Why stop drinking?
Why?
Before even thinking about how to stop drinking, you need to understand the why. If there isn’t a why, there won’t be a how. In other words, if you don’t know what makes you drink and the reasons why you need to stop, you won’t be able to find the right path to sobriety. This is the reason why the first step in any twelve-step program is radical acceptance.
Alcohol robbed me of the highly productive and creative potential of my twenties. That entire decade was lost, professionally, psychologically, socially and creatively. I couldn’t keep a job, I stopped writing, composing, playing music, caring for my health. Alcohol worsened my depressive episodes, my ADHD, and my anxiety. It made me stray away from my family and friends and it got me into bad relationships. It made me a bad mom.
Those were all great reasons to stop drinking, but they weren’t enough for me. One thing that I learned at my A.A. meetings is that many alcoholics need to hit rock bottom before they can crawl back up and get sober. That was what happened to me. Faced with the prospect of early death, I decided that I did not want to continue creating traumas for myself. I wanted to live. So, I quit drinking.
Reasons to quit
You may have different reasons. Maybe you have kids and you want to be there for them. I had a safety net with my family and they helped with my son when I was in bad shape. My son didn’t suffer much or even notice that he had an alcoholic mother, but not everyone is so lucky. Maybe you want to grow in your career and alcohol is drawing you back. Maybe you want to be healthy and live a long life. Maybe you hate the fact that you drink. Maybe you don’t want to die. Maybe you want to end a vicious alcoholic cycle in your family.
Alcoholism ran on both sides of my family tree. The probabilities that I or any of my siblings and cousins could come to be alcoholics was fairly high. The disease permeated every generation, from my grandparents to me. I am not a martyr or even a role model. But I do feel proud for being the first alcoholic in my family to look for treatment. Sadly, I was the only one so far.
Whatever the reason is for quitting, you need to find one. You need to understand why drinking is hurting you and why you need to get sober. Otherwise, the temptation to drink will overcome your desire to stop. Maybe, like me, you’ll need to hit rock bottom to be able to say “I never want to go through that again”. That is a solid reason. I hope you never need it, but it happens. Sometimes, it’s the only way.
Road to a good life
In my A.A. group, there was a man in his early seventies who was revered by the others and who looked much younger than he really was. He told me that by the time he was fifty, he had been an alcoholic for thirty years. He lost his job, all his money, his friends and his family. His rock bottom was when his wife asked him to leave and he didn’t have anywhere to go. He was sick, unemployed, overweight, penniless, depressed and homeless. He thought he was at the end of his life. And then, a concerned friend advised him to go to A.A. and showed him where there was a meeting nearby. He went to his first meeting and started on a long path to sobriety.
When I met him, he had been sober for over 20 years. You should have seen the shiny red convertible that he parked in front of the building where our meetings were held. After he quit alcohol, he became a successful businessman, got his family back, lost weight, started working out and was allowed a second chance at life. When he showed me a picture of himself back when he was fifty — at the pinnacle of his degeneracy — I couldn’t believe it. He looked older at fifty than he did at seventy. Sometimes it’s necessary to lose everything in order to learn the value of life.
Another story was told to me by my psychiatrist back when I had just quit. I was afraid of having to start life anew. Afraid that I wouldn’t have time to start life all over again and achieve what I wanted to achieve. Compassionately, he told me that Anthony Hopkins had once been an alcoholic, right when his career started to pick up. After coming close to losing everything that he had achieved and afraid of what might happen to his life and his career, he decided to quit drinking. From the moment he became sober, it took him 17 years to win his first Oscar. He was 54 years old. “It’s never too late”, my shrink told me.
