The book Alcohol Explained by William Porter CHANGED My life. I just stopped five days ago after 22 years of daily drinking

Keep reading! It seems you had quite a powerful moment of clarity that gave you some life changing insight into your behaviours. You need to nurture whatever that positive force that was to give yourself the best chance at sustaining your recovery and continue the feeling of being free from all that the drink had you doing. It gets easier, the hard part is doing it every day but that gets easier too. Embrace the natural return to feeling more alive and get addicted to that feeling, you need to try find something that triggers a dopamine loop that can stand replace the nasty unhelpful mega alcohol reward system that has been appropriately neglected for the last five days. 'I dont have a hobby' is not a good enough excuse im afraid, if this the case your hobby is 'hobby searching', find things you like and keep trying new ones if nothing is sticking because it could be crucial in sustaining a healthy happy lifestyle. Think about the amount of brainpower you've used over to keep drinking, try find that well of energy and use it for good.

I'm gona make a reasonable assumption here and speculate that in literally every possible scenario that if you go back on the drink you will instantly summon an unbearable wave of all the most undesirable of feelings like guilt, shame, fear, hopelessness, worthlessness, self esteem bankruptcy etc. Essentially my argument is that you should be terrified of picking up again as it will cause an eager destructive force to come into play. It was doing nonstop press ups waiting for your return to try restart the the stripping down of all that you own, starts by taking your peace of mind and manages to somehow convince you that the best way deal with a storm in the head is chemically anaethestise yourself. It ends six feet under because rock bottom is only when you stop digging.

Went on a bit of ramble but I'm urging you to keep find out exactly why that book worked, you have a window now with your new clear head to add fortifications to your recovery by learning all you can about your own behaviors and what kept you in the cycle. Develop a healthy fear of it, it is not your friend and any wayward warm feelings that you might catch when drink is in the picture is a lie and an instant red alert. Leave, drink water, do a back flip, anything other than drinking. Knowledge is a powerful ally in this lifelong fight we are in and he seems to have taken a liking to you so get reading! Fear causes anxiety, anxiety drives our behaviour by being particularly prickly and simply unbearable to someone in active addiction.

Fear of the unknown is a well described and effective driver of maladaptive and addictive behaviours that plague us, Knowledge can one-shot insta-kill the fear of the unknown beast, in a glorious moment of clarity where we have power over the storm and bask in the best natural buzz going. Get addicted to that

/r/stopdrinking Thread