I don't drink that much, though it goes up and down over time. I do have a few rules I follow: I never drink on Mondays. I take January as a month of sobriety.

The Monday rule is two fold. First it is a weekly check on alcohol seeking behavior. It is also because all the reasons I can think of for drinking on a Monday are not reasons I want to be drinking. Having a rule helps avoid bad habits.

Why just on a Monday? I feel like not drinking on Sunday to Thursday would be more useful.

You can do alot of liver damage in 2 days per week. If you think those 5 days sober give you free reign on the other two then you should reconsider your strategy. Although, the same also goes for 1 day per week sober.

The true upside, social aspects of drinking happen for most on the weekends, due to everyone else also cutting loose on the weekends. This is why I have liver scarring at a ripe young age, but to ignore the upside altogether is also foolish.

Indeed, and most weeks I don't drink Sunday to Thursday, but Monday is where I draw the line.

> From it I ascertained that the first two questions one should ask are when encountering something in life are, "is this actually important?" and "is this a problem I can actually solve or make a meaningful difference in helping solve?" - anything one can answer "no" to either of those questions one should just let go of, and try to focus one's energies on other problems.

This puts succinctly something I try to practice that I likely got from the same source. My parents were both in AA for the entire time I knew them and I was carried along to many meetings and, later, went along with them of my own volition. I have a great respect for the organization and, especially, the people humble enough to recognize their need for support.

Sometimes I find others who have the same life philosophy that I have, and I'd always wondered where they came to it from, but its just not one of those things you can ask.

I'm really glad there are others that were able to absorb the AA adjacent wisdom, and transform it into something productive like I was.

> From it I ascertained that the first two questions one should ask are when encountering something in life are, "is this actually important?" and "is this a problem I can actually solve or make a meaningful difference in helping solve?" - anything one can answer "no" to either of those questions one should just let go of, and try to focus one's energies on other problems.

This is also a teaching of stoicism. Focus only on those things you can actually change and understand that your reaction to external things is under your control

“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…” – Epictetus

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” ― Marcus Aurelius

What tools do you, or other HNers for that matter, have to share about breaking alcohol addiction? Especially covering the hard parts: what are the major hurdles to overcome?

For me, Naltrexone was an incredible help in reducing cravings in the first few months. I came off it after around six months and no longer need it, though I think many people take it for much longer and there's not much downside to doing so.

I avoided AA due to the quasi-religious aspect, but Smart Recovery meetings helped me in the initial phase (https://www.smartrecovery.org).

I was always concerned about the longer term aspect of replacing alcohol in social settings, and there is still some awkwardness there but non-alcoholic beers have really helped for me. The scene has exploded in recent years and they're really quite good, see Athletic Brewing for some excellent craft non-alcoholic beers (https://athleticbrewing.com). In a social setting you could be drinking one and nobody would have to know. I don't hide it but I'm still glad to have something "special" to drink at an occasion. And I drink them alone too: they fill that role of something to drink when I want to relax, and I enjoy that placebo effect.

For me, reading the AA Big Book[1] was a powerful start. I actually went to meetings for a while, and while I realized I had the same tendencies as the people there, I mostly had a problem with binge drinking. I created rules around alcohol consumption which I follow with some loose structure that helped a bunch.

I found the Personal Stories/Testimonies section to be pretty relevant for me, others may find other things. AA fundamentally is the best tool you can find to get you sober, and keep you sober, but it in some ways IMO, works as an addiction transference program. But if you need to stabilize your life, and find your own path to permanent sobriety, AA is literally the best tool you can find to do it.

[1]https://www.aa.org/the-big-book

Make sure you are never hungry and drink lots of water. Stay busy with people doing things you cannot do if you are hungover or intoxicated. Sometimes just having impending responsibility to others can be enough if it’s merely just temptation. Also getting a monthly injection of time released naltrexone can remove the possibility of satisfaction from drinking. Not advice just possible strategies.

High-functioning alky, here 6-10 9%+ cans of beer in an evening not a problem for me, day after day. On my days off I can start with the cans for breakfast. I 'preload' for social occasions, and time my 'sobriety' to be ok to drive.

Breaking the habit? Have the will to stop. That's both hard and easy. But you didn't ask the question because you don't want to carry on so there's a plus.

I drink as much regular milk as I can when I feel the urges: this is because whacking down beer after it just feels sloshy in the stomach: not unpleasant, just 'sloshy'. And pointless..it takes too long to get drunk.

So, I've pretty much banished the beer of late.

To keep away the demons - when I absolutely feel a binge coming on, I keep a mouthful of liquorice 26% alc in my mouth for as long as possible (as well as having had the milk).

Happy to say I've not been fucked up for well over two months now, and have done several stretches of 5-8-10 and a 14 days with zero alcohol in the last three months.

That's a success, as I've been pretty much drunk for the last 8 years.

And, I didn't stop to buy a crate of beer today - there's none in the house, either.

Where does the desire come from?

A different answer from AA, but there are medications such as naltrexone or campral that can help reduce cravings.

I personally have not tried it, but some people use a system called The Sinclair Method (TSM) whereby you take naltrexone prior to drinking, and it is supposed to reduce both the enjoyment you get from alcohol as well as your craving for it, so you would end up drinking much less than normal. I know on reddit, r/Alcoholism_Medication/ has a lot of discussion and resources on it.

The hardest parts for me at the moment is quitting the habit itself, and after that the physical withdrawal symptoms, which are not fun.

How much do you drink a day, if its not too forward to ask?

The answer varies where I might send you to seek help.

Enough that im horrified by it

Some people are horrified by a six pack a night, sone people are horrified because they keep a bottle in their desk to even things out during the day. Those require different treatment strategies.

It's still a fringe treatment, but Baclofen turned off my alcohol cravings like a light switch.

It did nothing for the underlying causes of my wanting to be inebriated of course, but the "I can't think about anything else until I've had a drink" just disappeared.

reddit.com/r/dryalcoholics has a decent community

I had a kid. So I just quit.

Congratulations! Whatever it takes to get off that wagon! Your child will thank you in old age for being around as a parent and not just dead.

I don't drink alone for the exact same reason.

How some people can function while drinking every night is beyond my comprehension.

Personal anecdote: I don't drink during the day, only after 9:30pm. It started out as weekends only, i.e. Friday and Saturday. Then I started doing it on Sunday. Then Thursday. Soon enough, I was drinking every day of the week, only after 9:30pm. I'd stay up until about 1am or 2am, sometimes 3am. This worked fine, until I started having to attend work meetings at 9am on the dot. I wormed my way out of some with excuses about personal commitments (my manager understands that not everyone can be available at 9am on the dot).

I need about 150ml vodka and 3 beers to get to the state I want. It wasn't always that way, of course, but it escalated gradually. I don't sleep well, but oh well. It's worth it, in a way. I can forget about my troubles, my bad pay, and my work pressure by drinking and watching movies or playing video games at the same time.

The next day? Sometimes I wake up with a headache. Not often, now that I know exactly how much water I need to drink before I sleep to avoid that. But the next day is always normal and I'm pretty well functioning, if lazy and procrastinating. I just need a 20 min nap after 12pm and I'm pretty much set to function.

Will I stop? I don't know. These things on my mind may seem utterly trivial to some. I wasn't abused, I haven't lost anyone in my family, I live fairly comfortably. But I need to get my mind off those thoughts. I can go days at a time, even weeks, without feeling the need to drink, so long as I just forget about its feeling. But why would I do that? When I have a 2L bottle of vodka and an 18 back of 5% beers? With them, I can enjoy the night more than I would otherwise. That's got to be worth something, at least to me.

Have you met SREs?