Anyone managed to move from problem drinking to moderation?

[WTFs]

I drink a bottle of wine a day, every day, without fail. I never drink before 6pm, never drink more than the bottle, but the thought of not having my wine at 6pm scares me. I don't know why, other than I have allowed myself to become emotionally dependent on it. I need to cut down obviously, probably need to give up, but I wondered if anyone had successfully pulled themselves back from heavy drinking without totally giving up?

I was nearly where you are following my divorce. Not a whole bottle every night but I easily could have done.. I forced myself to stop after 1/2 or 2/3 as I had work and young kids. I certainly would think ahead and work out what I had in the house etc. First I swapped to g and t through the week.. Longer drinks, mixed weaker but pimped up with ice, grapefruit, pomegranate seeds etc. Then I managed to drop the G unless it had been a really tough day. Saved wine for the weekends. To me it was a ritual. Something I deserved after surviving another day and sometimes yes I did need the buzz and fuzziness to numb the hurt of ex fucking off with OW. I have a friend though who really battled with alcoholism and I decided I wanted to address it before I had no other choice than to stop totally.. I like a drink, so the above technique really helped and I still use it if I feel the wine creeping in again. Also, nice flavoured tonics or ginger beer, something that's just yours that only drink at that time of day or night.

I’m most of the way through “The Sober Diaries” as recommended on here. Clare Pooley who wrote it had EXACTLY the same thought. The thought of never having a glass of wine again is absolutely unimaginable to many of us.
It’s a brilliant read because she literally writes what all us over drinkers think. She gave up completely after aiming to give up for 100 days. She wrote that many people give up being sober too quickly ,so they never get to the “ good bits”. They do they hard work of giving up for a couple of weeks, then try to moderate themselves and end up back where they were a month later.
She wrote a good analogy about how giving up was like being in a field full of lovely things and alcohol. And how it gets more muddy abd miserable over time. Over the hill is the next field full of sober people who tell you it’s great there but because we don’t see it and it’s hard work getting there, we stay stuck in the increasingly horrible one.
I think long haul is the way to go.

I think the fact that you still have some successful 'rules' in place (not before 6pm, not more than 1 bottle) suggest it hasn't spiralled totally out of control and is theoretically possible for you to claw back.

Could you try something like:

Week one - chose one dry day for the week and have no more than 3/4 a bottle on all other days.

Week two - 2 dry days, max of 1/2 bottle on other days.

Week 3 - 2 dry days, max of 1/3 bottle on other days.

Week 4 & ongoing - at least 3 dry days every week, no more than 1 glass of wine on 2 days, option of having up to 2 glasses of wine on the remaining 2 days.

I'd also commit to keeping an alcohol diary so that you can see it written right in front of you if it starts to creep back in. Then I'm can be quickly addressed and you don't have to go through a long phase of head in the sand before needing to give up completely.

Important things to consider that will contribute to how manageable this is for you: have you thought about why you drink so much and do you have people you can gather around you (even if just virtually) as support?

Similar to @HugeAckmansWife

I was drinking a minimum of a bottle of wine a night and, during a very stressful year, most nights a bottle and a half. I have been drinking pretty heavily and most nights for over 25 years.

I first cut down to the 'never more than the one bottle'. Then in December 2020 started having a long G&T with a measured single gin, loads of ice and nearly half a litre of flavoured tonic. I then allowed myself up to half a bottle of wine. Since the beginning of February I have cut this down to 1/3 of a bottle each week night and the half bottle on Fridays and Saturdays. The long term intention is to drop the gin from the tonic and to have no alcohol Monday, Tues and Wednesday. 1 glass on a Thursday and Sunday and up to half a bottle Fridays and Saturdays. A loose schedule though, I'm not going to beat myself up if I don't totally stick to it.

I class myself as a psychological alcoholic. There is no physical addiction and when I have had to go without for a few nights for medical reasons I have had no problems except difficulty in going to sleep.

There’s a good behavioural expert called Shahroo Izadi who works in this area. I think she wrote a book so you could have a look at that.

Ex addictions counsellor here
Which is the best glass of wine? For some ..if not most drinkers, it's the first one . I used to work with problem drinkers to change their relationship with alcohol, and the evening drink ritual was so important to many of them
... look at minimising harm and risk if total abstinence was not yet the goal ( it's easier to give up entirely for most people but you have to get there in your own time ), so we tried half bottles, even miniatures , to reduce the excuse of having to finish off a full bottle . This was often successful as the initial 'need' was satiated by a relatively small amount of alcohol ..if a second glass was had , we tried to water it down so the psychological impact was still met but the physiological damage was minimised .

I give these examples as ways to trick or diminish the call of the bottle if abstinence isnt for you just yet, but taking time out from alcohol for a while at least would be the best thing to do if you can .

Me. I wasn't having as much as you are, but I was hitting 50 units a week. I had a weird moment of revelation - I was recovering from a hideous cold, the kind where breathing is an optional extra, and having gone back to work too early I found myself pouring a glass of wine and then realising I couldn't bloody taste it. It was just habit.

That made me decide to do a dry month, with two possible outcomes: 1) if I found it hard in any way, seek out treatment and never drink again, or 2) if I found it easy, no alcohol Mon - Thu and minimal drinking on weekends.

I've been at option 2 ever since - that was in the summer of 2015. I reckon I was slipping into dependence and just caught myself. What also helped was the dawning realisation that my husband was a functioning alcoholic. He kept drinking, tried to sabotage my changes and ended up dead 3 years later, just before the divorce came through.

Meanwhile I had 5 hellish years with marriage breakdown, job loss and 4 major bereavements and it didn't change my new-found drinking habits. I think I've been very fortunate.

Yes I have had a problem before and reduced it. I still drink and occasionally get too drunk but it is predominantly under control.

Thanks all, really interesting. I can give up for periods so I know I'm not physically addicted. Its totally in my head. I use it to change my state, whether it be bored, stressed, happy, sad, anxious...whatever my mood I find it too much so I drink to take the edge off. I need to find a better way of being comfortable with myself. But dont quite want to give up since I worry about being the odd one out.

I crept up to a bottle almost every night. At least, I wouldn’t have an alcohol free night in any case. Sometimes I’d go over to a bottle and a half. It was just through boredom tbh, but one day I did catch myself on and think wtf are you doing? I really like white wine and champagne but can’t stand most other alcohol so trying to substitute for a G and T or a beer wouldn’t really have helped (I like an occasional G and T though and a non G and T also works almost as well if the tonics a good one) I also realised it wasn’t even the alcohol that I needed, it was the sit down at the end of a hard day and give yourself a reward, that I needed. Once I realised that, a cup of tea (crucially), made by someone else for me, became a good substitute for about four days out of seven. I have to say it’s more difficult since last March because, DH and DDs days have structure but mine don’t as I wasn’t working at the time of lockdown and so I’m kind of just facilitating everyone else’s life atm, it’s sooo boring I’ve found I started reaching for the bottle again just for something to do. I’ve given myself a slap round the face and gone back to wine only about three out of seven days, and sometimes not even then as I don’t always fancy it if I stop to think about it. I’ve realised that even after a couple of (probably large) glasses I wake up feeling irritable and not well rested, which has made me even less likely to drink as I’d rather be raring to go and wide awake everyday.

The Allen Carr book is an interesting read. His take on it is that everyone who drinks is an addict and will continue along the road of increasing addiction if they don't stop drinking totally. I am not sure I agree, but I may be in denial!

I cut down massively years ago having become worried about my reliance on alcohol. Definitely lived for opening a bottle after work on Friday.
After cutting down I just kept decreasing (tolerance was so low I felt terrible after drinking anything). Then I had a couple of years of going for longish periods (couple of months) at a time without drinking.
But I agree that you never get the the real benefits of not drinking if you keep going back. I haven't had a drink for over two years. I don't miss it any more.

Yep, me too. I spent years drinking about half a bottle every night and rather more than that at weekends, and genuinely believed I couldn't stop. I eventually started doing self-hypnosis with a woman called Georgia Foster www.georgiafoster.com/ which made me understand some of the triggers behind why I drink, and I got out of those habits. Have had occasions where I lapse, mainly due to stress but I've always been able to get back on track. I'm now basically a weekend drinker, but still drink more than 14 units at weekends. I'm trying to cut down on that at the moment, but mainly because I'm trying to lose weight. I think some people can cut down, because their problem isn't really to do with alcohol - its to do with other stuff, and alcohol is the way they deal with that. But others can't cut down, because their problem is with the alcohol itself.