Anyone else feel like they can’t switch off without wine?

[Bumblebee2345]

Hey ladies, this is anonymous honestly because I’m so embarrassed 😞 I’ve been drinking a bottle of wine every night since around 2017 and honestly I’ve had enough! This isn’t me making excuses, I just want to know if anyone else is like me. I’m so highly strung and I absolutely cannot stand being bored, my brain is constantly on the go and I genuinely don’t know how to chill out in the evening without a glass of wine. I did Dry January this year and honestly I drove my whole household insane 😂 I’ve tried everything from working out, puzzles, watching TV, doom scrolling, keeping busy etc and nothing seems to switch my brain off.

I work 2 jobs, have a successful business, 3 kids, 2 dogs and 1 husband 😂 We’re not in the best place at the moment for different reasons and even he has said if I stopped drinking it would probably end our marriage. My dad was exactly the same, so I do wonder if I’ve just picked this up from him or if I’m actually dependent on it now. I know a bottle every night is a lot and I really want to stop, I’m just scared because I honestly don’t know what I’ll do with myself in the evenings. Has anyone else been like this and actually managed to stop? 😞❤️

I’m with you! I have similar unhealthy drinking habits and am looking to stop. Can’t quite manage it though, I’ve already made the excuse that I’ll do it after the 6 weeks holiday. I have to now though! If I were you I’d look on the alcohol support places, on this thread I’ve seen you’ve got a lot of advice like ‘have a so and so non alcoholic drink’, or ‘barefoot walking helps’. I doubt any of that will help. Drinking is your go to and it’ll take loads of willpower to stop. Personally I’ve never understood the advice of having a non alcoholic tasting like alcohol drink. Um, I drink cause I like getting drunk, not because I like the taste 🤣.

But that's still 8/9 units of alcohol and OP is drinking that every night, which is about 60 units a week. Really is a bit much (like about 4 times the recommended intake!). And I know people do exceed those limits and are fine, but 60 is mad.

well done! Do you think if you hadn’t had had mounjaro then you would’ve conquered it? X

I wonder if dry January was so hard as you were counting down to drinking again. So you had an aim and a goal and it must have felt quite painful.

Instead of that why don’t you do a day at a time. Don’t say oh I’ll not drink until
the weekend etc just don’t set any time limits as it add pressure and creates mental stress.

Wake up tomorrow and say today I won’t drink. Wake up on Monday and say the same. If for some reason you absolutely can’t then go for it - but then the next day - don’t drink again. Don’t feel guilty , just try again. Even if you have a 50% sucsess rate that’s huge and even it’ll go down.

You’ve shown you can do this by doing dry January so this method should work.

anther thing - habit and routine are key to our behaviours. Mine for example is a coffee every morning . I would try and mix your evening routine up to break this habit and the cycle you’ve created. We are creatures of association. At Christmas for example I have to have bowls of chocolate out because …it’s Christmas, with a cheese board I have to have red wine, yet I wouldn’t do either any other times. Break the associations and habits. Good luck OP - i think a lot
of people have had a similar battle.

Ahhh I’m so happy for you well done 👏🏻 I’ve looked at mounjaro but I don’t meet the criteria my bmi is 23. So glad that your on the straight and narrow now xxx

Don't ask your friends for advice, fgs. 🤦‍♀️

If you want too we can help one another?! Make our own little rogue support group xx

I’d cut down but I’ve had a year now of less than 10 units a week.

I found myself drinking more because I didn’t want to waste the bottle so I bought a wine vacuum pump. They also do mini bottles so that might help? I buy really expensive wine so I can only justify the one bottle per week 😂

Ok, I’m in! I rarely use mumsnet so no idea how to do that. Also, I’m a bit pissed now 🤣. Seriously, I know that’s not funny as I have a problem as do you. WE WILL CONQUER THIS!

Also, I’m going to barefoot walk to go and get some wine. It will cure me.

Thank you! We can do hard things 😄

I’m not the person you’re asking, but I also mentioned ADHD in my post because the OP seems to have a lot of traits- inability to sit still/relax, busy mind etc. Like she’s ’driven by a motor’.

‘Adults with ADHD are roughly two to three times more likely to develop a substance use disorder (SUD) than people without ADHD.’ (According to WebMd).

No. Booze never occurs to me. Don’t know why!

I used to need it to relax.
I quit in 2018. Finally. I started with Dry January (on the 18th), which led into Lent (a period of fasting in the Catholic Church), I drifted into Summer - I thought I would do a dry year, I was looking forward to drinking over Christmas. But by then 'you haven't come this far, to only come this far' - the first 6 months were really hard, I knew I couldn't do that again.
I was very like you - busy professional job, children, DH - but I was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. I'd tried the drinking water, the wine free nights, the smaller glasses. I was angry at the dominance of alcohol in my life - the determination to not drink, the planning and effort around reducing consumption. The effort, the failure to control alcohol - so I stopped trying. Alcohol, you win. You have outsmarted me. I stopped trying to reduce or moderate.

The mental peace of it is the best part. I'm not an emotional ping pong ball. I do triathlons now.

Please do something (but get support) I met a woman drinking that much for 18 months who was in her 40s and dying of liver failure. There are so many reasons to stop but this is a life threatening amount of alcohol to be drinking.

Get a health check. The driver for me to reduce my alcohol was finding out I had a very fatty liver - I have a fairly serious chronic health issue and they spotted the liver at one of my routine MRIs. You probably feel OK, but you are damaging your body and won't know until it is too late. You need your liver - you'll miss it when it's gone.

Google Addiction Bird - it is a 4 minute comic strip that explains a lot

8-10 pints?? 18 to 23 units in a single night is a massive binge.

I agree with this. When you surrender all alcohol and just say ‘ok I won’t have any then’ it frees up your time and your mind so much. I learnt to make clothes, bake sourdough, oil paint and grow roses. I have more interests than at any other point in my life and I pretty much don’t even watch TV. Always something more interesting to do.

This is also just incredibly common in women in general. Didn’t all of our mothers ‘never stop’ and ‘never get a minute to sit down’. It’s common outside of ADHD too.

Yes, many women are busy much of the time @SewYellowLikeButter. There is a difference though between being actually busy and being unable to relax even when you have the time to do so.

And yes, my mum was like a headless chicken but she also had ADHD.