My old man quit drinking. He used to drink beer every day. Dunno how many times I heard him puking his guts out while I was a kid (usually on the way home from a family get together - they musta been serving liquor). He quit, cold turkey. Just took one time. But he tried to quit smoking many times and never could. Be grateful you are trying to quit the bottle and not the cigarette.
Ok, so far the "quitters" seem to have had serious reasons i.e. very heavy drinking was really messing up their life. I've never had that issue, I did drink quite heavily when younger but it never impinged on being able to function in life. In recent years I've just drank about 1-2 times a week with friends. The reason I've considered stopping is just reflecting on the amount of time wasted by drinking when I could be doing something more useful with the time. Also just avoiding the feeling of waking up tired and a bit rough after a night's drinking, and the fact that it's healthier to not drink. I think this thought may have been triggered by work. Earlier this year I decided to dedicate a lot of time and effort to trying to really push my trading results up to another level, and I started to find I wanted to do some work in the evening and would then get invited out to have a few beers with my friends. I'd say yeah and go out, then the next day I'd regret missing the chance to have done the work. That kind of spurred me to consider whether it was a wise move to spend so much time basically talking bollocks with drunk people, versus improving my trading skills (which I also found more fun, to be honest).
You'll probably just waste the time some other way e.g. chasing pussy instead. That said, lost count of the number of times I have been sitting in one of those type of bars in Bangkok thinking why am I wasting my time with this stuff when I have a 13" long [multiple nested, IF...THEN] Excel formula going through my brain - you'd be surprised how often going home to work on the formula or whteever wins out.
That's interesting, dreams. I've gotten off all of the pain meds I had been on, which due to migraines and whatnot I'd been on since long before I had cancer. I just decided though that I want to try to be as healthy as I can be, and that would include not taking 30mg of morphine 3 times a day anymore. In any event, I've had dreams twice about that I got a really bad headache, was able to go to the hospital and get a shot of morphine. I woke up and I swear to god I almost would have lied about it just to go ahead and get one. It was the wierdest thing.
Cutten, I can relate to all that you wrote, pretty much how I looked at the situation. I think the most important aspect you mentioned is about "more fun" doing this than that. When people became aware I quit they asked how do you relieve stress. Frankly, I hadn't given it a thought, I was having fun. I thought my creativity would take a hit without the alcohol and it did for a while. (note: You get what you expect. The self fulfilling prophecy )
I drank fairly heavily for many years from late high school through my late 20's and before having a child, decided to completely quit (which lasted for many years). As a writer, composer and guitarist, my greatest fear was loss of creativity. This is the danger of alcohol (and many other drugs): state dependency. You believe you can only do what you do when in the state of mind you've been doing it most, in my case, somewhat buzzed. (Ironically, when drunk many people think they are the most amazing, strong, creative, brilliant people around, when in fact they are blubbering idiots.) Eventually the "cure" for this for me was lots of physical activity. I went from a fairly sedentary lifestyle to working out 5 days a week and playing soccer 4 times a week. Wow, way better than drinking! The active lifestyle is very supportive of trading, too, which can be stressful at times. And doing anything to boost your sense of humor will quickly replace the artificially induced high with a fantastic natural high.
That is addiction talking to you. It's the argument you never can win. It's very, very much like the internet trolls. You have to ignore it. Here's a health foods and supplement addicts head's up, take D-Phenylalanine 500mg twice a day. It requires Vitamin C and B6 to process it. It does the same thing as a low dose opiate but without the addiction.. not sure how the liver likes it but so far I've gone through several bottles and not noticed any bad effects but I take vitamins that have a zillion herbs in them to keep the liver healthy...