How do you stop?

[Caccini42]

I was in an emotionally abusive relationship for decades. it took 2.5 years from the straw that broke my view on our marriage’s back, to actually moving house.

During those years, I was taking antidepressant and betablockera just to cope with day to day life. (Sertraline 50mg and Propranalol 49mg). But I also started drinking - to escape tbh.

When we finally separated and moved house, I instantly ditched the antidepressants and betablockers with no noticeable side affects.

but I can’t seem to ditch the alcohol :(

why?

I’ve tried joining online aA and similar meetings. But all they seem to be is people talking about their day to day life without alcohol?

But I need some help getting to that point!

When do you normally drink, and what have you changed to break the habit?

Can you maybe start by cutting down? How much are you drinking daily?

Can I join in? Like you op, drinking to escape and now I can’t stop, and it’s getting worse. Not impressed with myself this morning.

Using alcohol as a way to escape is really common amongst women (I used alcohol as a coping mechanism for years to deal with my problems, then fixed the problems and was left with the alcohol. Doh).

So you are a step ahead in that you realise how you’re using alcohol. We also dress it up:”I like the taste, it’s fun, it makes me confident” which makes it harder to stop.

It may be that your drinking is at a level that you need help to stop- have you spoken to your GP about it?

If doing it on your own is viable, then I would suggest reading some quit lit. The Alcohol Experiment by Annie Grace is really good as a 30 day “experiment” of not drinking.

I read the day 1 chapter many times! But eventually something clicked and I’m now 20 months alcohol free. I also used the “alcohol free living” threads on here (if I try to link I will lose this post!) which are really helpful if you want to stop completely

Think about what you are normally doing when you drink - and change that routine so it makes it hard to drink. I found the hardest time was between 4pm and 7/8pm, so I would make myself an alcohol free drink (choose whichever you like) at 4pm every day and put on a podcast while I cooked dinner. Or I booked myself into a class of some sort that I had to drive to and obviously not be drinking for in the early evening.

Just an update.

i booked a session with https://drinkcoach.bookinglive.com/. My council funds 6 free sessions. On zoom, camera off. I wasn’t expecting much of it, tbh, but his suggestion was to switch from buying 70cl bottles of gin to buying the pre mixed cans. He said to buy as many as I needed to start with to get near the amount of units I’m used to drinking, then gradually and at my own pace, reduce it by a can a night. Only buy the cans I need each day.

Well, to buy enough cans of premix to match the number of units I was dr8nking was an awful lot of cans, so I started with 8. I wasn’t convinced as, tbh, they are so weak they may as well just be tonic. But they take ages to drink - I found that by midnight I’d only drunk 8 and, actually, that felt ok.

Im now down to 6 and plan to go down to 4 next week.

pros - I’m feeling more energised in the day, more on the ball and motivated to do things,

cons - my sleep is awful, and all of the perimenopause’s hot night sweats are back with a vengeance. I’m not getting to sleep till gone 2am most nights. But, I still feel better during the day than I did when I was having 8 hours sleep helped by lots of gin.

Small steps, I know, but in the right direction. 🤞