Moderation success stories?

[youboozeyoulose]

Has anyone had any success with moderation? I would like to moderate but I'm not sure if I'm just kidding myself.

Think it depends on the issues and your own personality type. Think it probably helped my ex, he could have gone months without alcohol so wasn't addicted in the standard sense, but struggled to stop once he started and that led to various problems. I'd say it's worth giving it a go.

Have you tried to stop / moderate in the past and how did that go?

Nope. I can’t drink in moderation. I kidded myself I could for a long time.

I was drinking far too much a few years ago, and decided to moderate. 3 years on and I now drink 1-2 times a week, a couple of glasses of wine at a time. Some weeks I drink nothing. So it worked for me. But I guess it depends on what your issue with alcohol is, and your personality type.

I have managed to moderate in the past but drinking to deal with stress has crept back in. It definitely seems more of a problem in the winter months. I'm just not sure if telling myself that I can try and moderate is just me kidding myself.

I think we need to deal with the cause of our addictions before we can move out of them tbh. Otherwise we just let them creep up on us again.

Do you have good support to deal with the madness of life? Like parents or friends or colleagues that you can talk to that will support you?

Or could you get on the waiting list for counselling to help you change the way you deal with life’s problems so you feel more in control?

Sometimes a good hard look at life shows that what you think are problems all stem from something else. Like I’m stressed at my job. But the real stress is at home just now. But it’s easier to blame the job than tackle the home life issues!

I work with people who want to moderate and I have seen it happen very successfully. I don't believe it has anything to do with who you are as a person but with how you are willing to feel and what you are willing to do. When moderation becomes about a strict number then that's when I see people rebel. The first thing I have my clients do who want to drink in moderation is for them to become really conscious and aware of their drinking habits and how what's going on when they drink. Awareness is sooooo key. When we see what's going on automatically we're able to start to understand the habit and decide how we want to change things.

I cover topics like this in my podcast '90 Days Later'.

So yes it's possible but yes it requires work.

@brightspice I agree.

Both my parents were/are (mum now dead) alcoholics. I definitely had a dependency problem in my mid-late 20s, didn't drink every day, but used to look forward to my 'drinking nights', did sometimes hide my drinking from my partner, was very calculated about how much I was able to drink etc.... I was hugely in denial as I only drank XX units a week.

Then I got into exercise and started to reduce how much I drank as didn't want to feel hungover if I was doing an event etc... Basically the buzz from the exercise was better than the buzz from the alcohol!

My drinking slowly petered out until I was going years without drinking (or some years with just one drink at Christmas)... I actually got anxious about drinking too much (ie more than a small glass) because I didn't want to feel ill.

Have since had DC and I now don't really do much exercise and not to the same extent of getting a buzz, but still my (lack of) drinking hasn't really changed very much. In the past year I have drunk more than I have in the last 10 (have drunk on about three or four occasions but only 1-2 drinks each time).

But my whole mindset has changed... I don't see drinking as that fun hobby any more, I don't crave it or count down the days until I'm 'allowed' a drinking night.

I am also super aware of how it has destroyed my parents' lives and how mine has been affected by their drinking and there's no way I will put my DC through that. They have never seen me tipsy and I don't want them to grow up with alcohol as being a normal regular occurrence.

I think if anyone wants to try moderation, they need to come at it from a changed mindset around alcohol, which only comes from being sober for several years first. (And after that, they may not even want to go back to it).