I can't stop drinking wine

[wineoclock123]

Any tips? I drink wine every night, and I can't seem to get a handle on it. It relaxes me, and makes me sleep. I have to be up at 630am every day for work, and I'm starting to feel dizzy most days. If I don't drink, I don't sleep!

I wasn't drinking as much as you, but still worried that my wine intake was creeping up.

The 'drink free days' app is good for monitoring how often you are drinking. I set a goal to be alcohol free Mon-Thurs. Bought lovely Belvoir cocktails for the other days. Ice, fancy glass etc so it felt like a treat. Non alcoholic wine is awful but I found some non alcoholic beer I like too.

I now don't buy alcohol except one bottle of wine on a Friday night. Slowly over time that bottle now lasts me three days and that's all I drink. I feel so much better for it.

Could you easily have two weeks off?

If so then do it. If not, then you might have start thinking about giving up with help.

Why does it have to be wine? Loads of nice soft drinks or on alcoholic drinks around.

Agree but doing it for a few days may help to break the cycle

Don't buy it and allow yourself some at the weekend? then you're cutting down but not giving up completely. Think of the money you will save too

Because the OP likes the alcohol buzz? It's not that difficult to understand surely.

I'd book a week off work and stop drinking. There will be a few nights of poor sleep but you'll learn how to sleep without wine. Find other ways to relax before bed - a hot bath, reading a book, taking magnesium. These things all help.
It's simply not sustainable to use wine as a sleeping aid every night. You'll have poor quality sleep and increased anxiety (not to mention the other serious health effects).

You can stop drinking wine.

First thing to do is ditch the idea that you can't. Of course you can.

Personally, I'd phase it out. I find titration is way easier that cold turkey on anything, because by the time you have titrated you don't even miss something.

I'd start by adding mixers. If you drink white wine or rose, pour 100 mls of it into a big wine glass and top it up to the brim with chilled sparkling water to make a weak spritzer.

If you drink red, it's a bit harder but you can still pour 100mls and top it up with 50ml of still water and 50ml of dark grape juice. Or make it into a sangria with OJ, fruit and sparkling water.

When you pour your first drink, also prep yourself a long soft drink of something you really enjoy, so it is ready for you when the wine has been drunk.

If you go for a top up, make sure you have finished the long soft drink first. Then do the same - prep a soft drink simultaneously. That way, you will still only have had 200mls of wine - that's just a little more than one big glass.

While you are drinking these, do some things that calm you and make you sleepy - listen to a meditation on your headphones or do a gentle yoga or relaxation session. Or light a candle and put on some soothing lulling music and just watch the cadle flicker as you listen to it.

Buy some sleep inducing teas - there are loads around, and brew one to sip in the bath.

After a couple of days, reduce the amount of wine in the mixed drinks by 10% - keep doing this until the wine is just a timny splash for flavour. Then stop buying it.

Consider your health your most important thing. You are feeling dizzy. Is that from the wine or do you have vertigo? I have a vertigo condition - PPPV- for several years now, but not from alcohol. I do not drink at all now - never was a big drinker though. No cure for vertigo.in many cases.

It’s not less of a problem because it’s wine - imagine it is Special Brew. We are bombarded with advertising that unwinding with a glass of wine is sophisticated but drinking too much is drinking too much however you dress it up.

id read some quit lit. Alcohol Explained by William Porter is great. Or a more personal experience book like The Sober Diaries

Not quite the same, but I cut out drinking (wine) on any week/work night, including Sundays, so now I only drink on a Friday and Saturday night. Mine had really crept up over the years.

I only missed it for the first week, but now it doesn’t even enter my head and I actually look forward to a glass of wine on Friday night.

Try it and see if you too can moderate, and if not, you probably need to quit completely and should probably seek help.

Exactly this. You have created a sleep association which you need to break. You need to find a new one (mine is listening to certain audiobooks) and ride out the lack of sleep for a few weeks.

Worth noting that the quality of your sleep will be far better if you don’t drink. You may fall asleep more easily, but you won’t be sleeping as deeply or as well during the night and it creates a vicious cycle of being desperate to get sleep so you drink, but then being tired because the drink means you aren’t properly rested.

Good luck in tackling this, OP. If you are not already addicted, you will sadly become so if you carry on like this.

Be careful your drinking does not bring on permanent dizziness i.e. vertigo. In many cases the cause of vertigo is not known - there are more than one kind of vertigo but they all have the dizziness, lack of balance etc.

How much do you actually drink? A small glass of wine a night is fine whereas a bottle is worrying. Are you actually hungry and reaching for a glass of wine out of habit? Try having a soft drink and some nibbles or a few crisps. Then take a magnesium tablet an hour before going to bed (chelated magnesium from H and B is good). Magnesium is known as nature's sedative and helps you sleep.

I'm the same OP. If there's a bottle of wine in the fridge, I drink it. Usually all of it. If there's no wine, I don't drunk. There's a variety of gin, and red wine, in the house that I rarely touch.

I've just nit bought any for the past few days. I realised my face looks puffy, my eyes look awful. I need to lose weight so cutting wine out will help.

You absolutely can stop. There are loads and loads of women (and men) who have been where you are. And actually alcohol causes all sorts of issues with your sleep - it’s not helping you fall asleep and it will really negatively impact your quality of sleep and how rested you feel. If sleep is the issue, take a small nytol before bed for a few days so you adjust. It’s perfectly safe for short term use. I got the 25mg tablets and snapped them in half, as it was just enough to give me the extra reassurance that I could sleep.

When I stopped (I was drinking 2-3 bottles of wine a night every night), what I did was replace it with another nice drink in the evening. Kombucha is great if you want something low sugar.

And short term I filled my evenings with something else, a class, exercise, a hike, reading, listening to a podcast, literally I dumped the dc with Dh and did whatever I needed to do to keep myself healthy and happy. I’m coming up to 18 months sober now.

Yes, simple as it sounds, definitely 100% this.

When you are in good mental health, (say in the middle of the day before the urge gets the better of you) put as many barriers between yourself and getting wine as possible - can you put your credit card in the shed in the garden say, if you were tempted to run to the corner shop and buy some? Anything that gives you time to think before you get hold of, then open another bottle?

Buy a lovely candle or face mask to relax with instead.

line up some amazing tv shows to get sleepy in front of, or a great book

Cook yourself something you really love

You just need to one night without it. This is a one day at a time thing. Each day is a new chance. We believe in you xx

This is good advice but if you really need all these coping strategies then you already have a problem.

Congratulations. You've done amazingly well.

Just get some will power and stop. Do something else.

Dont buy any. If it's not there you cant drink it

OP, it’s very easy for people to tell
you to ‘just stop’, but that’s not going to help the root of the problem. You’ve got into a bad cycle, do you have a reason why it started? Was it stress, anxiety? I very likely have ADHD, I only sleep solidly when I’ve had a couple of glasses of something. Obviously that is not an option (as you are finding), but I spend a week powering through about 5 hours broken sleep a night. On a Saturday night I can have couple of glasses of wine guilt free. Do you think you can find a way of being more moderate? I’d absolutely look into help if you can.

That's incredible! Can I ask, did you go cold turkey, or cut down gradually? I've heard it can be damaging to stop abruptly but can't remember where I read that.

Get non alcoholic wine from the shop. For me it’s the feeling of having wine in a wine glass, and sitting down with it - I can do that with non alcoholic version and feel great next day.

Why on earth would it be damaging to stop abruptly. Nonsense. Sounds like and excuse someone made if you read it somewhere.