How Do You Know When It’s Time to Quit Drinking?

Questions to ask yourself to see if you have a problem.

Alcohol has been used to help humans bond, relax and have fun, for thousands of years. The earliest evidence of alcohol production dates back to 7000BC in China, but yeast has been naturally fermenting wild fruit for millennia before that.

Booze is embedded in human culture. No wonder it feels like a huge step to give it up. Many people struggle for years to keep drinking. I know I did.

So how can you tell when enough is enough? How do you know when it’s time to quit?

Four years ago I woke, dehydrated, with a sickening feeling of doom. It wasn’t the first time or even the thousandth time, and I had no inkling it would be the last.

What happened? I asked myself, not wanting to open my eyes. And then I remembered.

I sunk under the covers.

The night before had been a Thursday, which meant psychotherapy. It was my third or fourth session and it wasn’t going well. I was desperately seeking solutions for what was wrong with me, but I didn’t know where to start.

“How about we begin with what brought you here?” the therapist asked, and I tried to articulate what was wrong.

I couldn’t meet deadlines. I couldn’t get fit. I couldn’t control my boyfriend. I couldn’t resist alcohol or food or sweets or naps. I couldn’t read novels. My thoughts churned, constantly. Analyzing the very distant and very recent past. Ruminating on the very far and very near future. Completely overwhelmed by the non-stop improv that is the present.

Racing thoughts, paranoia, low self-esteem. Inability to concentrate, anxiety, depression. Obsessive thinking, a tendency to emotionally self-harm, relationship struggles.

And a total lack of willpower, which manifested in All Areas.

Looking back I can identify this as my pre-contemplation stage. The period when a person with a problematic habit(s) hasn’t seriously considered quitting yet. A person in the pre-contemplation stage can appear to be sleepwalking through life. Does that sound like you?

Back then, I knew alcohol was ruining my life, but I thought it was because my boyfriend was a mean drunk. My drinking wasn’t a serious issue. I mean, I wanted to cut down, but not quit entirely. I longed for a year off, but only as a holiday.

Cycling home from therapy in a daze, I determined not to drink for a while. I would start my Year Without Drinking today. Just to get some clarity.

When I got home, my boyfriend had set out Scrabble and two glasses. The weekly shop had come, and for some reason (to celebrate my decreasing intake, most likely) I had broken my longstanding rule of not having booze in the house.

We shared one bottle, quickly, then argued over whether to have the next. I wanted to go back in time and un-drink the first one, while Alex wanted to drink the second. I tried to switch to tea — an old trick — but it wasn’t possible.

“If you’re drinking more, I’m drinking more,” I said, blaming him for my decision. The wine loosened us up, and we put beautiful music on, then started to argue about whose fault Everything was.

There had been an incident recently: I had snooped in his phone and found something troubling. I felt more insecure in the relationship than ever.

“You don’t love me,” I said, bleating for reassurance. “You don’t think I’m beautiful.”

He refused to apologize. “You shouldn’t have looked through my stuff.”

Finally, sick of ourselves, we went to bed. I felt self-destruction surging through my veins as I picked up my computer and logged into his Facebook. Typing out the same ancient password, as he lay beside me, my adrenalin soared.

He was right there, eyes closed. He could catch me, any second, and then what? My heart pounded.

His eyes snapped open at the moment I pressed return. His personal page laid out before me.

“What the hell do you think you’re you doing?”

It was a good question.

What the hell did I think I was I doing?

What was this destructive urge in me trying to achieve? When had alcohol changed from being a balm that soothed the lostness and sadness to an accelerant that exploded it?

In the morning, Alex wasn’t ready to make up, but I needed forgiveness. Once again, I was under someone’s boot. And this time, without a doubt, I’d put myself there.

The depth of my self-loathing made it difficult to have a body. My psychological state was torturous. If this continued, I would have to kill myself. What other option was there? It was just too painful to live when you were this pathetic.

His question picked at me all day. What the hell did I think I was I doing?

I couldn’t explain my behavior, except to say that it had felt like being possessed. The unexpressed and unaddressed — everything I’d pushed down over the years — had begun to find their way out. Alcohol unleashed them.

That was the moment I knew I had to quit.

If I was going to become a person people (predominantly me) could respect, then I was going to have to stop drinking.

So how can you tell if it’s time to quit drinking? Here are some questions to ask yourself.

Do you keep trying and failing to quit? Is your life full of problems that seem to be exacerbated by alcohol? Do you find yourself surrounded by people with a drinking problem?

Do you find it hard to imagine a life without booze? Are you reading a lot of articles like this?

It’s incredibly hard to recognize your drinking problem when you are still managing to function. I achieved a lot in my pre-contemplation years. I wrote my second novel, bought a flat, and became a lecturer.

It took the total, undeniable patheticness of that Thursday night playing Scrabble to wake me from my delusion that my drinking was in any way edgy or fun or cool.

For the first time, I saw the truth. I took responsibility for the way my life was turning out. I understood that I was the one who had to change.

It’s a scary idea to quit drinking when it is your primary coping mechanism for stress. When you use it to self-soothe. To relax. To have fun. I get it. There is a lot to learn, in order to live sober and be happy. But I promise that the hard work is worth it.

You are worth it.

Don’t sleepwalk through your life, wake up and live it.

If you need help to stop drinking you’re not alone.

If you’re ready to try something different, try my alcohol experiment.

Do whatever it takes to stay sober for 30 days: go to your doctor, try Smart or AA or Hip Sobriety or Soberistas. Read beautiful hangover. Listen to Recovery Elevator and SHAIR podcasts. Read This Naked Mind.

There is a whole community of people just waiting to help you. Reach out. Something better is waiting.

Sign up for more from me at beautifulhangover <3

Chelsey Flood is the author of Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers, a lecturer in creative writing and a dedicated truth-seeker. She writes about freedom, addiction, nature and love.