Thank you and thank you for the very correct advice! Alas, and I know everyone says this, but my situation was a bit different than yer bog standard alcoholic. I was a bog fancy alcoholic! Nah, but really, my partner and I started drinking heavily every evening during COVID cuz it just made everything even more fun. Never to feel better about stuff going badly or to escape or anything, we just liked to drink all the time and talk and play stuff and laugh. Way not healthy to do every day, as evidenced by my big ol health issue it caused! It was temporary and I’m better now, and technically I COULD have been drinking the past couple months… I had a few times I planned to have a few beers, just just decided not to.

I’m definitely never giving it up fully if my body can handle it, I’d for sure kms. But I’m saving it for special stuff in the future, assuming my body actually lets me have some drinks without having the issue I ran into again. If it causes the thing I dealt with again after a few drinks, then I guess I’ll give it up and stick around anyway hahaha.

My partner and I definitely enabled each other. I told them when I was in hospital that they can totally drink around me and I won’t have a problem with that, I won’t be upset, and I can handle any cravings. Turns out, no cravings! I’m very lucky. No withdrawals, no seizures, no DTs. Just some really shit sleep for a couple weeks. My boy has been INCREDIBLE. Went from drinking every day with me to only very occasionally now. We’ve both lost a ton of weight, too! We were never huge huge, but definitely gained a good chunk since 2020 (we were both very petite before then, got fairly big, and we are on our way back to petite again already!)

But yah, I firmly believe I can handle my shit more responsibly now, having felt the full effects of the repercussions it can cause. I believe this because I’ve done every substance out there (except opiates, never touched those until I went to hospital for this issue and they loaded me up with Dilaudid all day every day which was WILD) and even the things folks classically go overboard with, I’ve been responsible with. (A ball of the best blow you can imagine generally would last my partner and me two weeks!) I know it’s time to treat alcohol that way now too, rather than treating it as night-coffee.