The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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I posted last week about trying to drink less. I went 5 days sober, which is at least past the alcohol withdrawal hump. I'm on vacation currently, and a bit of peer pressure and boredom led to me breaking my very short sober streak. I'll continue sobriety experiment when I get back from vacation. Which sounds like famous last words, but I will follow through. The first five days of no drinking was easy enough, and the results felt good.
212 days sober here.
What's your goal in regards to 'drinking less'? If it's literally just getting the number of drinks over a week / month down, then all you should worry about is tracking your drinks (plenty of apps for that) and looking for a gradual trend down. Eventually you'll find a sustainable level.
But is there something else? Are you worried your drinking is getting you fat and out of shape (it is) or that it's just sort of generally reducing your cognitive sharpness even if you aren't hungover every day(it is) or maybe that it's having a mild negative effect on mood stability? (it is)
If you want to quit. Quit. Hard sober for the rest of your life? Not necessarily. I think a good goal is to do 365 days sober and keep a log of how you're feeling about every 10 days or so. You'll learn a lot. You'll learn how to deal with out of nowhere cravings. You'll understand more about emotional and stress triggers. "Sober Octobers" aren't long enough and I feel like "stay sober for as long as you can including up to forever" creates an all-or-nothing kind of thinking that can lead to hard relapses (fun fact: a lot of programs have definitions of sober that allow for some level of drinking. I think this is absurd, but that's a personal opinion).
In my experience so far, the physical and mental health benefits are obvious and unambiguous. Social situations aren't difficult to navigate after you've said "no thanks" about 10 times. (As another aside, just use "No, thanks" or "I'm not drinking tonight" as your responses. Don't get into any more detail than that - that's when people get weird. Be ready to repeat yourself. A lot. )
The tradeoff is that my life is fundamentally more boring. Alcohol, like other drugs, is a quick hack to emotional regulation. How it manifests will be person dependent. For me, I no longer have any reflex to drink if I am sad, stressed, overwhelmed etc. That's a great thing. I miss drinking now when I am feeling very good. A Big Business Thing happened at work a few weeks ago and, when it did, I really wanted to tie one on on a friday night knowing that not only did I have nothing to do on Saturday, but that I could probably take a few days off the next week because of the big win.
I cleaned out some old home depot boxes in my garage instead. Anti-climactic.
I'll tie it off here. Start at the beginning; what do you want your drinking life to look like?
A question--as I'm approaching my personal goal of 30 days sober--why not have a drink (I mean you)? You seem to be set against it, or, put more positively, you seem set on staying sober. I will be at my in-laws soon on August holiday, and I quite enjoy that first cold beer with my father-in-law. Your post here has a foreboding about it, a definite anti-booze vibe, if not a direct or preachy one.
Perceptive as always, Doctor Hale. (I mean that sincerely and with admiration)
There was a time when I needed to be what I call "hard sober." I mentioned this on a previous Sunday thread I think, but in 2023 I was drinking heavily all the time. Never had a rock bottom moment or crisis incident, but from about Halloween through Christmas I came face to face with the fact that I was definitely full throttle on that Highway To Hell.
I think I passed that time somewhere between 100 and 120 days. Like I wrote previously, that's about the time when I no longer thought about drinking to relieve negative emotional states. It was almost a tangible shift and I am happy about it.
Why not have a beer now? I think being sober revealed that there was more work "under the covers" to do. I complain that my life feels more boring - because it is. Well, perhaps I should consider developing some interesting hobbies or otherwise inject dynamism into life. There's another perspective that says, "hey you got to the point in 2023 where you were getting after it pretty hard consistently ... what's to prevent that same thing occurring again?" So, proactive prevention is part of it too.
I'm not anti-drinking. Aggressive teetotalers are much the same as aggressive atheists; their rabid anti-religion is a fervent faith all its own. I am, more than I used to be, leaning more in the direction of "know thyself; and know thy limits" for some people, drinking just is to high risk even if they aren't problem drinkers or full blown alcoholics. In a very discrete case, I had a college friend who had severe loss of motor function and balance even when mildly intoxicated. It was a bizarre and scary sight to see; coherent speech (no slurring) full awareness of surroundings, but all of the kinesthetic ability of a new born deer. For others, it might be that they don't turn into Barry Blackout on the weekends, but they're slow motioning ruining their lives. I've also seen monster drinkers who seem to be immune from hangovers and have objectively high performance lives.
To maybe close with a little pithiness; arbitrary life long decisions are almost always bad. "I'm doing XYZ just because!" isn't a reason to do anything. My reason for not drinking so far is pretty simple; I keep waking up and thinking "Eh, don't feel like drinking today."
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