On alcohol

I stopped drinking on November 10th 2020 after the only panic attack I have ever had gave me enough downtime to question what the fuck I was doing with my life. I took a few weeks off to think about what might have caused me to throw a wobbly, stopped seeing the appeal of getting drunk, and havenā€™t wanted to drink since then.

I didnā€™t have a drink problem, but looking back; Iā€™d stopped enjoying going out drinking with my friends, I didnā€™t like the way I behaved while drunk anymore, and I dreaded the thought of behaving the same way for the rest of my life.

I felt like pure shit for the first 6 months. Alcohol was the only coping mechanism I had ever known for stress, the only social lubricant I had to make being in groups of people tolerable, the only thing I had in common with most of my friends, and so it played a big part in pretty much everything I looked forward to.

Itā€™s huge part of the culture where I grew up and it fuels all social engagements. Weekends are for drinking and holidays are for drinking even more. Itā€™s hard to adjust to not doing it. I had fuck all to enjoy for a while and a creeping suspicion that I might never be happy or relaxed ever again.

I felt noticably better after 18 months. The growing pressure that comes from not having a weekend blowout to look forward to just eased off at some point. Iā€™ve always been very calm, but I felt more emotionally steady than ever before. At the time of writing itā€™s been over three years since I stopped and my mood is still extremely consistent. I have a much clearer idea of who I am, how I want to behave, and a calming reassurance that it will continue because I donā€™t planning on deliberately altering my mental state any time soon.

I feel anxiety more than I did before stopping (probably because I donā€™t drink to alleviate the anxiety that I also had previously, so now I have to actually suffer it). Itā€™s mostly in busy social settings around new people, but thatā€™s getting better all the time too.

As a brief update four and a half years on from stopping; the social anxiety is all but gone.