This is hell

[blah]

I recently decided to get sober after just coming to the realization that I’m killing myself.
I’ve never been a problematic drinker, but I can tell that my drinking is really affecting my health more than it did just a few years ago.

I’m 45 years old, and in the last couple years, it’s like a lifetime of heavy drinking just finally caught up. My sleep patterns were bad, I feel tired and beat up constantly, and I’m addicted to the sauce in a way I just wasn’t in my youth. Like if I don’t drink, I get night sweats, anxiety, irritability etc. I also have developed adult onset asthma this last year, which alcohol makes worse, and I had a bout with thyroid cancer last year. While it wasn’t a dangerous cancer, head and neck cancers are correlated with alcohol abuse. It was a red flag for me.

Basically, it was time to say goodbye to an old friend, so here I am. I quit drinking about a week ago, and I’m miserable. It’s odd to me that this is hitting me so hard because I’ve gone long periods of time where I haven’t drank over the years, and I’ve never had it affect me like this. I feel like I’m not that heavy of a drinker to be getting hit this hard with sobriety. I’m a daily drinker, but a typical night is a couple pints of a decent IPA micro brew. While I do get pretty torn up a couple times a month, I typically just have a couple good beers in the evening on a normal day.

Maybe it’s the thought of never drinking again that has me depressed??? I don’t know, but I’m REALLY out of it right now. Like everything annoys me. I can’t concentrate, and nothing is interesting. Clearly, i’m experiencing some acute depression that I didn’t see hitting me like this.

I’ve read that this is pretty normal and can go on for some time, but my question is, as someone that wasn’t dumping vodka in their morning coffee just to function or pounding a few bottles of wine every night, should I get past this somewhat quickly? One of my best friends went sober, and he said it was about 6 months before he got out of the dull-drums. He was a day drinker and a serious drunk though. I’m terrified of having to go through what he went through, as it basically destroyed his marriage, and even 3 years later, he’s just a different man, and not always in a good way. Like, he’s so quiet and reserved, that I can barely stand to be around him, yet i’m behaving just like him right now.

[Mno]

Welcome to your sobriety blah. And welcome to Talking Sober too. There’s no clear cut answer to what you’re asking. Every body and every mind reacts different to alcohol abuse. I do think that is what you’ve been doing though.

Please be absolutely sure that you’re doing the right thing by quitting. And a good thing. A loving thing to yourself and to yours. And know that the beginning is hard. There is work to be done. You need to build yourself a new life, a life worth living without alcohol.

One thing I can say: don’t go it alone! We need each other. The opposite of addiction is connection. Could be face to face meetings. For me this place has been my life saver and life changer. So much support. So much knowledge. Would never have made it without. Welcome again and wishing you all success friend.

[Cjp]

Try not to worry or fixate on forever. Just get thru today without drinking. One day at a time. When i first started out i was overwhelmed with the thought of forever too. Focus on the here and now. Deal with tomorrow tomorrow.

[HoofHearted]

Like @Mno said, everyone’s different. I’ve seen people who drank all day everyday quit without any major symptoms, I’ve also seen people who only drank a few drinks a few nights a week have seizures from quitting…

I would say, though, what you’re describing is par for the course. Alcohol withdrawals has a wide range of symptoms; from mild to severe. They wont last forever, and after a few weeks, it’ll get a little better each day.

I think the worst part is the mental aspect. There is definitely a mourning period. One thing that helped me in this time was changing my relationship with alcohol. It went from like losing a friend to having a huge weight lifted off me and being free.

I wrote about my journey here:

Change your Relationship with Alcohol

[blah]

I can really relate to some of that.

For me, I don’t have a laundry list of bad things that have happened while drinking. I’ve just never really been a super problematic drinker. I can think of the times I blacked out, and it scared the crap out of me. I can think of some less than attractive women I bagged while drunk. I can remember getting sucker punched while completely wasted by a guy at a house party while breaking a fight up. I can remember waking up after a night of partying and realizing I spent $50 I didn’t have to spend at the bar. However, this was all stuff in my youth that most every guy I know did, even if they didn’t have an issue with drinking.

In my 30’s and 40’s, my biggest negative with alcohol was not getting anything done. Like, my girlfriend and I would go out to lunch and have a few beers, only to come home and do nothing with the rest of the day. Alcohol really has been a motivation killer for me the older I’ve gotten.

My list of positives is huge with alcohol. Some of the best times I’ve had in my life were drinking with friends, going on dates, playing live shows in bands…etc. The thing is, that life is gone. That was my youth, but as a mature man now in my mid 40’s, I’m just drinking my life away on my couch watching TV or playing on my phone. It’s not enhancing the moment, it’s an addiction.

I too began to really go down a deep dive as to what alcohol really does to the mind and body. I just knew that even though I was only drinking a couple of high content beers most nights that it was killing my health. I could feel a change in my health. I could feel the way alcohol had a grip on me. I started having anxiety about being in a station where I couldn’t drink because of night sweats and other withdrawal symptoms that had become the norm on nights I don’t drink. What I started to do was listen to podcasts about what alcohol does to you from a physiological perspective.

I too also started seeking motivation and inspiration stories. I did this in the form of podcasts as well. I even started to listen to addiction videos on YouTube in the form of hypnotism at night.

I finally pulled the trigger when I felt ready. I was one excuse after another until last weekend when I drank the day away only to pass out early and wake up in the middle of the night with horrible anxiety. I couldn’t get back to bed, and I just told myself that I was done with this roller-coaster ride and wanted off.

This is one of the hardest things I’ve done in my entire life, and it’s only been a week. I just keep telling myself that the worst is over, but that’s just not true. I feel just as awful today as I did the first few days of sobriety.

[Gotno]

It will get better… and relatively quickly… this might not be a popular approach for most people, but to help myself quit I made a promise to myself not to drink for any reason for 100 days. If I really thought that drinking was better I could go back to it.

You really do need to give sobriety some time before you can see the benefits… most of my improvement happened between 2 months and 1 year… I am still seeing incremental gains in year 5.

[Starlight14]

I hear you blah…i felt alot of these things in the beginning too…its like you mourn your youth and all those good times u had…i get it…its a cultural thing to drink once we get to a drinking age in life…almost to the point the drinking is just something that goes hand in hand and not even thought about…imagine if alcohol had never existed…do u really think that all those great times u speak of would have been less great? Or is that just a perception u have? Its worth thinking about. Im a similar age to u…and although my drinking did get problematic for most it is a progressive disease, affecting your health and becoming worse over time. Im just under a year sober and i can tell u that over time i went from basically gritting my teeth everyday and absolutely making myself not drink to hitting a point where i no longer wanted to drink because my life felt so much better without it…the good started to outweight the bad. One of the biggest things ive had to learn in sobriety is patience…nothing comes quickly…no instant gratification anymore but when the rewards do come they are worth waiting for, it might seem like hell now but nothing worth doing ever came easy- it is 110% worth it…its just a matter of time