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Alcohol

It simply stopped appealing and I miss the ritual more than the drink

Started 28 April 2025 · 16 replies · 152 hearts · read 2.2k times

TamGlasgow, UK · 28 April 2025
about a year ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: It simply stopped appealing and I miss the ritual more than the drink

Anyone else navigating this? I feel as though every piece of advice I read was written for someone with a completely different week.

What I keep tripping on is not the physical bit. It is the not knowing whether what I am experiencing is normal, and having nobody to ask who is not either selling something or frightened for me.

What I would find most useful is not advice. It is somebody describing what their version of this was, and how long it went on for.

My prescriber has been fine, genuinely. The problem is that I get nine minutes twice a year and there is no version of nine minutes that covers this.

Anyway. Thank you for reading this far. Any experience gratefully received, and I promise to come back and say what happened.

51

EspeSeville, ES
#1

I would take that to a clinician rather than to us, and I would do it this week. Not because it is definitely serious — because it is the sort of thing that is much easier to rule out than to worry about.

9

LinneaTurku, FI
#2

Two things that helped me, neither of them clever: small amounts more often, and drinking a lot more than felt necessary.

12

AdaFacilitatorManchester, UK
#3

I will leave this open for a few more days and then add it to the circle's resources, because the answers here are better than anything I would have written.

16

LucasSão Paulo, BR
#4

Different experience here, for balance. Mine did not improve and in the end I stopped, and that was the right call for me. Both outcomes exist.

5me too 9

Obi OEnugu, NG
#5

I keep a two-line diary and it is the only reason I could answer this question about myself. Worth starting even now.

10

AmbroseYork, UK
#6

No advice, just recognition. That sounds exhausting and I am sorry you are in it.

9

DotFalmouth, UK
#7

My pharmacist was more use than anyone. Ten minutes at the counter, no appointment, no charge.

6me too 4

MorayElgin, UK
#8

the reply above said something I want to sit with for a second.

Can I gently push back on one thing? Not the substance, just the framing — you have written twice that you should be coping better. Who told you that?

10

BoWhitby, UK
#9

What helped was lowering my own expectations of the week rather than trying to hold the week together.

13me too 5

OttoPrague, CZ
#10

My experience was very boring, which I offer as data. Some of us just get a dull time of it.

7

FionnualaDundalk, IE
#11

I did exactly the same and felt terrible about it. You have not done anything wrong.

7

TeganNewport, UK
#12

Practical, boring answer: write the three questions down before you go in. I have never once remembered them otherwise.

9

BethanPontypridd, UK
#13

Coming back to this a fortnight later to say it settled. Leaving the update because I hate reading threads that stop.

5me too 6

PerdyShrewsbury, UK
#14

Building on what the reply above wrote rather than answering the original question.

I am the person who had the frightening version of this. I went in, it was investigated, and it was not what anyone feared. Going in is the whole of my advice.

10

AdaFacilitatorManchester, UK
#15

the reply above — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

I want to slow this down a little. There are four different answers flying about and they are all somebody's real experience, which makes them true and not necessarily relevant to the person who asked.

14

NkechiAbuja, NG
#16

Please do not read the comments under news articles about this. I lost a fortnight to that.

10