Support thread for anyone trying to lead an Alcohol free life - Winter 25

[Lavrander]

Hello and welcome!
This thread is for anyone who is trying to live an alcohol-free life. It was first set up by @drybird and has grown into a safe, supportive space to share thoughts, ask advice, swap experiences, or simply check in as we give up and keep off the booze.

There’s no judgment here – just encouragement. Whether you post every day, once in a while, or just read along quietly, you’re part of the group. Many of us have found this thread invaluable, whether brand new to abstaining or years into AF life.

Wherever you are on the journey, someone here will have been there too. Don’t be shy about posting – we love celebrating successes of all shapes and sizes, and we’ll support you through the tougher times as well.

The only thing we ask is that your aim is complete abstinence. If your goal is moderation or a break, there are a couple of really good threads on this board that will be a better fit. That doesn't mean that slips don't happen, and we'll support you in picking yourself back up and carrying on.

Living alcohol-free isn’t always easy in today’s world, but it is absolutely worth it. And you don’t have to do it alone – we’re here to help each other realise just how good AF life can be.

So lovely to hear all of these positive stories of hangover-free New Year's Days. I would like to share my 365 days AF. I read this thread nearly every day though I rarely post, will try more in 2026!

Last night we had friends for drinks then went to the pub. It was my birthday as well but I am so glad I didn't drink.Never thought I could do that!

Just wanted to encourage those who are starting out that it is so worth it. Even if you have setbacks, every single AF day is to be celebrated

Happy new year lovely shipmates. I hope 2026 brings you much joy.

I woke up to a texted list from my M about things she wanted me to get from the shops (she's got the lurgy). I pointed out that not many shops were likely to be open today, but went anyway. DB is visiting in a couple of days - supplies are needed for him. M says she might put him off though, as she doesn't want him to be exposed to lurgy (I am immune, it seems). Fortunately St. Tesco d'Express was granting access, so supplies have been procured. I sent Sid ("Pawn Sacrifice") in first, armed with the Easy Peelers, just in case. All was well. Happy new year! 🥳😀

We didn't stay up for the new year, Sid is generally out as soon as snout hits pillow, but there were a lot of fireworks round here last night. The last lot we heard started around 10.30 - I heard the lady opposite's dogs going beserk before I heard the first firecracker, poor sods.

Sid and I love a dippy egg @WendyWagon, I'm a devil for stuffing as well - one of our work cafes has a vegetarian option which is just stuffing wrapped in flaky pastry. I'd walk over hot pins for one of them.

Strength and courage. It will be alright. x

Congratulations on your anniversary @AshMum and happy birthday :) what have been your most positive changes over the year?

@TwoNicePuppies same I can’t remember a time or occasion in my adult life where alcohol wasn’t really involved I’m so happy to be free. Weirdly I have a bit of guilt that my husband isn’t really drinking either, like I’ve forced his hand but he says he’s fine and wants to be supportive.

I had a bit of a weird night as I massively fell out with my teens for arguing with me, we have our own business and doing ok financially but I grew up with money being very this tight, I got a job as soon as I could at 14 and always did lots of chores at home. I think it’s a particularly triggering subject for me, mine really need a lot of pushing to help around the house and always asking for money. I probably could do with some therapy ….
Also they’d talked my husband into buying them some alcohol can blue vodka things, fairly low apv but had 3 each and were being a bit silly. I’d said 2 max. They are good kids aren’t out partying all the time, have nice friends etc and whilst I know that they will have to navigate alcohol themselves again I just didn’t like it and don’t feel I have the tools to deal with it without losing my temper. So I took myself off to bed and hid the rest of the cans. I don’t know if anyone has any advice on this but it’s made me start the year feeling a bit melancholy when I should be so happy to be sober.

So. A dry NYE. Not many, if any, of the regulars on here have reached my age (because heavy drinkers my age are usually no longer above ground!). But the last sober NYE I experienced was as a teenager. I won’t mention the year but at the school disco Alice Cooper, David Bowie, Deep Purple and Mott The Hoople were on the gramophone. It was pre Slade’s Merry Christmas hit, and the Christmas record was John Lennon “Happy Christmas (War is Over)”. So yes it was a dry NYE. But the music was not as good! Stay dry sobernauts!

@ShyMaryEllen i also love a dippy egg, caught the end of Dirty Dancing yesterday, what a great movie.

@REP22 I’m glad Sid wasn’t bothered by the fireworks, we went to a party recently and they had the noiseless ones and they were just as good.

I used to be allowed a bottle of Babycham when I was a teenager. NYE was about the only time my parents drank anything other than my dad's horrible home-made wine (which stank the house out when he was making it, and then we'd have demijohns exploding periodically while it was fermenting, covering the bathroom where he put them in smelly brown foam). I tried a Babycham in later life from nostalgia and it was the most horrible sickly sweet stuff ever, can't think why I enjoyed it as a teenager.

@PhantomOfAllKnowledge my grandad used to brew his own wine. I can still remember the fixed smiles of my DDad and M when another bottle of "Parsnip, 1973" was proudly placed on the dinner table. Granny finally put a stop to it when he blew up the shed (which included the outside toilet).

This has made me laugh!

Home made booze was very popular back in the day. My dad used to buy kits to make beer and wine from shops that specialised in selling them, and there was always something bubbling and blooping in the airing cupboard, and concoctions filtering in outhouses. My parents bottled it in old beer bottles and served it from one of their 100 cut crystal decanters, as though that would disguise the horrible flavour and guests would think it was shop bought.

Husband went through a phase of making wine out of random things. Once he made it from barley - it was lethally alcoholic, and very sweet, if memory serves. The worst was made from cartons of juice - I seem to remember it having alarming laxative qualities.

I persevered though, and became quite a connoisseur 🙄. The trend is probably due a revival, come to think of it. Another good reason for being teetotal.

@ShyMaryEllen "The trend is probably due a revival, come to think of it. Another good reason for being teetotal."

You're not wrong. I remember Boots Kitchenware selling vast numbers of homemade beer kits back in the day. The most recent reference I can recall to modern home-brews was in 'This Country' when Kerry's dad was making Skittles Vodka. Not tempting.

😆

That has made me chuckle - sounds just like my dad, he'd make his wine out of pretty much anything he grew on his allotment, it tasted like alcoholic dishwater.

I think you must be a similar age to my husband - late Boomer?

He has now been dry since early 2022. He developed cirrhosis of the liver and horrendous ascites - his stomach swelled up like a balloon, he is very thin so this really showed. He had to have them drained and the doctor told him if he carried on drinking he'd be dead within a couple of years. This shocked him into stopping. His liver is monitored now and though it can never fully repair itself, it has improved a lot.

I carried on drinking while he was stopped which in retrospect was very selfish of me. I have great respect for the way he stayed off the booze while I was stupidly drinking. Since I have been dry it's a strong motivator to me to stay dry, as well as wanting it for my own health and mental wellbeing, because I won't be putting temptation in his way by having alcohol in the house.

@FiloPasty No advice as I am childfree but I think you are doing the right thing presenting alcohol to your children as something that needs to be treated with great caution. While my parents were not heavy drinkers, they didn't try to caution my sister and me about alcohol when we were of an age to start going to pubs/off-licences, they took the view of letting us make our own mistakes.

I don't remotely blame my parents for the unhealthy and dangerous habits I developed - that's on me and me alone - they role-modelled occasional, moderate drinking - weekly glass of home made wine with Sunday dinner, glass of sherry at Christmas/NYE - but I wish they had been stricter over my drinking as it might not then have become such an ingrained habit with me by the time I was 20.

@ShyMaryEllen ”alarming laxative qualities” really made me chuckle.
I remember my dad and uncles making all kinds of horrible home brew concoctions. I was never allowed them but do remember having alcohol from quite a young age and of course the obligatory Christmas babycham.
And like many teenagers in the early 90s spent many an evening drinking all manner of hideous beverages.

@FiloPasty - thanks for the good wishes - the main advantages for me have been decent sleep and the brain space that comes with not trying to moderate any more. Over the last few years of drinking I was weighed down with feelings of remorse the next day which have now gone. I still make mistakes but no longer beat myself up about them. I understand you with the teen drinking. I bought some beers/ciders for my 17 yo and his friends as some came with their parents last night but it did make me feel uneasy. The problem is that you don't want to make it taboo, it is a hard balancing act.

Thank you @Adsy1988

Congratulations on your year too @AshMum and happy birthday for yesterday.

Sorry @ShyMaryEllen I think I missed yours- a belated happy birthday to you.

Another one here who grew up with a home brew enthusiast parent- our airing cupboard was always full of demijohns of the stuff too. My sister and I were encouraged to drink from the age of 9. Absolutely appalling.

Congratulations @AshMum
@FiloPasty its the same for me, during the 1 dry Jan & 3 AF months on meds I simply worked & hibernated (the 3 months was during lockdown) so didn’t have to avoid the temptation!
I don’t have kids but have many nieces & nephews, my siblings allowed them to have the odd weak drink at home from ~16yo so it wasn’t some magical thing to aspire to when they hit 18, it seems to have worked as none of the older ones drink much at all, in fact those 20+ and many of their friends are gym bunnies who refuse to ‘poison their body’.

@PhantomOfAllKnowledge oh yes, Babycham (vile but lovely when you’re 10!) @REP22 @ShyMaryEllen @Carpetburn @IChooseTo We also made awful wines & home brews & like others they exploded in the shed/airing cupboard more than once! I remember a particularly bad banana situation! Unfortunately I had (have) 1 alcoholic parent and the other is a religious nut who’d only have the church wine, the alcoholic would actually encourage my siblings & I to get drunk to wind up the other side of the family. 😢

Homebrew was crazy, we also had a corridor full of gear and my dad making blackberry wine and a rather potent banana one!

Hello all do you mind if I join the thread? I’ve been lurking

I just successfully did my first AF Xmas and NY since I was in late teens,
I’ve been sober for 9 months ❤️ went dry one day at a time from the day after my birthday in March 2025

Well done. That’s a great achievement.

Hi @ScrimMN. Of course you can join - welcome! How did you find Christmas and New Year? With 9 months already under your belt I hope you're feeling great. What was your motivator?

I do remember the home brew kits in Boots but I'd never heard of brewing wine in an airing cupboard!
On the talk of teenagers / young adults and drinking, I think you have to treat it like most things in that you can neither be really for or against it. I think you did the right thing @FiloPastyand just taking yourself off to bed. I couldn't have abided the silliness either and I can imagine it would have been stressful to see them like it. I was given Bacardi breezers from around the age of 12 but I actually think it was my parent's heavy drinking (which still is incredibly problematic but that's for another thread) which contributed to my poor attitude to drinking as I got older.

Great work @Slackfoxy. Although I have to say there are definitely better Christmas number ones than that John Lennon one ;-)

Morning shipmates.

A good sleep was had after I took the last of my hospital meds.

On the subject of teens mine are now young adults, one tea total and the other the booze police. My son even reminded me of my shenanigans before he left for London this week. (we have a table full of booze gifts and it made him uneasy). My DC never bought booze @FiloPasty and their dad wouldn't have as he comes from a religious non drinking family. I of course in those days wouldnt have noticed as i was so bladdered! If youre brave enough I would just say 'dont be me'. If they're 16/17 it will be hard but most gen z are not drinking. My son is 26 and a gym bunny. Everything is controlled!
I and many others have wasted half a lifetime pouring rotten vegetation (in water) down our throats !
Time for a new us.
Be powerful my friends.

My two both drink, but socially. They can drink too much when they go out, but neither of them drink in the house unless they have people over, which is not very often as they both work, and both houses have a shift worker in residence. they are 32 and 34, so late millennials, I think.

I don't know whether they chose not to drink at home because of their childhood, but I do know that if I could erase that and not have them grow up with a mum who drank I would do it in a heartbeat. I think I hid it when they were children, but they definitely saw things they shouldn't have when they were teenagers. I don't want to preach, but shipmates who can avoid the guilt I feel about that would benefit so much if they stop before it's too late. You can't turn the clock back, and they only get one childhood and one set of memories when they grow up. Also, they still need you when they are adults, and if you kill yourself by drinking and check out early they lose there, too. Do it for them if you can't do it for you.

Its interesting what @ShyMaryEllen says about young adults . My dc were distraught when they thought tbey would lose me last year. My mum died when my daughter was one and she grew up without a granny. It is a different dynamic when you have another female there for you. My DHs mum lived abroad and was really quite old. My granny although not an 'aple pie maker' taught me to sew and about fashion.
I'll be quite old when my DC have children but i hope to be able to help as a sober influence.

Evening shipmates and welcome to @ScrimMN 9 months is great! I have a way to go yet!
I have one grown up DC who drinks and one grown up one who doesn’t. But I know they both prefer my company AF!
It’s fab to see so many coming back to share milestones too. Thank you! Day 40 today.