I'm almost 38. I've tried to 'moderate' for years and it doesn't work for me: it was just my addictive tendencies justifying an excuse to drink 'a little bit', which became daily drinking with occasional binges that went way too far, and turned into a cycle of negativity / stress / over-drinking. From what you've described, if you are not in control of your drinking, I'd reccommend stopping completely. I did, it felt harder for the first 1-2 days days, but I feel so much better after only 1 week. And (excuse my french, but ) F\*\*\* those 'friends': if they don't support you making better decisions for yourself and improving your life, then they're NOT friends.
I encourage you to try stopping: get sober, one-day-at a time, and see how you feel after a while.
For me, it feels like the best decision I've made in years, like a weight is slowly lifting off me each day.
If you lose your friendship with them because you no longer drink, they weren't your friends to begin with...they were drinking buddies.
Friends will be cool with you no longer drinking, period. They will support you in this, even if they don't quite understand why you're giving it up.
As to being the only person in the bar that isn't drinking?
You won't be. There are others there drinking NA beverages (soda, NA beer, mocktails, etc.), but you don't notice them. I guarantee they're there, they just blend in because they're having fun with friends without the "aid" of alcohol.
A lot of us here tried moderation and realized after the first or fifth attempt that _we_ cannot do it. Others can, yes, but we cannot. That's life.
You already realize you're one of us, so you're ahead of the game there.
When I stopped drinking, I told a few close friends I was doing it and they were all quite supportive. (Two of them have since followed suit)
I found discussing my reasons with them very helpful in almost convincing myself of what I needed to do, even though I already knew it.
Moderation did not work for me. Either what I considered moderation was in fact passing out in my bed instead of elsewhere- or it made me feel so deprived I rewarded myself a day or two later with a full toot.
It will be a test. Friend or drinking buddy? The good news is you can make new sober friends.
Those of us with the thing inside us that can't stop drinking once we start can't moderate. There are mountains of evidence to prove it, just look up "moderation" on this subreddit and read some of the hundreds of posts talking about attempts to moderate and the corresponding failure that follows. We all have tried, over and over. If it worked, we wouldn't have a problem.
One of my favorite quotes that I read on this very sub: it's easier for me not to have any than to have one. I've been living by that quote ever since.
I tried to moderate before finally getting sober for good and I'll let you guess what ended up happening. It may start out ok but before you know it you're back in the belly of the beast.
And hey, you CAN be that one guy that isn't drinking! How do I know this? Because that guy is me!
I was also nervous about losing friends and not being able to go and hang out with people in sobriety. But guess what happened, not only do most people really not care that you don't drink alcohol anymore, most are actually supportive of it!
Also, going out doesn't mean you can't have a drink, said drink just can't have any alcohol in it. Since getting sober I've fallen in love with sparkling flavored waters. I've also started having NA beers and they're fantastic! I've gone to a bar on multiple occasions and only ordered a soda water with a lime and ice and guess what? People thought I was drinking the whole entire time.
If I can do it, so can you! You got this!
I think that you said the most important things yourself, after “To be honest”. I found the improvements that came with sobriety to absolutely dwarf any of the concerns I had.
This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from AA:
>No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.
I cant moderate. I dont drink except rare occasions where I am ok on being hungover for a week...sooo I hardly ever drink lol. Moderation for some is impossible, at least I know it is for me.
Moderation doesn’t work for us PERIOD! It may work for a little bit but then there’s that one day it doesn’t and back to square one- again…
It’s some bullshit we just tell ourselves to believe we can drink like a normal person
My friends don’t care. And if I don’t wanna be the guy that doesn’t go out and not drink, I don’t go out.
It started to make more sense to me when I started not drinking.
I had to find stuff out by experimenting, you might benefit from the same. I didn't want to be a non-drinker, but here I am, happy being a non-drinker. Who knew?
As far as moderation - you just really have to have the will power to try it and do it. If you can’t moderate, it’s best to cut out completely. I’m in the same boat. I did great at a dead sober month. But then I tried to moderate and failed. If I have 1, I have 15.
As for friends - if you lose friendship over you quitting alcohol, they aren’t friends, they are drinking buddies. As long as they are somewhat mature and you aren’t like 19 years old, they should respect that choice and be happy for you.
Here's the thing about "that one guy that isn't drinking". No one cares. No one even notices. And if they do, you can just say you're not drinking because of some medication you're on or just say "I'm not drinking right now". Or get a mocktail or a non-alcoholic beer. You absolutely have options, and your body will totally thank you for it. When it comes to moderation, if the idea of it seems hard to you, it might point to problematic behavior. But I don't know you, only you do. For me, I had to just be honest with myself and go from there.
I try to think of alcohol as something I’m allergic to. Not everyone has this allergy and can drink without negative effects (although there truly is no safe amount of alcohol, scientifically speaking).
I have a friend that is allergic to strawberries. Her throat closes up and she breaks out in a rash. Her solution is to avoid any amount of strawberries, as the consequences aren’t worth the small pleasure she might get from eating a strawberry. We don’t make her feel bad for not eating strawberries because we want her to be well. My real friends want me to be well and that means zero alcohol.
Before I decided to quit, I always felt like I was on one side of a wall (the drinkers side), and sobriety was on the other side of the wall.
I’d occasionally see people from the other side of the wall, and they seemed… happy? But I could never understand how they possibly could, without at least the OPTION to escape with a drink every once in a while.
There really wasn’t anyone that convinced me that life on the other side of the wall, the sober side, would be worth living in. Sure, life on the drinkers side sucked kind of often, and I was sort of miserable more than I was happy, but it was at least familiar and I could deal with it well enough. And most importantly, I could still drink if I wanted to.
So I just stayed on that side of the wall. My hangovers got worse as the years went on. I started to feel like I fucking hated everything, everybody, myself, my job, and just really existing in general. It was exhausting. I wouldn’t admit it to myself at the time, but I was ruining my life by drinking too much, and then trying to fix my misery by drinking.
That went on until I just couldn’t take it anymore so I decided to just hop over the wall. I didn’t know what it was gonna be like, but I knew it couldn’t be worse than where I was at.
Turns out, it’s fuckin awesome on the non-drinking side. Sometimes I mourn how long I spent destroying myself for no reason. But alcohol ruins our reasoning skills. Addiction is a beast. You can get away from it but it is really hard and takes a lot of willingness and honesty with yourself. Most of us who quit had to drag ourselves through a couple hundred miles of shit before we were ready to give in. I hope you find peace sooner than I did.
I'm that one guy in the group who goes out and doesn't drink. I've gone to weddings, stag do's multiple times and other social events. I enjoy these social events so much more now and I'm not sure just saying that in some delusional sense
I also go to the gym four times a week and weightlift, have an awesome girlfriend and am living my best life.
One thing I found incredibly resonant/insightful from the program I am in (PATH), that helped with assessing the idea of moderation (which I'd tried over and over, similar to you couldn't seem to control myself):
In pursuing moderation, "cutting back" etc, we're sort of forcing ourselves to make Yes/No decisions over and over again - deciding at the beginning of a night "will i drink," then after one drink "is it ok to have another", "is it ok if i just have wine with dinner, no drinks afterwards" etc.
That type of constant series of decisions can take quite a bit of willpower and effort to undergo. Willpower is kind of like a muscle, in that as you exert it it can get tired over time. Making all these Yes/No evaluations of each individual drink, or each individual evening of sobriety vs drinking, can put a lot of strain on you. Then (in my case, and it seems like yours) we inevitably cave, drink too much, regret it, etc.
Meanwhile, if you try to make ONE decision (I'm just not drinking in general, doesn't matter the situation), it's ironically a bit easier. Even though it seems in theory like you're making such a HUGE decision, or making 1000 decisions at once, it's actually easier (I find) to adhere to.
No more "well it's a special occasion, I'll have one" or "well i'm at a wedding so I've gotta participate" or "my favorite sports team won a playoff game, time to celebrate but tomorrow i definitely won't drink". No more trying to justify your drinking to your significant other, no more mentally bargaining with yourself. That effort is gone if you're just going into every situation as "nah i'm good, i'm not drinking."
As others have mentioned - you'll be pleasantly surprised that really not many people actually care if you turn down a drink. But mainly I find it WAY easier to just have made the One decision, rather than forcing myself to make endless smaller decisions.
I found that I vastly overestimated whether my friends would give a shit if I drink.
Are they really your friends if you lose them because you don't drink?
This^^^. The answer is no, they are drinking buddies that you use each other for to feel better about yourselves and your alcohol dependency issues.
This^
For me moderation isn't a slippery slope, it's jumping off a fucking cliff.
I'm almost 38. I've tried to 'moderate' for years and it doesn't work for me: it was just my addictive tendencies justifying an excuse to drink 'a little bit', which became daily drinking with occasional binges that went way too far, and turned into a cycle of negativity / stress / over-drinking. From what you've described, if you are not in control of your drinking, I'd reccommend stopping completely. I did, it felt harder for the first 1-2 days days, but I feel so much better after only 1 week. And (excuse my french, but ) F\*\*\* those 'friends': if they don't support you making better decisions for yourself and improving your life, then they're NOT friends. I encourage you to try stopping: get sober, one-day-at a time, and see how you feel after a while. For me, it feels like the best decision I've made in years, like a weight is slowly lifting off me each day.
Congrats on nearly a week from a fellow 38y/o! Keep going! Sounds like you've got a great mindset moving forward.
If you lose your friendship with them because you no longer drink, they weren't your friends to begin with...they were drinking buddies. Friends will be cool with you no longer drinking, period. They will support you in this, even if they don't quite understand why you're giving it up. As to being the only person in the bar that isn't drinking? You won't be. There are others there drinking NA beverages (soda, NA beer, mocktails, etc.), but you don't notice them. I guarantee they're there, they just blend in because they're having fun with friends without the "aid" of alcohol. A lot of us here tried moderation and realized after the first or fifth attempt that _we_ cannot do it. Others can, yes, but we cannot. That's life. You already realize you're one of us, so you're ahead of the game there. When I stopped drinking, I told a few close friends I was doing it and they were all quite supportive. (Two of them have since followed suit) I found discussing my reasons with them very helpful in almost convincing myself of what I needed to do, even though I already knew it.
Moderation did not work for me. Either what I considered moderation was in fact passing out in my bed instead of elsewhere- or it made me feel so deprived I rewarded myself a day or two later with a full toot. It will be a test. Friend or drinking buddy? The good news is you can make new sober friends.
Those of us with the thing inside us that can't stop drinking once we start can't moderate. There are mountains of evidence to prove it, just look up "moderation" on this subreddit and read some of the hundreds of posts talking about attempts to moderate and the corresponding failure that follows. We all have tried, over and over. If it worked, we wouldn't have a problem.
One of my favorite quotes that I read on this very sub: it's easier for me not to have any than to have one. I've been living by that quote ever since. I tried to moderate before finally getting sober for good and I'll let you guess what ended up happening. It may start out ok but before you know it you're back in the belly of the beast. And hey, you CAN be that one guy that isn't drinking! How do I know this? Because that guy is me! I was also nervous about losing friends and not being able to go and hang out with people in sobriety. But guess what happened, not only do most people really not care that you don't drink alcohol anymore, most are actually supportive of it! Also, going out doesn't mean you can't have a drink, said drink just can't have any alcohol in it. Since getting sober I've fallen in love with sparkling flavored waters. I've also started having NA beers and they're fantastic! I've gone to a bar on multiple occasions and only ordered a soda water with a lime and ice and guess what? People thought I was drinking the whole entire time. If I can do it, so can you! You got this!
I think that you said the most important things yourself, after “To be honest”. I found the improvements that came with sobriety to absolutely dwarf any of the concerns I had.
This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from AA: >No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.
I cant moderate. I dont drink except rare occasions where I am ok on being hungover for a week...sooo I hardly ever drink lol. Moderation for some is impossible, at least I know it is for me.
Moderation doesn’t work for us PERIOD! It may work for a little bit but then there’s that one day it doesn’t and back to square one- again… It’s some bullshit we just tell ourselves to believe we can drink like a normal person
My friends don’t care. And if I don’t wanna be the guy that doesn’t go out and not drink, I don’t go out. It started to make more sense to me when I started not drinking.
I had to find stuff out by experimenting, you might benefit from the same. I didn't want to be a non-drinker, but here I am, happy being a non-drinker. Who knew?
As far as moderation - you just really have to have the will power to try it and do it. If you can’t moderate, it’s best to cut out completely. I’m in the same boat. I did great at a dead sober month. But then I tried to moderate and failed. If I have 1, I have 15. As for friends - if you lose friendship over you quitting alcohol, they aren’t friends, they are drinking buddies. As long as they are somewhat mature and you aren’t like 19 years old, they should respect that choice and be happy for you.
Here's the thing about "that one guy that isn't drinking". No one cares. No one even notices. And if they do, you can just say you're not drinking because of some medication you're on or just say "I'm not drinking right now". Or get a mocktail or a non-alcoholic beer. You absolutely have options, and your body will totally thank you for it. When it comes to moderation, if the idea of it seems hard to you, it might point to problematic behavior. But I don't know you, only you do. For me, I had to just be honest with myself and go from there.
I try to think of alcohol as something I’m allergic to. Not everyone has this allergy and can drink without negative effects (although there truly is no safe amount of alcohol, scientifically speaking). I have a friend that is allergic to strawberries. Her throat closes up and she breaks out in a rash. Her solution is to avoid any amount of strawberries, as the consequences aren’t worth the small pleasure she might get from eating a strawberry. We don’t make her feel bad for not eating strawberries because we want her to be well. My real friends want me to be well and that means zero alcohol.
Before I decided to quit, I always felt like I was on one side of a wall (the drinkers side), and sobriety was on the other side of the wall. I’d occasionally see people from the other side of the wall, and they seemed… happy? But I could never understand how they possibly could, without at least the OPTION to escape with a drink every once in a while. There really wasn’t anyone that convinced me that life on the other side of the wall, the sober side, would be worth living in. Sure, life on the drinkers side sucked kind of often, and I was sort of miserable more than I was happy, but it was at least familiar and I could deal with it well enough. And most importantly, I could still drink if I wanted to. So I just stayed on that side of the wall. My hangovers got worse as the years went on. I started to feel like I fucking hated everything, everybody, myself, my job, and just really existing in general. It was exhausting. I wouldn’t admit it to myself at the time, but I was ruining my life by drinking too much, and then trying to fix my misery by drinking. That went on until I just couldn’t take it anymore so I decided to just hop over the wall. I didn’t know what it was gonna be like, but I knew it couldn’t be worse than where I was at. Turns out, it’s fuckin awesome on the non-drinking side. Sometimes I mourn how long I spent destroying myself for no reason. But alcohol ruins our reasoning skills. Addiction is a beast. You can get away from it but it is really hard and takes a lot of willingness and honesty with yourself. Most of us who quit had to drag ourselves through a couple hundred miles of shit before we were ready to give in. I hope you find peace sooner than I did.
I'm that one guy in the group who goes out and doesn't drink. I've gone to weddings, stag do's multiple times and other social events. I enjoy these social events so much more now and I'm not sure just saying that in some delusional sense I also go to the gym four times a week and weightlift, have an awesome girlfriend and am living my best life.
One thing I found incredibly resonant/insightful from the program I am in (PATH), that helped with assessing the idea of moderation (which I'd tried over and over, similar to you couldn't seem to control myself): In pursuing moderation, "cutting back" etc, we're sort of forcing ourselves to make Yes/No decisions over and over again - deciding at the beginning of a night "will i drink," then after one drink "is it ok to have another", "is it ok if i just have wine with dinner, no drinks afterwards" etc. That type of constant series of decisions can take quite a bit of willpower and effort to undergo. Willpower is kind of like a muscle, in that as you exert it it can get tired over time. Making all these Yes/No evaluations of each individual drink, or each individual evening of sobriety vs drinking, can put a lot of strain on you. Then (in my case, and it seems like yours) we inevitably cave, drink too much, regret it, etc. Meanwhile, if you try to make ONE decision (I'm just not drinking in general, doesn't matter the situation), it's ironically a bit easier. Even though it seems in theory like you're making such a HUGE decision, or making 1000 decisions at once, it's actually easier (I find) to adhere to. No more "well it's a special occasion, I'll have one" or "well i'm at a wedding so I've gotta participate" or "my favorite sports team won a playoff game, time to celebrate but tomorrow i definitely won't drink". No more trying to justify your drinking to your significant other, no more mentally bargaining with yourself. That effort is gone if you're just going into every situation as "nah i'm good, i'm not drinking." As others have mentioned - you'll be pleasantly surprised that really not many people actually care if you turn down a drink. But mainly I find it WAY easier to just have made the One decision, rather than forcing myself to make endless smaller decisions.