Two weeks ago I decided to cut alcohol out of my life. I have a weird issue though where I don't feel I necessarily relate to other problem drinkers in support spaces online, and I assume would not in-person, because I feel like my habit was never particularly bad. I've never been addicted to the degree where I have to have a drink to function, I never used it as a crutch in social situations, or anything like that. I don't mean this to put anybody down, but I've grown up around alcoholics, and even count myself among that number, but feel I somehow never fell into the worst, and have a hard time walking away from where I was because of it.

To break down my cycles of drinking:

I started with a beer a day. I liked beer, then moved on to drink/include whiskeys and other hard liquors. I'd have 1-3 drinks a night most nights from when I was of legal drinking age and could afford my own alcohol, and have a pace usually of one an hour. I enjoyed the tastes, experimenting with different varieties, and just exploring what was out there from whiskeys, cordials, weird beers, meads, anything.

Then there came a point where I started drinking heavily infrequently but regularly about seven years ago, where half a handle was gone in a week and a half and I had no idea where it went. I didn't black out at all, but would later realize I was drinking it really fast. This continued, I would stop buying hard liquor, and then buy some, and drink it quicker than I should have, rinse repeat.

The thing where I feel conflicted is I feel like I was in control, in a sense. I really enjoyed the alcohol I was drinking and would sip on it over a few hours having glass after glass. For these heavier nights I would wake up with a mild hangover, but it wasn't an every day thing. I would occasionally mess up and drink half a 750ml bottle and regret it, but tone it back down.

As far as cravings, I would crave alcohol like I crave other foods/drinks, like "I really want some Johnnie Walker Black this week" similarly to how I would think "I want a coke." Then I would clear 375ml in three days, and realize I didn't have enough to enjoy until the next paycheck (I generally didn't buy liquor more than once a pay period because I was usually interested in being more intimate with one drink at a time). Similar to how if I eat candy bars regularly I crave them, alcohol is/was the same.

Part of this led me to take a long time to give myself permission to stop drinking. I decided two weeks ago that I just don't need alcohol and sort of just said I'd commit to it, do the "one day at a time" thing. No end time, just never doing it. I feel if there's a deadline, or any conditions to drink, I'll slip back into the patterns I had which weren't entirely self-destructive, but not something I wanted to live with. As far as work functions, I'll just get a soda, mocktail, or water.

As a result, I have also hit a sort of malaise about how different things aren't. I've had dry patches where I chose not to drink, and I don't have a huge recovery story since I wasn't drinking all the time anyway, but going through these sorts of cycles. I don't feel any different because I'm not healing, I'm not going through any withdrawals or detox, I don't have any behavior to feel guilty about, or anything. I feel like a bad alcoholic, in a sense, because I don't have much to run from beyond the problem of "one is too many, two is not enough." I also feel self-conscious about not drinking alcohol, because I'm worried about how to answer if asked why.

I guess, to a point, I'm reaching out because I feel a little alone on this. I'm not sure how to navigate my not-quite sobriety (I still use cannabis edibles on rare occasion, and kava quite frequently, but not regularly). Has anybody else been in a similar situation? How did you navigate it internally?

Even since my teenage years it's been a problem. They say people who start drinking sooner will probably develop alcohol problems and it seems to be the case with me and the majority of my friends. We are friends since little kids and we started drinking together when we were about 16 or 17 i think (i'm 32 now).

Every single one of us has a problem with binge drinking. I think i'm the less worse case among us since i can keep myself from drinking for days and usually have only one binge per week or less. They drink almost every day. I'm better than when i was younger, but it's still bad.

When i go out to drink i chug down +/- 3600ml (121oz) of cheap beer. It doesn't matter if it's craft/expensive beer, i will just get drunker and poorer in this case.

It's what happened yesterday. Now i'm hungover and just depressed.

How do you guys deal with alcohol? Is it a problem? Is it something you want to change or it doesn't bother you?