Cold turkey wasnt working for me. This will be my third week as of tomorrow of limiting myself to one night (none work day, my second requirement)a week and limiting quanity to a degree where i dont have a hang over the next day. I really wanted to break my promise to myself yesterday and get something on my break for after work. But, i told myself no and i am proud of myself. Its been very hard since i was forced to go back to night shift and other family issues going on. For once in my life im hopeful regarding my alcoholism and working towards improvement. Next month im going to start intergrating whole weeks of nothing. On that note, im going back to bed.
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This form of moderation/limiting/etc almost never works. Truth be told if you had the ability to moderate or limit you wouldn’t need to stress about it so much. There’s no easy way to get sober. You’re going to have to do the work at some point because you’ll just end up back to drinking like you used to on this “program”. You’ve been a member of this forum a long time so I’m sure you’ve seen how others have gotten and stayed completely sober. You should try that way and see how it goes
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Why doesn’t cold turkey work?
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Well, this is the first time in a very long time i havent been drinking 3-4 days a week.
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I dont know. Been trying for many many years. Trying something new. I should have known better than to post this. Knew id get nothing but backlash and no support. I havent been able to talk myself out of a craving in years and i did it yesterday.
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We can’t give support for ideas that are proven not to work. That’s co-signing a bad idea. We will give you support in getting sober by telling you moderation doesn’t work. I went back and read your old posts and you seem to take a passive approach to sobriety. I would suggest taking some proactive steps. Rehabs, IOP, meetings, SMART. Things like that give you a much better chance.
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Hey I started here too. I made myself a calendar and gave a literal gold sticker to myself on days I didn’t drink. It was a good visual representation of me trying.
Ultimately the math got too taxing for me. Trying to moderate an addiction is exhausting. I was happiest laying down my moderation attempts and not drinking period.
My one drink on a Tuesday, but only beer I hated and never out at a bar math always morphed back into all the drinks I could carry/afford all the time. I also tried no whiskey or red wine which always led back to whiskey and red wine.
There is support here. đź©·
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If it’s any worth, we all empathize. It’s not backlash so much as most of us have been there. It’s awful. (Though also encouraging moderation is against the guidelines here.)
Cold turkey is hard, but there’s also help out there for getting off the merry go round we call drinking.
For what it’s worth, I tried to moderate for a long time, looking for a way out. Weirdly once I was resolved to just not drink at all, life got so much simpler. It was crazy how many mental calories I didn’t realize I was wasting keeping score, wondering if it was too much, etc.
Once it was black and white (Did I drink? No. OK good, all is well.) I was more at ease. No doubts. No questions. Just sober.
The insights of others went a long way to helping learn how to not lose my mind in those new sober days though. It was hard at first. But drinking was harder by a country mile.
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Hey there 
The answers you are getting here are from the experiences others made.
I also belive everyone has to walk their own path. Trying something new is a good idea. Some things we try out in life are blind alleys, some work only after trying multiple times, some have to wait for another time.
In your situation I really like the calender suggestion @TrustyBird has made. Find a way to mark all the days you manage to stay sober. See where this leads you. Keep your heart and mind open. Stay curious.
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Sorry, I appreciate your trying hard to control and limit but alcoholism is a progressive illness and alcohol WILL always win in the end limiting might work for a while but ….The sneaky bastard will eventually get you moving goal posts to “well I could just have a couple today” been there done it all . This is a sober forum so of course people will tell you if sobriety is not what your doing .we’ve experienced and witnessed first hand the progressive hell that ensues. Why not plan something to do on your one night off that doesn’t involve drinking then see how proud you feel of your achievement, not drinking is about life LIVING
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What im doing isnt just going to try an moderate forever. I am weening myself off. My consumption rate was getting so high. I was probably reaching a mild physical addiction. After these three weeks. My cold sweating has stopped. I am feeling much better. My sleep has improved. After tomorrow, im going to decrease the amount to even less. And the goal is absolute zereo. My ideal plan is in three months to be at 0. Im trying to re wire my brain and make new better habbits and re learning self control.
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I tried weaning myself down several times and I would decrease for like 3 or 4 days (I was a daily drinker), then stay abstinent for 2 days, then start to feel better and “change my mind”, thinking I could have 2 or 3 and stop. That was generally a disaster.
I had to be stopped. Like arrested and locked up stopped. If you are concerned about the very real dangers of alcohol withdrawal, there are medical detox facilities or your doctor can help.
My “weaning” was just another form of my obsessive thinking about booze - that I could somehow tweak it and control it still. I could not.
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It’s unlikely you’ll gain any support for this “plan”. I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who successfully used an unsupervised taper method to get sober. And there’s a lot of people.
We’ve all been where you’re at. Your alcoholism is the same. It can be treated the same.
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Speaking for myself…
Some of the worst plans i came up with about alcohol, is while I was still drinking alcohol. I came up with so many plans, all involved drinking less. All failed.
It wasnt until I stopped consuming alcohol, where I could come up with a plan for self betterment that actually worked.
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Sounds painful (I remember trying to do this and it’s horrible)
If you’re going 1-3 days without drinking you are already doing the cold turkey part but then drinking again. Those first few days are the hardest so why would you want to go cold turkey over and over again…
If you can manage a few days the rest is a mental challenge but easier IMO than repeating the pattern.
As previously mentioned, you can get medical/supervised detox help or talk with a doctor etc.
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I never was successful doing it myself. Getting past the three days was impossible. Somehow in the beginning the days 3, 6, 9, 12 are very hard. Detoxes are mostly around 15 days, that’s for a reason. It’s the time it takes the brains to be able to withstand the cravings more or less. Next to that a psychiatrist became angry at me when he found out I tried it be myself before. Chances of seizures etc….even in a detox I nearly died. Why make it so hard on your self by trying it by yourself…all good advice is already given by people who know the drill of getting sober….yes I was a stubborn pain in the ass too…it took me 8 years after acknowledging I had a problem to put an end to it…at that point it could also have been prison or death.but…… man read it and follow the advices given. All the best and wisdom 
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This is an excellent point but alas, it seems like the OP is no longer following this thread. Oh well 
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Firstly well done and congratulaions Techpro92. Though depending on your alcohol intake previous to quitting, I would not recommend "cold turkey’. Why, well due to the risks of seizures, when the brain that normally receives the signal no longer does the brain goes haywire. This causes the brain to go into a “reboot” so to speak. These are refered to as “tonic-clonic seizures” and are very frightening to the individual.
If one is consuming large amounts over a constant period of time, then suddenly stops this supply this is what may occur. It would be best advisable to taper down, if one cannot do that I would recommend a more clinical approach and seek a GP to go into a Detox, even a Outpatient one. This is where your GP will subscribe medication (Diazapam) for a week or two. This assists is prevention of any seizures to assist one over the danger period of 48-72 hours in general. It does not help in all the rest of the symptoms such as insomnia, intense sweating, nausea, depression and the rest that withdrawel entails. I was also subscribed some great anti-nausea tablets that were magic.
How do I know all this, well I have experienced the exact situation. I had a seizure, snapped my ankle so much that it flopped around 180. I broke my fibia and displaced my tibia and was sent off to hospital. If I recall I then went into delirum, this was the most frightening event in my life! It was a crazy dimension I was in, too much to go into here though I documented everything.
Good luck on your sobriety, the first step is the hardest; for me it was literally 
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I was working.