Health & Family Quitting alcohol and social life

That was part of it, yeah. Plus I wanted to hike up Damavand, and travel around a bit and see Isfahan, etc.

 

That's dedication!

 

2 months dry today. Feeling great.

 

A big thumbs up there @Propagate.

 

Not to scare the bejesus out of anyone but...

A very inconvenient truth: alcohol isn't good for us

 

A couple of paragraphs from the article.

"It's unfortunate but true - alcohol is a carcinogen and there is no safe dose. Alcohol use increases the risk of mouth, throat, liver, bowel and breast cancers, and is estimated to be responsible for one in 20 deaths around the world."

"There are also things that drinkers can do to help themselves. There is evidence that half of drinkers regularly accept drinks they do not want to avoid peer pressure or offending their hosts. Manning up (an awful phrase - SK) and refusing drinks others try to push on us can reduce total intake. Research also shows that actively counting one's drinks has a dampening effect on total consumption."

 

Well @SatayKing looks like you’ll have to flush your supply of Four Pillars down the dunny. I’m mean directly not indirectly through you.

 

Absolutely no way would I waste any booze unless it goes through me. Awful concept to pour it out.

Yes, alcohol is a poison but so is mercury and we have that floating about in us. It's all a question of risk and quantities all else being equal. Nothing so good as a fine G&T on a hot day.

For others who have reduced or eliminated their intake for reasons which are personal to them all power to them. They have taken a rational approach and adhere to it.

 

ive always wondered, if alcohol magically became extinct or you were forced to live in a alcohol free country, how would most people react

I reckon, all the true alcoholics would struggle and do anything for their fix, and the booze lovers would simply get used to it and go and find a hobby or change their entertainment habits

alcohol is all too easy to get and society and peers simply have it for the sake of it every weekend, or to cure boredom,

Im not even a regular drinker , a binge drinker as they call it, but on a weekend with no kids, and nothing to do at home, am tempted to drink something at home, just for something to do

 

I know for me, anecdotally, I do feel better generally since not drinking. I'm sleeping better, less brain fog, can't say I've much more energy as such (but we have just taken in a rescue puppy that was abandoned, so combined with our current two dogs it's bloody exhausting at home just now). I have managed to up my training considerably and no longer wasting weekend mornings feeling hungover.

I'm two months and a week dry now, after daily drinking for a long time before that, last time I tried to cut-back and go a month dry was January and I fell apart at day 26. This time, no cravings until two nights ago and they hit hard out of the blue. The last two evenings I have literally sat and imagined how good an ice cold beer would taste, topped off with a good whisky. It was incredibly hard not to grab what was in the fridge (particularity as there's still a few bottles of Bridge Road in there and two nice bottles of whisky I was given as a gift for taking in said puppy).

I think it has highlighted to me that I'm kidding myself thinking I could drink again at some point, just for the enjoyment. The feeling the last two nights are very different from "I just fancy a xxxx", it's a feeling of compulsion, which suggests to me that if the bottle gets opened again it may never get closed.

 

You are doing great , keep it up. If you get that again, try to get busy. Just stop whatever you are doing and get busy doing something else. Go for a walk, a run or just get out and do something in the garden ...

 

I honestly don't think anyone needs anything more than a few quick drinks to prove to themselves that alcohol is bad for the body. Hence the hangover and all the vomiting if really abused.

With my own experience, i noticed that not giving my body time to breakdown the alcohol is what gives me the worst hangovers. So, long sessions were i keep to a drink an hour are perfectly fine even if i have 6-8 drinks(Which is a rarity these days). But on the other hand, having even 2 drinks in say half an hour is a guaranteed hangover.

Ohh and it's dry July for me.

 

It's a great idea @wylie and exactly what I did last time I tried to quit a few years back, coming in from work before even opening the fridge I'd grab a pint glass and smash 2-3 pints of water down ASAP. Last thing I wanted to do was float a beer over that. It really helped break the habit cycle that time.

 

Have successfully managed to restrict my alcohol consumption to 1 - 2 beers a few times a week. A couple of enjoyable specialty craft beers with the wife of an afternoon. Happy with that.

Spirits however is a no go. It’s impossible to stop at one or two, at least at this stage.

Fortunately I don’t really like wine any more so giving that a miss is easy.