I'm quitting alcohol

How do I quit drinking. I crave it so much. I feel like an alcoholic. I might be.

3 Likes

@Sheryl

You may want to look into a medication called Naltrexone (an opioid antagonist). It’s a prescription medication, so you’ll need to see your psychiatrist and check if your insurance covers it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naltrexone

4 Likes

I have replaced cigarettes with vaping, so maybe you can replace alcoholic drinks with non-alcoholic beer in the beginning, you can notice if it helps or not, good luck !

4 Likes

Like @kindness says, naltrexone really helped me cut down on drinking. It even helped me get 90 days of sobriety at one point. I have only been truly drunk a few times since I started naltrexone and that was when I wasn’t taking meds properly. I recently started Zoloft and it turns out Zoloft and naltrexone combined is 3x more effective in preventing relapse then naltrexone alone. So maybe if naltrexone doesn’t fully work for you you can add Zoloft. You can also try Aa if you think it can help you. I’m 23 days no alcohol today since starting Zoloft. I have no cravings. Good luck. The booze is like a demon inside a bottle. Especially drinking on these pills we take.

3 Likes

It can sometimes be dangerous to just stop drinking if your body is dependent on it.
If you want to cut down you could limit your drinking to a 2 hour period before you go to bed.
I used to drink alcohol all day every day, but I have not had any at all in the last 4 weeks.
You will get lots of support from everyone on here. Many have used alcohol and have given up.

I once quit smoking and drinking all together. It was the worst 15 minutes of my life.

Just kidding. I have almost 11 years since I quit smoking and allmost 12 years that I am not abusing alcohol. I might drink one beer with my father every once in a while but it is very seldom.

Good luck on quitting. When I was in rehab many moons ago they said that we should keep some sweets with us.
Alcohol contains lots of sugar and part of the cravings is for the sugar. So if you crave a drink, have a sweet. That is how I managed to quit one time.

3 Likes

That is a very nice trick :grinning::smile::smile::smile:

2 Likes

Could also be your med making you so flat and depressed that you wanna drink as an escape reaction. That is what happened with me. Now that i changed meds i rarely drink anymore

1 Like

for me I think it was a med change that put the nail in it. The risperidone I’m on has a long half life so if I drink I get too sleepy and just plain feel like crap. I also don’t have cravings anymore. U might wanna see if there’s a different med. also try drinking kombacha! You can make it at home so it’s really cheap.
The best thing about not drinking is your always in a positive good mood, renewed energy, with extra money in your pocket . You won’t regret it

I’m almost six months sober myself. I crave it too. It’s only because there are no stores in town that sell beer that I was able to quit for this long. (There are ways I could get alcohol, though. I choose not to use them.) I’ve heard that the definitive signs of alcoholism are blackouts and personality changes. I used to go into a black out and do all kinds of crazy things I didn’t remember doing the next day when I was drinking. My brother said I was a different person when I came back from Germany when I was in the army.

I never drank alcoholically but I used to get drunk fairly often. I also got addicted to crack for four years. And I also smoked pot occasionally. I got clean and sober in 1990 when I was 30. I joined AA, CA, and NA. They’re free and they have worked for me. The social aspect of meetings helped me too.

2 Likes

Long-time AA member here. Over 25 years of sobriety in the program. Also worth mentioning, the coping skills you learn to help recover from alcoholism also work wonderfully well for recovering from schizophrenia.

1 Like

Replace bad behavior with good. It’s not easy getting off alcohol if you drink a lot. It’s best to titrate down…a bit less each day …then move to days off. Set yourself limits both in time and number of drinks. Ie don’t start drinking till a certain time. Only have a set amount…It’s not easy but it’s doable.

3 Likes

Eh, I tried that. Invariably titrated ‘down’ to the next case/bottle. Had to go cold turkey, which massively sucked, but it was the only way to not hit the next bottle.