I like to pretend that I don’t have a serious drinking problem, mainly because I don’t get hammered every night. However, I haven’t gone a full 24 hours without a drink in probably five years. I’m 31 and also work as a restaurant manager where we are always bringing in new beer, wine and spirits. Don’t get this misconstrued, I DO get drunk on a regular basis and when I don’t I probably still have 3-5 beers or a bottle of wine. I like to work out and try my best to eat healthy. It eats away at me every day that I am so dependent on alcohol. I feel like if I could just quit for a few days or a week, I could maybe keep it going. Please any advise would be greatly appreciated.
AA has been VERY helpful for some people I know.
Three days isn’t that bad… It’s kind of an adventure. You can tell yourself, “It’s only temporary,” and that helps. It’s like hiking a long country trail; when you can see the end, things seem much better. When I was a heavy drinker (problem drinker, drunk, near-alcoholic, or alcoholic – the terms get mixed up and debatable) I used to take a week off from drinking, now and then, just to see what would happen. The feelings, cravings, reflexive urges, were a little scary. But for just a week, they tended to be manageable.
I recommend the experiment, as a kind of scientific assessment of how deep your need has become. It’s a way of gaining insight, of calibrating your problem. If you can’t make it through three days, you know you’re in worse shape than if you can make it through three days. It will give you a measure of self-knowledge.
Also, practicing quitting will help you when you decide to quit for real. You’ll have a better understanding of what to expect.
Good luck to you; I hope you find the answers you need.
Try here for helpful advice http://www.brighteyecounselling.co.uk/alcoholic-forum/
I’m over 3 years sober and found these a great help
Back in my single days, I went to happy hour every single night and closed down the bars on the weekends. While I had no reason to think I was an alcoholic, I also realized that if I drank every night I had no good way to know for sure. I made up my mind to quit for 30 days and see what happened. I stuck to the same routine, hit happy hour, closed bars, etc., but just drank Coke, OJ and other non-alcoholic beverages.
I’m happy to report that it was a piece of cake for me and while I was then satisfied that I wasn’t an alcoholic, and still have drinks to this day, I did drastically reduce my alcohol intake and it wasn’t even a conscious decision to do so.
So I guess my suggestion is to up the ante to a longer period than just 3 days.
No expert here but isn’t there some actual medical risk of quiting cold turkey when your body has been aclimated to constant alchohol exposure?
Yes. There are a few factors to consider: (1) the number of drinks per day, (2) whether the patient is a daily or binge “weekend” drinker, (3) luck. In general, though, a 3-5 drink/day habit shouldn’t be enough to put someone into DTs, even if quitting cold turkey will probably make you feel pretty crummy.
Do you have certain routines that involve alcohol, like always coming home from work and sitting in front of the TV with a beer? Try breaking the routine (e.g., going out and doing something where you wouldn’t normally have a drink, like going to the movies).
Thanks for all the great advice everyone. To answer a few questions, yes, I am a creature of habit. So I almost always have to have a beer to unwind after work. Which also leads to another habit, I almost always have to have a salty snack and a few beers just to sleep. I love spicy food, and I love to cook, but one day I realized that I actually pick spicy foods because I know that I will pound the beer easier. I’ve always wondered if anyone else has experienced this, or heard of it before. When I’m cooking I could drink a six pack of beer in a little over an hour. The industry I’m in makes it so difficult to turn down tastings.
The first time that I realized it was really a problem was a few years ago, when I ran out of beer and I decided to open my roommates bottle of white wine. I drank the whole thing in less than 10 minutes. I don’t have a doubt in my mind that I have a problem with drinking, I just can’t figure out how to approach quitting. I did go one whole night with out drinking a few weeks ago, but I thought I would never get to sleep. I tossed and turned all night and was wide awake until after 4am. I appreciate everyone’s input, one thing is for sure, it feel’s really good to get some of this off my chest. Never wrote in one of these columns before.
I did the same thing recently. The hardest for me is finding something else to drink while I am unwinding. Part of my motivation was to lose weight, so it needed to be tasty and low calorie. I ended up with tea. If calories are not a problem, find something tastier.
I quit regularly for short periods and for much the same reason as you: to prove that I can. Once I prove I can quit, I go back to drinking - because I enjoy it.
3 days doesn’t seem like it proves very much though. I usually shoot for a couple of months at least.
I really like the carbonation of beer amongst other factors like taste and a little buzz. I find that having a fridge full of sparkling water instead of beer makes it a lot easier. Doesn’t quite hit the spot like a cold one or four but it does take the edge off.
I am certainly no expert, but if you are really convinced that you have a serious drinking problem or are even a full-blown alcoholic, and you are also committed to addressing your situation by getting sober, you are almost certainly going to need to find another industry to work in, as you must clearly know that the restaurant and hospitality industries are constantly brimming with a myriad of opportunities to indulge in drink and/or drugs, and in fact tends to draw people with substance abuse problems into the ranks.
I can’t think of a harder job in the world to be abstinent at than working in a bar or restaurant—Even working in a liquor store or a brewery you aren’t constantly surrounded with other people actively imbibing, then getting off work late at night with a pocket full of cash and a bunch of your coworkers urging you to hang out and socialize with them after your shift.
Good Luck.
Since the OP is looking for advice, this is best suited to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Similar experience here. Addictions run in my family, so I started to get worried when I realized I was using alcohol to relax after work every day. I quit for a couple of weeks, and when I started again I went right back to a healthier glass-of-wine-with-dinner pattern. I also addressed some work-related stress that needed to be addressed. No problem, at least this time.
Sparky311, you’re in for a ride. If you decide you’re serious about this, I highly recommend having some experienced outside support - a counselor, a sobriety group like AA, or something of that nature. AA has a concept they call ‘white knucking’, where you try to quit something by sheer willpower, with no real support or changes. It doesn’t work well, and usually feeds into a nasty cycle of relapsing, feeling like a failure, trying again, relapsing again… By all means do just quit for a few days to see what happens, but if you decide you want to make it permanent, you need people to talk to. There’s a surprising number of people out there who get it and will be happy to give you a hand. And just recognizing that there’s a problem is a major hurdle - congrats.
IME, kicking an addiction requires a lifestyle change. You can’t go to the bar every evening with friends who have similar drinking problems and stay sober yourself. It’s a good time to pick up new hobbies or activities that will change your schedule and give you something other than alcohol to fill your time with. (This is part of why drug addicts tend to go to rehab, get clean from a chemical standpoint, and then are high again within 24 hours of checking out. When everyone in your household uses drugs, what are you going to do?)
I went to a weekend training session to get my motorcycle license a few years ago. There was a guy there who was buying himself a new Harley and knew how to ride very well, but needed to renew his license and was taking the class anyway. He told several people in the class that he’d had a drug habit when he was younger. He finally had to move away from his wife (who had no interest in quitting) to get clean. I believe he stayed married to her and involved in her and his kid’s lives, he just couldn’t share a house with her. He promised himself if he stayed clean for twenty years, he’d buy himself a new Harley. And he did, and the anniversary of that twenty years was that weekend. It was pretty damn cool.
Get rid of all the booze in your house. I find it easy not to drink if there is nothing around to drink.
For the record, if I had 3 - 5 beers, I WOULD be extremely drunk. Don’t let the fact that you’ve built up a tolerance to alcohol fool you into thinking it’s not such a big problem.
This might sound silly, but I wonder if it would be helpful to keep a drink journal? Not just of alcohol, but all fluids. Given your current rate of drinking alcohol, if you stop that for three days, but don’t replace those fluids with healthy ones, you’re going to get very dehydrated.
I keep a food journal for weight loss and it’s really effective. It’s both motivating to look back and see the days where you’ve done well, and it’s instant feedback on how you’re doing, so long as you’re completely honest with yourself. The nice thing is that even if I’ve had a bad day today, I can look back on the past few days, see that those have gone well, and I don’t feel like giving up, I recognise that one bad day is just a blip on the journey.
So grab a notebook, a page a day, draw a line down the page to make two columns and keep a note of non-alcoholic drinks consumed on the left, and alcoholic drinks consumed on the right. Be accurate about quantities.
Set yourself a daily goal (not just no alcohol, but something like drinking at least 2L of healthy fluids) and give yourself a small reward each day. Nothing food/drink related, but something quite different. I’m a reader, so I buy myself a book from Amazon when I’ve lost a kilogram.
Pick three days where you’re off work. You don’t want to have to deal with people. You’re going to sleep badly. You’re going to be very excitable, probably also anxious. You might feel physically weak, tense and nauseous to varying degrees. You may not be quitting, but your body might elect to believe you are.
Get something to keep busy with. Borrow a friend’s console and games, maybe, if you don’t have one yourself. If you read, treat yourself to a couple of new books.
I’ve helped two friends kick their daily six-pack habit. One just needed to be distracted for a week, the other guy was a real effort, but it was worthwhile. (Except for the smell. You might start smelling *real *bad, by the way. Get some deo.)
This is literally a mirror of me. Especially the dependence. Since about a month ago I hadn’t gone 24 hours without a drink. I found weed helped, and buying a gym membership. Investing money into a monthly gym membership acts as an incentive to go, and drinking is in my eyes extremely counter productive as it really hinders any muscle gains.
The natural high from exercise and then getting high is the only way I could do it. Otherwise I’d get terrible sweats and uncontrollable cravings.
Really, all the gym has done is made me more upset when I do end up relapsing, but each time I relapse I do better and longer when I get back on form (which never lasts longer than a month as it stands)
Best of luck.
Equally, don’t pretend that you do. You might. What you’re proposing to do is a good way to find out. 3 days is a little short - it will take far longer for everything to flush through - but a good start.
Dude works in a bar.