Great work, keep it up.
Gout was the perfect wake up call for me, it's as if my body knew my brain needed a big dose of pain to reboot. I don't wish gout on anyone, but for me it was a blessing in disguise.
Reminded me of a couple things
I still get this sometimes. I have to remind myself that by the end I wasn't having fun anymore. What I miss isn't drinking, just a small and fleeting part of it, without the commensurate downsides. And having a life that was conducive to drinking, which isn't sustainable or fulfilling -- as I've proven to myself through firsthand empirical research.
Following up on this. I let out my anger by typing really hard and being aggressive and I felt relief somehow after that.
This might sound trite and cliche, but exercise is a great replacement after giving up alcohol, substances, porn, doomscrolling, or whatever your source of drip-feed dopamine is. It lets me get some of that anger/aggression out too. That feeling of listlessness, anhedonia, acedia, depression or whatever you want to identify it as, is very difficult to feel when I'm bench-pressing a bar that could kill me if I drop it on my face/neck/chest. And when I'm done, my body gives me that feel good brain juice for actually doing something.
Developing gout from drinking alcohol is an excellent motivation to quit. I never had to deal with it, but I have met people who did and the pain is exquisite.
Yeah this is a huge revelation for a lot of people. That you can just feel bad and you don't have to reach for anything outside yourself to get through it or "fix" it. There's obviously an internal impetus to avoid discomfort, but there's also external pressure in the sense that society has become so fagged up about positivity that anything else is written off as a behavioral problem or a mood disorder. There's an expectation that we're supposed to be happy all the time, both in terms of mood and how we present ourselves, and without quoting Schopenhaur suffice to say it causes nothing but problems. Every emotion is natural and has its place, and treating them as something to be avoided or remedied leads to a narrowed and impeded existence, when in reality it generally resolves itself when you let it run its course. People need to cry, people need to express grief, people need to express rage. Ideally you sublimate it into an activity that is beneficial to you or someone else, but even impotent expressions serve a purpose.
A lot of people don't realize how much an addict's life revolves around acquiring and measuring their drug of choice.
The fun part was revolving liquor stores. You didn't want to go to the same liquor store to get all your booze because then they'll realize you're a full-blown alcoholic, so you go to Paddy's Packie on Monday, Louie's Liquors on Tuesday, Pajeet's Place on Wednesday, Ching Chong's Chinky Chug Palace on Thursday, and then start back at Paddy's on Friday. Then you get into the logistics of disposing all the bottles so that your neighbors don't see your overflowing recycle bin and realize you're an alcoholic...
One giant chain bought out 4 of the 5 liquor stores in my small city, and they rotate their staff. I could go in to "Store A" and be greeted by Employee Chuck, then a day or two later go to "Store B" and Chuck would be working there too. It was mad embarrassing.
That's actually kind of funny and the type of thing that should have a comedy sketch made about it and only gets a few thousand views but the comments are filled with people sharing anecdotes like yours.
The shit I hear in AA meetings is both hilarious and awful.
I've always kinda wanted to write a one-act play of a guy in his early 20s who goes to an AA meeting and hears people telling their war stories and just thinks "well... at least I'm not that bad yet" and never comes back.
It would work as a short play. What really causes this is rooms full of angry people. There are plenty of guys in my group with heartbreaking stories, but they still laugh and joke.
Most people legitimately don't give a shit if you drink today, or not. You don't owe anyone an explanation. If they do care that you're not drinking, they probably already know why you're not. When offered a drink "No thanks, not tonight," is a perfectly normal answer. Worse comes to worst, and you really get nervous about it, say you're on an antibiotic.
What I do is say I'm on a new medication that I can't drink with, like statins for cholesterol. Or say you hurt your back, took some Advil, and you can't drink.
I love how I used to dread making excuses not to drink. And literally no one ever batted an eye. Just because I don't drink like normal people, and my thoughts were consumed with it, doesn't make the rest of the world like that. It took me far too long a time to reach that realization.