questions when you say you don't smoke, but not drinking is somehow seen as weird.
Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?
#260>I enjoy the act of drinking - literally having a drink, or the feeling right after a drink. I hate how I feel an hour later, the foggy head feeling.
Hydrate the same time you consume alcohol and after. One 500 ml of beer takes around 300 Alcohol metabolism incurs body dehydration, may as well be that you're mildly dehydrated on top of being poisoned by toxins.
>I don’t buy it for weeks at a time, then cave and have a 12 pack in a weekend and feel like garbage most of the time.
You must evaluate your stress factors. It's not easy because most likely you use alcohol as a sedative tool to hotfix some issues.
>Any tips on cutting out something completely and how to get out of just hating yourself when you fail?
Not really, unless you identify the stress factor and deal with it/your attitude to it.