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Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?

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Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?

#481

Post by blakewatters »

userlandmax wrote: post #468

I've been sober for 4.5 years now - totally free from alcohol and cannabis (my first and biggest problem). I've also quit smoking. First off, let me say that it took many tries for these abstentions to stick - that is normal, and you should remember that. Be kind to yourself. It's a skill and a habit you are building, and those things will take time. It took me years to finally gain real duration in my abstention. Se…

Agreed. This is aligned with what I was throwing on another thread. Your behaviors were not aligned with your identity so one of them had to go. Sounds like you picked the one you really cared about. Kudos

Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?

#482

Post by Bakary »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #149

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'v…

This sounds a bit backwards to me. Exercise and proper nutrition shouldn't be seen as hardship you take on because the alternative is worse, but the path to understanding the potential of your body and the joy of physical activity and good food. It's a hedonic activity at its root.

The same goes for book reading, except this time it's about the joy of using your mind and being exposed to different modes of thought. In fact, I'm not sure how you gain wisdom and inspiration if reading the book is boring to you.

Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?

#483

Post by _huayra_ »

One thing that worked for me for other addicting behaviors was to properly and deliberately harness regret. If you call upon it in advance of making a regrettable decision, it can be a tool instead of a cudgel.

This book goes over this philosophy well: https://www.danpink.com/the-power-of-regret/

Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?

#484

Post by blakewatters »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #480

I listened to Annie Graces This Naked Mind and it helped me make a rational argument for why I shouldnt drink. I wanted to stop when I started the book mostly because hangovers started getting bad and I was spending too much on booze. I told myself I was going to quit for 90 days. That turned into 6 months. Which turned into about 2 years now. At this point I dont get urges anymore. The first 90 days were the worst.…

The most concerning part of this post is that you could get drunk enough to watch shitty lifetime movies and describe "those shits are fun"

Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?

#485

Post by neillobo86 »

Rather than aiming to cut down completely on alcoholic drinks, I have swapped it for non-alcohol alternatives. I was surprised to see a whole range of non alcoholic beers, dealcoholized wines and even whisky/gin/vodka alternatives that taste similar without the negatives of the alcohol.

Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?

#486

Post by peejfancher »

About 4 years ago I was drinking a bit too much. I was 38 and had been drinking heavily and happily for about two decades. There wasn’t a problem per se but I knew I was overdoing it. My wife and I had our second son showing up soon and I knew the drinking was going to be hard to maintain with a new baby in the mix. I decided to use my critical/dev brain to take an honest look at all the arguments out there against drinking. I loved alcohol and never really allowed myself to take a hard look at all the real negative effects before. So I opened myself up to some resources. There are a ton out there of varying quality. I continued to drink regularly while reading these.

Some of the most helpful I found were: Stop Drinking Sub-Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/stopdrinking/top/?t=all I made myself read a lot of the top posts. It was real helpful reading real-world stories of lives improved by removing alcohol.

Allen Carr's Easyway to Control Alcohol https://www.amazon.com/Allen-Carrs-Easyway-Control-Alcohol/d... This book appears gimmicky and generic but it was very helpful in changing some of my thinking. It is not flawless but it does a great job of going through all your excuses for drinking and why they are all bullshit. I read it twice, print and audio.

This Naked Mind by Annie Grace https://www.amazon.com/This-Naked-Mind-Discover-Happiness/dp... A great follow up to the first book. A more modern perspective from a female author.

I had the advantage of a looming deadline with our new baby coming. This made it easier to pick a date to give not drinking a try. Our son turns 4 in two weeks. I haven't had a drink since he's been born. My life is much improved.

A caveat to these things is you have to actually want to stop drinking for any of this to work. It does not work if you do not open yourself up to the possibility. Finding your reasons is a personal journey you have to make yourself. These resources can help you find those reasons.

Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?

#487

Post by jrwoodruff »

ffwacom wrote: post #146
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”?

Not OP, but I can speak about what this meant to me: Primarily facing my emotions, even learning how to feel emotions again, then learning how to understand and communicate them in a way where I stay true to myself, and live life on my own terms.

Before I started doing this work I approached everything logically. "I shouldn't feel this way, because x, y and z are objectively good." "If I present things this way, I'll get people to agree with me." "I don't want to do x, but it will make so-and-so happy."

It never worked for long, and alcohol has a nice way of suppressing those feelings, as well as the little negative voice in your head that tends to accompany those suppressed emotions.

Rather than trying to logic my way to acceptance and contentment, I've had to learn how to wade into my emotions and figure out productive ways to express what they're telling me.

It's work to improve the relationship you have with yourself; it's still a work in progress for me.

Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?

#488

Post by blakewatters »

coldpie wrote: post #432
jcims wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Left to my own devices, I tend to settle into a pattern of 2-4 drinks per night, 5-6 nights a week (I actually tracked this for a while with a spreadsheet). This is where I would settle as well, except some Saturdays when I'd have a bloody mary in the morning then just nurse gin and sodas from noon until 2am Sunday. Just enough to keep a little happy buzz going, I really don't like getting drunk at all. My daughter…

> My daughter started a practice of not buying alcohol for her home. This has been working for me, too. For a few years in my late 20s I was doing 1-2 drinks per day on average, with a fair number of completely sober days in there as well. Never "problem" territory, but as I got into my 30s, I realized I felt way, way better on the days where I didn't have anything at all to drink the night before. So if I was ever w…

Legit tactic

Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?

#489

Post by thenoblesunfish »

I find it's easier to take action than to resist temptation. So a partial solution might be to look out for goals that make drinking less attractive. Train for a marathon. That might not be great general advice but you're on HN so good chance you'd enjoy the optimization problem and have something (dopamine releasing) to do instead of drink.

Re: Ask HN: How did you stop drinking?

#490

Post by idrock »

Probably not any one thing - but a combination of things:

1. In a work situation once, I was embarrassed while out drinking with the 'team' at my behaviour - not because I made an ass of myself, but I 'went along' with a mean characterization of someone in my group that I never would have done when sober. I decided that wasn't me - and I vowed to NEVER drink with people I didn't respect, or make myself 'vulnerable' to that kind of behaviour.

2. Not drinking 'about something' - like a country song 'drinking because my gal left me' but usually if I drank it was because of stress, it was an escape, a response to painful stimuli, and not a 'joyful enhancement of activity' that it can be in moderation. And finding what I was 'drinking about' (hate your job, feel trapped, an excuse to 'get drunk' etc.) and work on THAT instead.

3. Feeling fat and bloated, and hungover is not something I want to put up with as I get older.

4. Adopting a 'gourmand' vs. 'glutton' mindset - consciously choosing a good experience, vs. the 'mass of experience' - i.e. a shot of a new whiskey enjoyed, vs. a case of Labatt's, etc.

5. Worrying about the cumulative effects of drinking over time - how will you 'know' that you're damaged your liver, brain, memory irreparably? Scary.

So the end result is - in a social (especially work situation) I'll have a drink, but find I rarely finish it - everyone else is on their third or fourth and I'm still enjoying my first. I have a clear head, can enjoy things, etc.

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