I used to love drinking because of the atmosphere it created - you can instantly feel a closeness with strangers, you can dance and flirt all night long. I also met my current fianceé at the club scene. Anyway, one day last spring, after me vomiting at her apartment, she was complaining that I drunk too much, so I began to think. I was not so happy myself with the situation (too much time wasted on hangover; morning fatigue after staying up too long), so I decided to replace my drinking habit with having sports.
It took a few discussions with my friends, which went like: "You up for beer?" "Sure!" "What did you just order - orange juice?" "Yep - I'm going swimming/bicycling/running today, and even one beer would screw up my metabolism completely". "Come on, it's just one beer." "No I can't, and you know it." Sometimes, I told that I was going to have sport the following day, or even invented imaginary sports that I would be doing. When hosting drinking parties, I was a very aggressive when pouring booze to my guests. I drank booze with every guest (of course, as host, I was usually able to pour water into my shot, so that I could drink 2-3 people under the table during the same evening without anyone ever noticing).
Then I discovered aerobics. Music, dance, scantily clad sporty girls (sex ratio from 3:1 to 9:1) to flirt with (some instructors are very skilled on that, since they can make men work out harder that way), a very good feeling afterwards, no hangover, and my fianceé isn't angry or jealous. The best of all, they today also have such easy classes that even such a coordinational disaster like me can attend.
Nowadays, I drink 25% of what I used to drink a year ago, and the number is getting less and less all the time without me putting any conscious thought to it.
OK, what's the moral of the story? Use creativity. Think of something you'd rather do than drinking alcohol, with similar upsides but less downsides. Switch your point of view. Note that I was not taking the alcohol viewpoint ("But, I promised to drink less") but the sport viewpoint ("If I do this, I cannot do sport tonight"). Someone said that the mind does not understand the word 'no' - so if you try to concentrate in cutting down alcohol - repeat 100 times in your mind 'no alcohol' and your mind only hears 'alcohol', or the old Zen koan "do not think of a monkey." Be creative when turning down your friends. Recruit them to help you (I never even told anyone but my fianceé that I was cutting down drinking, but I told everyone I was doing more sports, I think it's easier to get people to support you in the latter case.) Finally, you don't have to feel the shame that is often related to the "I should quit X" programs - you are not a bad person that is correcting his behavior, but a good one who wants to be even better.
One disclaimer: I think my addiction to have been a purely mental one, and I have absolutely no experience on physical addictions except food, warmth, sex, and other similar things. Curing physical addictions may require measures of different type, or scale.
--SS (Mood meter: -1 in the scale of -5 to +5)
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