Four years sober today!

Thanks! I appreciate it!

Thank you!

I'm not op but I've got over 3 yr no booze and used to drink a lot daily like u.

Speaking personally I just got sick of feeling how you describe. Not hungover but just sloppy and gross... You go to the same bars and see the same ppl wasting their lives away on beer and never actually doing anything or going anywhere just getting DUIs and rotting from the inside. Is that where you want to be in 10, 20 years? Right where u are now no book written no album spun all you did was drink ur cash away?

You're better than that homie. I can tell even over the wire. The hardest part is the first month ngl.

I know u got 30 days in u. What have you got to lose? A few weeks being tipsy?

Buy a few cases of sparkly la Croix and chug that stuff hard when u want to drink. Trust me it helps.

Best of luck friend.

Thing is, when you're drinking as much as you are, you can't really trust how you're feeling as being really how you feel. Alcohol has such an influence on mood / outlook / general emotional state that I'd argue you don't really know how you feel right now. The insidious part is that all the emotions feel just as genuine as sober feelings, even though they're being shaped so heavily by outside chemicals.

I'm not arguing that if you take some time off you'll magically discover you're just super happy or something, I'm not naive. But you can't really trust your emotional state when it's this heavily manipulated. For me, problems feel much bigger and more hopeless when I drink regularly. There's also an anxiety that comes with heavy use that's near universal, and I don't have that feeling at all sober, just flat out isn't there. Take 30 days and find out how you really feel, and pay attention to how those feelings change as you get some distance - you at least owe yourself that. You don't have to make some huge "never again" commitment. Just take the time to really dry out and see what your emotions are like from there. You've got nothing to lose by doing so, it's just a few weeks.

Oh, ETA - like you my hangover symptoms were always super mild and that definitely contributed to overdoing it. I really only get severe fatigue and low motivation, but even that was absent for years. Plus I was internally doing some stupid macho "I can handle this when others can't" type shit, not sure if you've let that seep into your identity as well.

Yeah I felt shitty more often than not for sure. Not necessarily a full on hangover, but definitely a deep depression. I'm on medication for depression already and it helps so much more now that I'm sober. It was that self-hatred more than any of the physical symptoms that made me want to quit. Depression and drinking is a vicious cycle that reinforces itself with every step, I'd long since realized that but just couldn't bring myself to care for so long.

I honestly don't know what it was about that day that did it. I'd woken up feeling much worse in the past, both physically and mentally, and that wasn't enough to get me to stop before. I guess I was just done with feeling like that due to my own actions, if I was going to suffer depression anyway, at the very least I didn't want to suffer at my own hand.

I understand the suicidal feelings, that was a regular part of my life too. If you're not already, I definitely encourage you to seek help for depression, medication can help, and giving up alcohol alongside it can do wonders.

Thanks!