My name is Konstantinos and I am a 41yr old hotel owner and musician from a small Greek island. My story with alcohol is pretty simple. I was wasted almost every evening for about 15 years. As long I had finished work id consume a bottle of vodka (average) in zero time. In my alcoholic record there is everything except violence. I hurt people I loved and loved me, I had my driver’s license removed , I made myself ridiculous countless times , myriads hangovers, regrets etc etc. To get the full picture, back in 2013 I was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of blood cancer witch I overcame by January 2015 and I was even drinking between the chemo’s.
I had made countless attempts to stop and I obviously couldn’t. I always did a max of 3 days sober. Like many of you here I would wake up swear to god that “That was it!” and I’d drink same evening again… and so the years went by…In 2017 I visited a psychologist who was a nice guy but not much of help. I tried to take pills such as naltrexone and didn’t work for me. I tried various stuff (some dangerous for my life) and nothing worked. I was in despair. AAs wouldn’t be an option (there aren’t any where I live…) and rehab neither. I had already decided that I will probably die drinking. That was until march 2020 were when I was seriously drunk in the (empty at the time) hotel I own and something made a “click”. I decided that I will give it a try. This time alone. I had to find out how alcohol works in me and why can’t I stop. I was pretty sure that willpower is not the solution so it had to be knowledge. Took pen and paper and started working.
I created a diagram that I called “The 3 cycles of addiction” . With this tool I manage to understand the nature of the beast. I learned by myself how to reverse and finally eliminate what I named “premature triggers” so my evenings would be “easy” .I understood simple brain functions that play a crucial role in addiction. Finally I understood that behind each trigger there is an existing actual problem to which alcohol was the symptom.
Living dry in a world where everyone drinks without feeling deprived it’s quite a task and in my eyes only knowledge can solve this problem. It takes knowledge of yourself and of the beast to get there. I kept on drinking every night but during the day I’d prepare for the “final solution”.
By the end of summer 2020 plan was ready. On the 17th of Oct. 2020 Hotel was closing for the season. A ¾ full vodka bottle was there. I drunk it by 23:00 and haven’t had a drop ever since. Note that this summer (2021) I have served myself enormous amounts of alcohol (due to work) and never even thought about having a drink,. I even played a gig with an audience of 200 ppl while drinking orange juice. I have played more than 3000 gigs in my life (I was doing it professionally earlier in my life) and I always drunk… this was my first dry and by far my best gig!
And no, not all days were happy and easy. I had some seriously depressed, stupid, sad etc days… but that’s life isn’t it??
If you are a new guy and want to stop there are 3 basic stages of quitting alcohol.
- Decide that you want to do something about your problem. Since you are here you have already made that step so well done!
- Find the way that suits you and use it to stop drinking. Whether you do it alone like me , or AAs , or rehab , or self-help books etc, make sure you enjoy the ride. For many here including me, stopping alcohol seemed a very scary decision. Trust me there is nothing to fear. Once you make the first step and wait a while things get much much clearer.
- Find the problems behind alcohol that lead you to it and SOLVE them. Could be a panic attacks , anxiety , shyness , whatever… there is a solution for everything out there , so find it. Quitting alcohol doesn’t make you automatically happy, it stops destroying you. Finding the problems behind alcohol and solving them will get you much nearer to happiness though.
Also remember that you are not alone. I personally feel more connected to some random guy in here that Ill probably never meet and writes from the other end of the planet than the “friends” at the bar down the road…Besides alcohol never made any friends. In fact it never did anything. Every single thing about it is a lie.
This Is how I look at alcohol today: Mankind’s biggest fraud and the alcoholic is the victim. A guy who is heavily taxed paying alcohol for destroying every aspect of his life, in order to take some drops of what he thinks is happiness by “solving” his individual problem for max 15 minutes a day.
This obviously does not concern physically addicted people, but the vast majority out there do not belong in this category.
I don’t think I need to mention the benefits of not drinking, we all know them. But if I had to choose one that would be waking up with no regrets and despair.
I want to wish each and every one of you in here a super wintertime with a huge smile on your faces.
And remember:
Alcoholism is an open cage. Fear keeps you in. Dreaming gets you out. (Yep its mine)
I HUG YOU ALL