I drank alcohol from about age 16 on.
It does ruin things in your life. For me it was spending time drinking and always having everything revolve around it. I noticed after many years if I did not drink I would start to get withdraw very fast like in 4-6 hours.
I knew it was not good for me. I went to AA and knew right away that a 12 step program was not for me. I drank not because of enjoyment it seemed more like a job almost like it was medicine to stop withdraws from happening and always with the fear of having some sort of seizure.
Long story short the way I stopped is that I was in the hospital for 5 days for something else. When I was there I started having those withdraws and they put me on detox stuff at the hospital while I was recovering from the other stuff I was in for.
I came out of the hospital and stopped drinking. I did smoke some weed for a few years after that.
It felt good not to be anchored down always “having” to drink so I just stopped.
It was a major lifestyle change and for about 6months really just laid low. Did not go out. Eating At restaurant was not enjoyable.
It was amazing how much time I wasted revolving it around alcohol.
The boredom was a real problem for me.
Eventually I started finding other things I liked doing.
For me staying busy was key.
I almost became ocd in how clean my house was and how I organized things but for some reason that organization just felt better.
It was the lesser of the two evils.
Here I am today. No alcohol.
I found that talking about it gave me more strength but AA just was not a place I liked. I know it does work for many.
My close friend went the rehab route. Ended up having a seizure in rehab and hitting his head. Ended up in the hospital himself. There he went the same route as me. Detoxed there and never looked back.
Who you live with will make a major impact on doing it.
Your wife needs to be all in.
Don’t be embarrassed by it because it is actually a sign of strength to be able to fight it and see it that way. You have to be stronger then the alcohol and take inner pride in not drinking each and every time your brain says stuff like let’s stop at that gas station or when you are walking around a grocery store and see it advertised. Your brain will play tricks on you.
Good luck good to see posts like this very few times a year. Sometimes I want to click on them sometimes I don’t. I saw this a day ago and passed reading it because l did not want to think about it.
I saw it was still going this morning and felt drawn to reading it and posting myself.