I sleep under a duvet so it buys me a second or two to adjust the boys
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Nailed it!
The olly gummies (and a unisom) worked great! Hopefully i can ditch the unisom in the next week. I might be slightly groggy from the unisom but feel great otherwise, easily in the top 10 days of the 2023.
I might be oversharing here a bit, but as i have lurked on this thread for some time, Iâm sure there are others out there too.
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I frequently drank alone, however this was also a continuation of a daily habit that originally included an SO. As her kid got older and bedtime later, it gradually included less of her. Itâs something i should have stopped a couple of years ago, but itâs hard once itâs a long term habit.
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Awesome! Glad to hear it. Continued good luck and positive health response.
I hope no one takes my rooting for folks in this thread as condemnation of all drinking, but if it causes you more problems than it is worth and you want to reduce the harm, i am for all the help you can get.
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Drinking culture has certainly changed in the last decade or so, and I think COVID made a lot of people worse and a lot of people re-examine themselves.
Partner and I just visited in-laws. While I was drinking, Partner was blind to their parentâs drinking habits. We casually visited them for an evening and during that, in-laws polished off 2 bottles of wine and were opening a third as we left. My partner had 1.5 glasses and I had water.
Thatâs a normal evening for them. Partner now sees it too and considers them to have a significant problem. They go wine tasting nearby us every month or two. Last time they hit 9 wineries, then we met them at a restaurant where they ordered alcohol with food. And theyâll take back maybe 72 bottles of wine to last for the next month or two.
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There is a reason the alcohol industry has $250B in annual sales in the US alone.
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Their livers must be absolutely shattered by this point.
Even in Europe, we have professional people that work in wineries (so great access to fantastic wine at cheap prices) around Spain and Portugal, and they moderate their drinking as daily tastings (this used to be the norm a few decades ago) add up in terms of liver damage over time.
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Wouldnât know it, FIL brags about not going to a doctor in 25 years. Not wishing ill but wouldnât be surprised if he drops dead or is diagnosed with a preventable disease like late-stage cancer.
The wine bottles are only part of it, but it appears their daily baseline is about 1-2 bottles or alcohol equivalent each. MIL smokes 1 pack a day but FIL doesnât, both drink more than baseline more than rarely. MIL is inevitably becoming one of those wrinkly, thin-skinned people that show the accumulation of tens of thousands of cigarettes.
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There were some fairly strong opinions back at the start of the thread, but you along with everyone in the thread has been generally pretty respectful and encouraging the last year or so I have been following this more closely.
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this isâŚok?
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Yes. Thats the new thing.
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not sure how old seven fathoms is. the new distillery opened in 2013.
it is definitely one of the âbest rums given as a free sample of at a professional conferenceâ that I have ever enjoyed.
back on topic i hope with people abstaining and feeling better.
I was by the Hungarian deli this aft and picked up a couple of rum balls. So goooood!!! 
Naturally, I will respect anybodyâs decision to forego said treat. 
the classic
Another night of decent sleep and a week without a drink.
So Iâll undoubtedly come up to a decision point today or tomorrow if we go out for dinner. Should i have a beer or no? This isnât a celebratory drink, and it wonât be with someone who will encourage several drinks, it would just be a normal beer with dinner sort of thing. Sure, i could easily skip it, but if long term i just want to have a âhealthyâ relationship with alcohol and have the occasional drink with dinner or at a social outing, why not?
I guess i donât want to have the view that any drink is starting over. If i grabbed a drink from the fridge after i got home before bed, then that would be starting over as that is the habit Iâm trying to break, and given the effort put in to trying to break that this week, have a fairly strong incentive to continue avoiding that.
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Iâve never gotten to the point where I felt that my relationship with alcohol was unhealthy, so Iâm coming at this from a different POV, but one of my rules is that I donât drink alone. I do consider drinking over a FaceTime with a friend who is also drinking to be not alone, but I honestly donât do that much these days. (More often when I was briefly in a long distance relationship, but thatâs over now.)
This keeps my total intake pretty low and it keeps my tolerance down too.
You also have to not go nuts when youâre in situations where you are truly social drinking⌠maybe limit yourself to two drinks a night when youâre out with others?
If you can truly manage that then youâll be fine. If you canât then you might be best off fully abstaining.
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I never had an issue with the social drinking outâŚI am car dependent so there is almost always that to deal with, and that usually limits the drinks to two anyway. Honestly, when I have been out with friends, I maybe the best behaved of them and will often pass up any sort of final round they call.
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In my opinion, youâre in a healthy mindset of self-reflection. I personally donât feel that youâre using alcohol as a reward for not drinking, nor are you going from sobriety to a relapse. If you can truly tell yourself youâre going to enjoy a drink or two, then sometime later youâll do it again without doing it most days or in greater quantity, I wouldnât concern myself over it anyway.
Itâs hard to know if your brain is rationalizing or making a good decision, but my outsider take is that youâre not on a dangerous path, just one to keep your mind on.
Last comment: It hurts nothing to drink, only helps. To each their own, it is fun to have a slight buzz and I wonât begrudge a person who can enjoy that little bit.
President, you can always give it a try and have two beers on a Friday night out. If Saturday comes, youâre at home and donât have a drink, maybe your relationship with alcohol will be fine going forward.
If you find youâre making an excuse to drink at home again, maybe reevaluate what your goals are going forward.
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I havenât really been craving alcohol, although when I was at the grocery store yesterday, I seemed to notice everything, but I was also hungry and I found that those cravings tend to be substitutes for each otherâŚI could come home and want a beer, but if I just had a snack, that craving went away. I think you mentioned something similar about substituting alcohol and food calories.
I learned quite a bit this week. It was exhausting, but I think I broke through on a bad habit with the need to drink daily. I have felt a lot better the last few days than I have in a while, have been sharper at work, and I think just generally more relaxed and outgoing. Maybe one day I can keep a few 6packs in the fridge, but at this point that is the one thing I am going to stay away from for a long while.
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