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[Kev Kev]

From everything except weed, and i just started smoking again a few months ago. I've never really considered weed a drug like I do alcohol or any other hard stuff, so I'm still going to call myself sober . I do have a prescription to medical marijuana, so I'm just as much of a druggie as an elderly woman who takes Vicodin for pain management. In other words, not a druggie at all.

Nothing more to really say here. Just wanted to come and brag about it. For anyone else struggling, feel free to post in here or DM me. It's the months after quitting that are the hardest, and having a ear to get into can help take your mind off the depression and withdrawals. Also, just hearing stories of other's success can inspire and motivate people to get clean. If you have a story you want to share, please do! It could help someone else in need, even if they aren't willing to admit that they need help, or if they aren't even aware that they have a problem to begin with.

So like I said, if you wanna chat, I'm usually pretty available. Maybe we can start a sober OT if there is enough interest. We had one on Era (I know I know) and it was really supportive for me when I was quitting. Anyway, cheers to at least two more years for me (I only planned on quitting for 4 years... honestly though, I'm not sure if I will ever drink again, and I'm okay with that, I've made my peace with the piss).

Post your sober stories or share whatever is on your mind. No judgment ITT.

 

[nush]

I've got to try again, I can do a week then I'm back on the beer. I did finally manage to give up cigarettes this year after first switching to vaping and then cutting down on that until I'd kicked the nicotine addiction.

 

[Deleted member 1159]

Good work. More and more I realize I need to take that step myself.

 

[AV]

Congratulations. If weed helps curb the cravings of everything worse than weed, then go for it.

Unfortunately my biggest vice is stodgy food and weed ain't helping me curb that.

 

[ClanOfNone]

Congrats man! I'll have nine years sober next month, crazy to think it has been that long since I picked up a drink.

 

[pauljeremiah]

Congrats. I'm currently five years dry and the first two years were the hardest. So congrats on reaching this milestone.

 

[Mista]

Congratulations man! I’m always happy when I hear/read someone quitting this poison

 

[Kev Kev]

I've got to try again, I can do a week then I'm back on the beer. I did finally manage to give up cigarettes this year after first switching to vaping and then cutting down on that until I'd kicked the nicotine addiction.

well there it is, you can quit. just a matter of putting your mind to it. what helped me the most was taking it one day at a time. if you think about the idea of quitting forever, youll never do it. it just too daunting of a task. just think t yourself, "im just gonna make it through today, and when tomorrow comes i will tell myself the same thing, but for now, im just thinking about today."

good luck!

 

[GymWolf]

great job man.

 

[Droxcy]

Congrats keep on it!

 

[Cutty Flam]

Good work. If you see it as destructive poison then you see it clearly. There’s always those who will take it lightly and wave it off but it makes zero sense to put that stuff in your body. Not good for your health and can affect others around you. Likely will affect those around you in some way or another. Hopefully it doesn’t though

I’ve seen drugs and alcohol destroy lives, take lives, heavily damage relationships, tear apart families. It’s nothing but a liquid that will bring great suffering. Probably has its uses in extreme cases, but why anybody would chance falling into its trap is beyond me. I hate alcohol and cigarettes with a passion

 

[Starlight Lotice]

Congratulations man!

I'll have a few drinks for you tonight! (Sensibly of course)

 

[Mistake]

I knew a guy that was an alcoholic. He got through the worst of it by playing skyrim. True story

 

[Kev Kev]

I knew a guy that was an alcoholic. He got through the worst of it by playing skyrim. True story

dude straight up, minecraft and underground hip hop/lofi hip hop beats did it for me. i dont know why i went with that kind of music, but it just channeled that depressing, empty, gunky feeling i had all the time. it was the worst. i wouldnt wish depression withdrawals on anyone. hip hop like this...


i dunno, it just sounded sad to me, but also comforting.

but yes, video games are definitely helpful

 

[and 3 others]

Yeah well, that's just like, your opinion man.

 

[#Phonepunk#]

Congrats on getting sober! Alcohol is heavily abused in modern society and it’s not easy to ween yourself off it. Best of luck!

 

[Revolutionary]

From everything except weed

For real though, congrats.

 

[DAHGAMING]

Nice 1, keep it up mate.
Im currently trying to slow down drink, luckily Im a bus driver so I never drink the day before work so my job helps me drinking so much or els I would drink alot more. Right now whenever I know im not working il get in and drink, I tell myself "ok im off tomorrow but tonight I wont drink, couple of teas and relax" yet I get in and cant wait for a drink.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

Huge congrats, keep it going mate.

 

[keraj37]

Keep it up OP.

Not many realize that alcohol destroys testosterone making males more eager to cry, be scared for no reason and in other words, be beta males or a soy boys.
I have dumped alcohol or any other drugs including nicotine, years ago and I feel just great - my mind is 3x times faster, I remember things better then Joe Biden does - only benefits my friends!

just had short break from being sober few months ago, but I went back on the right path quickly.

 

[DeceptiveAlarm]

Congrats man! I'm coming up on 7 clean from everything. Opiates were my thing.

 

[Sub_Level]

I remember things better then Joe Biden does

So you remember things.

 

[ClanOfNone]

Congrats man! I'm coming up on 7 clean from everything. Opiates were my thing.

When I was doing inpatient rehab I was with a group of about 50 people. 4 of us were there for alcohol, the rest were all opiates with one lone gal in for benzos.
Central Florida was ground zero for the opiate epidemic, my hometown was the opiate death capital for the state several times over.

 

[Alter_Fridge]

great job man.

Savage

 

[Bullet Club]

Well done, Kev Kev.

 

[Richard Packer]

Congratulations brother.

Last night after a long day of work I went out and did some basketball drills for an hour. It was still hot and I was sweating like a beast. Felt absolutely amazing. There are other ways to stimulate the mind and body.

 

[All Hail C-Webb]

Congratulations!
I haven't had a pk since the lockdowns started, and it feels great. Don't see myself lasting 2 years though. That amount of time shows that you have what it takes to make it a lifelong change.

 

[Kev Kev]

When I was doing inpatient rehab I was with a group of about 50 people. 4 of us were there for alcohol, the rest were all opiates with one lone gal in for benzos.
Central Florida was ground zero for the opiate epidemic, my hometown was the opiate death capital for the state several times over.

where do you live? daytona beach here and yeah i know all too well. lost 2 childhood friends to phentanyl over the last two years (they didnt even know they were taking phentanyl, it was laced in their bars or something, so fucking tragic) and at least a half a dozen other people who werent friends but i knew from high school also OD'd. fucking sad man. i want to say it's getting better, but i honestly just dont know. all i know is we all got spooked about buying drugs off the street and perhaps thats a good thing? i honestly dont know if the pill mills are still active, but i wouldnt be surprised if they were

hey congrats to you on the rehab. i was fortunate enough to never be heavily physically addicted, but i would have gotten to that point eventually, just a matter of time. i cant imagine how hard that must be.

 

[ClanOfNone]

Bradenton/Sarasota. Bradenton is a hellhole of biblical proportions.

 

[ExpandKong]

Eww why

hahah just kidding good job dude. I’ve been making an effort to drink less lately. Saving money and losing weight with added bonus of not feeling like shit in the mornings.

 

[Kev Kev]

Bradenton/Sarasota. Bradenton is a hellhole of biblical proportions.

never been down that way other than for a couple baseball games or to hit the clubs in Ybor, but ive seen enough hellholes in florida to get the idea. we literally call daytona "dirtona" lol. thre are some really nice communitites to the north and south of us though: ormond beach and port orange. i mostly grew up in port range, so it isnt all bad... just mostly bad lol

 

[EverydayBeast]

I'm 2 years sober today

 

[Flying Toaster]

That is great news. Always being the right frame of mind and always fighting urges can be close to impossible at times. Keep it going.

 

[Mitsuda Maniac]

Good job!

I have actually been drinking a lot more since the pandemic. I drink like a handle of Tito's per week and often top it off w/ my GF hard seltzers. Thankfully I haven't blown up yet due to drinking the lowest calorie types of booze, but I am hurting most every morning after I drink. Nothing like my younger years.

 

[DeceptiveAlarm]

When I was doing inpatient rehab I was with a group of about 50 people. 4 of us were there for alcohol, the rest were all opiates with one lone gal in for benzos.
Central Florida was ground zero for the opiate epidemic, my hometown was the opiate death capital for the state several times over.

Yeah it was bad. I'm 37. This is my second time clean first one I had 5 years. In high school it was easier to get oxy than beer.

 

[Tesseract]

grats, brother!

 

[haxan7]

3 days sober for me ... this will be the first time I've even made an effort to not drink in years

I'm trying to stay sober long enough to at least drop my belly

 

[Kev Kev]

3 days sober for me ... this will be the first time I've even made an effort to not drink in years

I'm trying to stay sober long enough to at least drop my belly

thats awesome man. just take it one day at a time. worry about tomorrow when it get there. just worry about making through the day

 

[sonomamashine]

I'm 2 years sober today

 

[Keihart]

Congrats, i can barely keep myself away from sugar so i suspect it must be harder with alcohol.
here is hoping yo make it to 3, 4, and many more.

 

[ClanOfNone]

3 days sober for me ... this will be the first time I've even made an effort to not drink in years

I'm trying to stay sober long enough to at least drop my belly

I weighed about 230ish when I stopped drinking and I dropped to 170 in the first 4 or 5 months of sobriety. Didn't change my (abysmal) eating habits or start working out, that was just cutting out the booze.

 

[Hudo]

 

[Kev Kev]

in a strange way, this is actually really sweet. thanks dude

 

[Mistershine.]

Seriously though, congrats. Dependency or extreme fondness? I was borderline dependency and I hit 22 years dry this year and then got super bored during the lockdown and drank pretty much a bottle of vodka and a bottle of kaluha in the guise of white Russians. Luckily I didn't enjoy the sensation of being drunk and haven't been tempted since.

 

[M1chl]

CONGRATS! Some of us, does not have this sort of...I don't know...chance in life. Share the story? Well, okay then.

PSA: Don't drink alcohol too much. Liver transplant experience. NeoGAF special edition.

Prequel: So.... I've been planning to write this in here for some time, but let's say it's not that easy to talk about that. I've been preparing this in my head, how to write something for this wonderfull community, which imrpoved my mental state a lot. I was abstinent, till my 22 years old. I...

www.neogaf.com

 

[Bogey]

Congrats, overcoming an addiction is a big, big achievement to be very proud of. You've probably added back multiples of those 2 years back onto your life expectancy since quitting!

 

[Kev Kev]

Seriously though, congrats. Dependency or extreme fondness? I was borderline dependency and I hit 22 years dry this year and then got super bored during the lockdown and drank pretty much a bottle of vodka and a bottle of kaluha in the guise of white Russians. Luckily I didn't enjoy the sensation of being drunk and haven't been tempted since.

sorry, long post incoming... tl;dr i wasnt physically addicted as much as i was emotionally/mentally addicted, but i probably would have been physically addicted eventually. which is how people die, of course

you know its funny, im actually kind wishy washy when it comes to calling myself an alcoholic or an addict. reason being is that i wasn't heavily physically addicted. i didnt get the shakes in the morning, i didnt have any seizures (this is happens to physically addicted people, and it can be deadly obviously), and i never had to go to rehab

so for the longest time i told myself that i wasnt physically addicted (which wasnt exactly true). the result of that was me just keeping drinking because "i wasnt really an addict". basically i told myself that i was mentally and emotionally dependent, not physically, but the reality is, is that was the addict in me trying to find any way to justify keeping drinking.

so was i physically dependent? yeah, but only a little bit, not the way some one who drinks a handle of vodka a day is physically dependent.

heres the thing about all of that though... bottom line is, if you know something is causing you a problem, and you want to quit doing it, but you cant resist the urge and still find yourself going back to it every single day, then you are basically addicted to that thing (forget about physical, mental, emotional or whatever). that to me, is an addiction.

and truth be told, i went through a mega depression for three+ months after i quit, i had a panic attack that i had to take a shot to calm me down (i actually gathered up all the empty bottles out of the trash and poured all the drops out f them until i scrounged up a whole shot, and it helped me feel way better so thats an obvious physical withdrawal symptom), and i went through very tired, lethargic stages. oh and insane dreams, but thats less of a physical symptom of course.

anyway, sorry for the essay. basically yeah, i was physically dependent, but not to the extremes that some people may imagine. it was more of a mental/emotional addiction, but it came with most of the same consequences of the physical addiction.

 

[ConkerTheSquirrel.]

I logged in just to say congratulations! It's always nice seeing others improving their lives for the better!

 

[DragoonKain]

That’s awesome, man. Great job.

Addiction is so weird how a lot of it seems to be related to you genetically or biologically. Some people are just really prone to it and others not so much. I’ve known people who have gotten hooked on Percocet after using them for a week, and I had to take them before and I hated the way they made me feel and had no desire to ever take them again.

I’ve been extremely lucky that I’ve never had to deal with addiction, even technology I can just drop it and be totally fine. But I talk to people who deal with addiction and can’t even imagine their struggle and it takes so much strength to fight something that your brain is hounding you to keep going. It takes willpower, determination, and grit.

Keep up the good fight.

 

[TheContact]

How often did you drink when you were on the wagon? How bad did it get? Were you functional or did you drink so much you'd get sick and blank out a lot? Just curious because I struggled with alcohol for a while.