How do I stop?

[Toppasito]

I need to stop drinking. I‘ve been using the try dry app and drank 170 units in July. Only two dry days.

I‘ve woken up yet again feeling like shit and feeling like everyone can see it on my face.

I mainly drink in the evening, once the kids are in bed. I settle on the sofa with a movie and a glass of wine which soon turns into a bottle. It’s something I look forward to and enjoy. Then feel regretful the next morning after a sleepless night.

Last night I poured myself a vodka after finishing the bottle of wine, because it wasn’t enough.

Does anyone have any tips to help me stop? Or just some support and reassurance that I‘m not a terrible mother.

I‘ve done dry January before and loved how I felt. But it quickly turned into a wet February afterwards.

I think you need to create a new routine. If your glasses of wine with a movie is your nightly ritual to relax, then you need to find something different. Go to bed with a cup of tea and a book and read. Do some exercise. Do some painting/knitting/baking/whatever and listen to a podcast (there are some great ones focussed on not drinking). If you have time to do anything after the kids are asleep, you have an incredible asset (mine don't sleep til nearly 10pm, not time ever to do anything after that except crawl into bed), make the most of that time. When I stopped drinking, I started using that time when I used to drink to listen to podcasts, to do some baking with the kids, to exercise (if you have a partner at home, you could do so much at the moment in the evenings because it's light), read, started to re-learn a language. One of the things that we often feel we don't have enough of when we have young children is time and I found I got so much time back, which I could use really productively and to help improve my mental health (which was frankly shot).

There was a psychiatrist in the 60s who successfully treated alcoholism with psilocybin. It’s licensed in Australia. Are you doing it to self- medicate mental health issues or is it just that you enjoy it ?

There are lots of benefits to joining groups like AA or other groups involving peer support.

If you've tried to stop but can't, then a reasonable conclusion is that you need some outside help — admitting you need help is a really brave and strong thing to do.

When you join other people working to recover you may find you feel less lonely and you might like picking up sobriety chips etc.

Then one crucial thing I learnt (and am learning) is that it's only ever one day you need to stay sober. Just try to find out what helps you get hour to hour without drinking. It's so easy to slip into thinking about weeks, months, years and get stressed about stopping drinking "forever" but you live life one day at a time.

Don't beat yourself up for when you reset to day 1. Being too harsh on yourself is a recipe for failure. True self compassion involved being sober and picking yourself up gently and getting back to it if you fall down (without being self indulgent about relapse).

I found a lot of use in learning about the neuroscience of addiction. Huberman podcast episode on alcohol. Anna lembke book on dopamine. It helped me get a more compassionate perspective on how alcohol had hijacked my reward pathways and therefore my behaviour.