Oh I'll take this one.

I considered drinking to be fun, part of how I made friends and took stress off. Most of my friends are in the hospitality industry.

At 37 I realized it was not doing me any favors, making it hard to stay in shape, always hungover, feeling bad about myself and just drinking and moping.

I quit last summer and the first thing I noticed is I had like 3 more hours every day in the morning being clear headed instead of hungover. That made it easy to quit (for me) and I really don't think about it much anymore.

Migraines. I started getting a savage headache if I drink more than about 50ml of it. The pain created an aversion very quickly.

The bottle was empty and I have social obligations today.

I got to the point where I was drinking 8 rum and cokes etc. to get to a point of drunk where I might, might, feel happy for like 20-30 minutes, followed by passing out, and hours of feeling horrendous, only to do it again the next day. And I was spending a fuckton on booze. And I was like, the ROI of feeling good vs feeling awful, and trashing my body just is not making sense. What am I doing? And I stopped and never looked back.

Family obligations that were being neglected and too many sorry mornings.

I heard that the toxic limit of alcohol is half a glass of wine per year. It's linked to many diseases and at high dosage and harmful even at low dosage. Alcohol has never been my drug of choice but that stat made me think twice about the small amount of drinking I did. Nothing against drinking or people who enjoy it but it is a dangerous drug.

The hangovers kept getting worse over the years. At 3-day hangovers followed by depressive symptoms every time I drank (too much of course) I stopped. It's not worth it to ruin 4 days for a couple hours of fun.

I don't like strangers and people but alcohol made me fearless and charming. The following weeks would be followed by people trying to talk to me and other consequences of my actions. I didn't like who I was when drunk and had no reason to keep drinking except for some food pairings. Eventually the joy of really excellent Taiwanese tea and weird fruit juices replaced wine and beer at dinner. It took a while, old habits being old habits.

I was a teenage alcoholic, I always knew I needed to stop before adulthood. I had refused to get my driver's license until I quit drinking, one of my good friend's father had been killed by a drunk driver when she was very little. I never wanted to be that person that killed someone's father.

But the actual moment that made me quit, was one day I opened my locker at school and there were more empty vodka bottles in it than there were books.

In my early twenties the house I rented with four friends was partying headquarters as our combined friend groups converged and gelled well. Bunch of punk culture infused tech nerds. I do not regret the self destructive binge drinking we did regularly for four years. Life was otherwise fucking rancid for us back then in every way except socially. We were dirt poor working awful jobs. A lot of aimless/hopeless feelings. The outlet was needed.

Eventually however I had my first memory black out. I hadn't even been all that drunk that night but seeing photos of myself when I had zero memory of what I had been doing was so disturbing to me I just went cold turkey then and there. Didn't matter too much because I was moving out soon having finally landed an okay job at the time.

I didn't get moderately drunk again until last summer, so 11 years later. It was fun but I like my legal weed way more and it's a lot cheaper.

None of us became alcoholics in the end. Not like I recommend what we did, but there's no bad ending in our case.

Only one of us could handle the alcohol and not be a complete asshole.

A combination of wanting to be at my healthiest for my medical transition, and the god awful stomach issues that came about from drinking after my medical transition.

I used alcohol as a means to escape, and I don't need to do that anymore. It makes me feel absolutely miserable and it was time to let it go.

I love my wife. She deserves better than what I am when I drink.

I haven’t had a drink since mid-June. I’m to the point where feeling and being drunk really is not a good time. And the next day, the hangovers fucking suck. I’d rather smoke/vape cannabis. When I get too high, I lay down and proceed to have an awesome nap

I lost my job over it, and was damn close to losing my partner over it too. I realized that I am powerless over alcohol and that my life was unmanageable.

Nothing "made" me stop. I just chose to not want to drink anymore.

I got medicated and my desire to drink near instantaneously evaporated. A few months later I tried to have a beer with friends and could barely keep my eyes open from the fatigue. So that was that.

I never drank much but I enjoyed a glas of wine sometimes with food or a whiskey after. But !myalgicencephalomyelitis@lemmy.blahaj.zone got so bad I fear that even a little alcohol will make everything much worse for me.

I developed fatty liver disease.

I was no longer thirsty :)

!hydrohomies@lemmy.world