Ever wonder how to stop drinking alcohol on your own? This post is for a drinker who wants to quit.
What I mean is, it’s not exactly for a capital-A alcoholic who is in desperate need of rehab. It’s for someone who is ready to quit on his or her own.
It is important that you clearly identify and note the reason(s) behind your desire and ultimate decision to stop drinking alcohol. These reasons may range from medical, social, health, marital or financial. Yet, there’s also that intuitive gut feeling, right? That gut feeling may be what keeps you on the path, but you really do need some specific and concrete things as well. These two are things you’ll be falling back on, and the more concrete, the better.
There are a lot of ways to stop drinking alcohol on your own; some are quite helpful whereas some are just dangerous.
The question is how to stop drinking alcohol without going through the kind of cold turkey episodes that make life miserable.
Below, I’ll recap some of the best advice I’ve found over the years. Some of it is from me myself, and a lot of it is something I know to work. But before we get there, let’s talk motivation. For someone who has hit rock bottom, there’s really no choice–you have to sober up. But if you’re not at a place where your life is at stake and you try to quit, things could get ugly. You’ll get a bit of snootiness from some friends and a lot of careless offers of drink.
So, those reasons we were talking about earlier: write them down, keep them in a small notebook you carry all around, and be ready to keep going back to them and back to them.
Use At Home Alcohol Detox to help you stop drinking alcohol at the onset
You’ve heard of detoxification as something that happens at detox centers, but it happens at home too.
It means flushing out all the alcohol from your system through sweating and shedding of other liquids from your body. Don’t worry, it’s just a minor detox diet like other diets. You use plenty of water, foods rich in potassium like oranges, green leafy veggies and bananas. You will also need a good supply of clean heavy blankets and a variety of sweatshirts.
Drinking lots of water is known to reduce withdrawal symptoms, while foods that are rich in potassium help in keeping your body well hydrated and assists in replenishing the lost potassium that is shed with the expelled liquids.
If you’ve decided to go this route, you should, and it may be very successful. But you can go without it–particularly if you’re a less heavy imbiber–and the important thing is just stopping the drinking.
Go Back Memory Lane
Yeah, temptation will shadow you. You’ll need to arm yourself with vivid memories of all the bad moments that alcohol gave you from your past experiences.
Re-live those ugly moments when you are tempted to take a sip of your favorite alcoholic drink, remember those times when you completely regretted ever drinking and try to recall how you felt. How many times have I done this? So many it’s embarrassing. That’s all my lawyer will allow me to say. But, I can tell you that there are people who aren’t in my life now due to screwups I made due to drink. If that’s not enough to keep the willpower alive, I don’t know what would be.
Carefully plan your quitting drinking
Now that you’ve laid down the mental framework, it’s time to get into the logistics.
The very first thing you should do is to remove all alcoholic drinks hanging around your apartment; also toss the alcohol glasses that you may have in the house.
If your route to work or home takes you past your local liquor store or bar then GPS your way into an alt route, friends. Overboard? Not quite. It’s smart. Be smarter than temptation.
If you’re comfortable telling people about your quest to stop drinking alcohol, that can be beneficial to you; otherwise, you’ll have to be explaining this constantly. Some people like to keep something like this secret–it’s a private thing and they feel that the mental focus they need will be there if they go it alone. Yet more people I’ve known have gone the route of getting very good support from one or two close family members. You can’t very well do that if you don’t tell them.
Visualize
It’s really important to maintain a vision of the kind of life you want to lead once you’re dry. It is bound to be a lifestyle that is better than the one you are currently living; try to make this vivid–you may have success with writing this down right along with your list of reasons for wanting to stop drinking alcohol.
If it is a lifestyle with more money and more time with your family, make sure you can vividly see yourself and family members enjoying yourselves. If it is a life without early morning hangovers then you should also think and see yourself enjoying the benefits of that kind of life. You really need something like this to keep you going.
Every time you get tempted, you can have yourself see the sober and healthy version of yourself at any given time.
Try Aversion Therapy
I’m throwing out suggestions, here, folks! This particular one is pretty extreme, and, as such, successful. It’s all about picturing disgusting things every time you’re tempted to drink.
You can pretend that your local bar or liquor store is full of barbaric or ugly creatures that you fear the most. One can also imagine his glass of beer as being full of urine or dead animals. You can also think of those occasions when someone vomited all over the place when you were either with them or near them. Come to think of it, you very well have been that person, right?
Aversion therapy can get you out of a tight spot if applied correctly, but you can see its limitations.
Avoid Bad Company
This is usually called the ABC of quitting alcohol. It’s not so much that you have to avoid drinkers and/or start shunning your friends wholesale. I have a close friend, Brandon, and he’s a drinker. But he respects the heck out of my recovery. Therefore, he’s not bad company. Bad company is anyone who disrespects your recovery or gets you into traps where drink is available. But I’d say bad company is also anyone who disrespects you in any way. If you have a friend who’s as much of a hassle as anyone else, the kind of guy who calls you at 3 a.m. with some dumb idea or wants you to invest in his senseless business, during this tough time, it’s time to give things a rest with him. What you need to do is a bit more than just get off drink. You’re trying to make things better overall–there are issues underlying your drinking to begin with–allowing those to get worse won’t get you anywhere.
You’ll have to decide if you can gracefully avoid these folks or if you’re going to have to be blunt about it and end up taking a stand. Only your intuition can sort that out.
Finally, when you have gone through the various ways, techniques and methods on how to stop drinking alcohol on your own, choose the most comfortable pieces of advice and methodologies that fit your needs and requirements and go for it; you have made the right decision.
Let no one tell you that it will be simple and easy. It’s a battle of your mind and you need to assemble all the courage, determination and available strength to be victorious; but yes, you can overcome and stop drinking alcohol.
Photo Credit Dmitri Rhyzkhov on Flickr
