The Drinking Too Much Thread

Deebs is out and about in rural Alabama doing moonshine runs every night

I’m on day 1 of an attempt to stop drinking on weeknights, from now until I go away on holiday in late May. It’s mainly an attempt to lose a bit of weight because I’m still carrying a massive lockdown belly, and I’d like to at least have smaller man-boobs before I hit the swimming pools in just trunks. But I also definitely drink too much, and it’s also bad for my home life because booze makes me snore, so I don’t go to bed for fear of disturbing the wife (who gets up crazy early for work).

The flip side is if she asks me to give her a night of uninterrupted sleep and sleep downstairs, I go “well, I might as well have a drink then”. She had covid the past 2 weeks and I drank every night while “isolating” downstairs. So I guess I’m trying to kick a sleeping downstairs habit as well as a drinking habit.

hedben

They were pretty good! The crowd was definitely mostly in the 40-50 year old demographic, and whilst their new songs got a good reaction (it's a good new album) the classics got the biggest reactions...

I think my main reasons for wanting to drink less are health reasons - I'm getting fat and have a hideous fucking gut these days, though to be honest drink is only a part of the problem - and to a degree financial. And the hangovers.

But I do enjoy the getting drunk aspect and I'll not pretend otherwise. I'm going to try and get through this week without drinking but I'm absolutely planning to drink over the bank holiday.

Had to sort my mum's funeral out today, as well as doing the bank admin etc. Was sorted much more quickly than I expected, so was in the pub with my brother just gone 11 (Spoons, he won't drink anywhere else). Fuck me, if many of the regulars last the year, I'll be amazed.

Left just gone 3 after 6 pints, costing less than £20, had to come home for a sleep.

Yeah, the dog was always going to stay with us, but I had hoped that if she made it home, we'd drop him round a couple of times a week for company. C'est la vie. Doing ok, taking it easy, few more bits of admin tomorrow. Will probably take next week off too, so will hopefully get some gaming in.

I had planned to do a dry two weeks, as there was no way I'm not drinking around my birthday.

Yeah, lasted about 4 days. Not been drinking as much though.

Dryish here too. 9 days off it then met a mate I'd not seen in months, so had a few then with a curry. Will be dry then until I go to football in a week or so. Then dry again after. 2 days of drinking in the month is good going I think.

And tbh, kind of where I need to get to for my health - been struggling to get my blood pressure under control for months, despite increasing meds etc - took it after being off the sauce for a week and it was bang on. Took it the day after the session and it was high again. Normal again today. So yeah, I don't think I should drink much anymore. (Which I've kinda always known but have been kidding myself).

Ouch, that's a bit of a wake up call isn't it. I know full well I get palpitations if I go heavy on the drink so I've cut back a bit but not enough tbh.

The routine I adopted a few years back was no drink Mon-Thur and then having a drink at the weekend. Thing is "a drink" normally means a few beers, half a bottle of wine and several big rum and cokes.

I'm thinking long term I might try and keep it to weekends. But with the rule of:

- No drinks before 5pm on friday and saturday
- No drinks after 5pm om sunday

i tell you what though, r/stopdrinking on reddit is pretty wild. It's a helpful group of people for sure, and there's plenty of "drinkers" who consider half a bottle of wine every 3 days as excessive. But on the other side of that there are people who used to nail 3 (three!!) litres of vodka per day. I don't even drink that much water for fucks sake

smoothpete yeah that place is an eye opener. Definitely helped me to just read through other people's experiences and check in there daily when I first stopped.

I've knocked cider on the head as it upsets my stomach if I have too much, so I've switched to Guinness.

Its more expensive but fuck me, that's better. Its much smoother, stomach is happy and it slows my drinking down.

I still drink daily, but at the moment, I'll have 2 or maybe 3 at the pub and that's fine for me now.

Except Fridays. Band night, so that'll be about 5 or 6. Ah well. Weekend.

Edit - that's all I drink though. I don't drink spirits or wine

Yes, going over to dublin for the rugby many years ago was an eye-opening experience for how much better it tasted over there.

I maintain the best pints of it I had were at the airport. Possibly because they were the first and last pints, or maybe due to the volume of pouring they did that meant it was always fresh, but by god it was lovely.

The guinnessy aftermath of that weekend would have made a good story for the poo diaries thread though...mmm, tarry.

One night a week for me in January is my goal, then I'll try to keep it going after that.
Only drank once so far this month and have been mostly fine with it, Thursday is when I really start to crave a drink though...

Same as Dougs, got high blood pressure and my recent blood test showed a bit high on the liver check, they have asked me to retake in a month. This happened a couple of years ago and I sorted it by cutting back so hopefully should be okay.