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Oh I’ll take this one.
I considered drinking to be fun, part of how I made friends and took stress off. Most of my friends are in the hospitality industry.
At 37 I realized it was not doing me any favors, making it hard to stay in shape, always hungover, feeling bad about myself and just drinking and moping.
I quit last summer and the first thing I noticed is I had like 3 more hours every day in the morning being clear headed instead of hungover. That made it easy to quit (for me) and I really don’t think about it much anymore.
Similar story here- 34 at the time and a regular social drinker, I decided not to drink one day on a whim (actually just intended to see how hard it would be to abstain for a while) but felt so great without hangovers and just generally so much more energy that I stuck with it. 5 years now and really happy with that development. I have book club 9am on Sundays now, that would have absolutely been out of the question in the before-time.
It really feels like an insane hack in the beginning, how much more time and energy there is.
Thank you for your comment!
Migraines. I started getting a savage headache if I drink more than about 50ml of it. The pain created an aversion very quickly.
Unsurprisingly but not exactly obvious when I first read about it, alcohol addiction is strongly correlated with alcohol tolerance. I have come to understand intolerances like yours as protection mechanisms of the body (not a scientific claim!)
I suspect my neurologist would agree with you (if I could afford her time.)
I got to the point where I was drinking 8 rum and cokes etc. to get to a point of drunk where I might, might, feel happy for like 20-30 minutes, followed by passing out, and hours of feeling horrendous, only to do it again the next day. And I was spending a fuckton on booze. And I was like, the ROI of feeling good vs feeling awful, and trashing my body just is not making sense. What am I doing? And I stopped and never looked back.
The bottle was empty and I have social obligations today.
The hangovers kept getting worse over the years. At 3-day hangovers followed by depressive symptoms every time I drank (too much of course) I stopped. It’s not worth it to ruin 4 days for a couple hours of fun.
Family obligations that were being neglected and too many sorry mornings.
Seeing my grandpa drunk all the time
I was trying medications to help with depression. I stopped drinking so the alcohol wouldn’t interfere. After a few years I stopped trying medications because they only made things worse but I realized I didn’t want to drink anymore after going without it for that amount of time.
A combination of wanting to be at my healthiest for my medical transition, and the god awful stomach issues that came about from drinking after my medical transition.
I used alcohol as a means to escape, and I don’t need to do that anymore. It makes me feel absolutely miserable and it was time to let it go.
Only one of us could handle the alcohol and not be a complete asshole.
I was a teenage alcoholic, I always knew I needed to stop before adulthood. I had refused to get my driver’s license until I quit drinking, one of my good friend’s father had been killed by a drunk driver when she was very little. I never wanted to be that person that killed someone’s father.
But the actual moment that made me quit, was one day I opened my locker at school and there were more empty vodka bottles in it than there were books.
I don’t like strangers and people but alcohol made me fearless and charming. The following weeks would be followed by people trying to talk to me and other consequences of my actions. I didn’t like who I was when drunk and had no reason to keep drinking except for some food pairings. Eventually the joy of really excellent Taiwanese tea and weird fruit juices replaced wine and beer at dinner. It took a while, old habits being old habits.
I was no longer thirsty :)
I haven’t had a drink since mid-June. I’m to the point where feeling and being drunk really is not a good time. And the next day, the hangovers fucking suck. I’d rather smoke/vape cannabis. When I get too high, I lay down and proceed to have an awesome nap
I lost my job over it, and was damn close to losing my partner over it too. I realized that I am powerless over alcohol and that my life was unmanageable.
