Even the lure of hot chicks in activeware isn’t enough for me to go running by choice 
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If I still lived in the area, I’d just hang out around The Bay Run.
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BTW, i love ‘Mahdi Fun’ doing his statue pranks in Australia.
Always nice to see ‘locals’ and visitors in places i know.
Anyone quit drinking for a period of time? Any tips?
Booze has been a bit of an outlet of late and need to knock it on the head, but I am struggling to make it stick for more than a week or two at a time.
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NA beers are actually drinkable these days
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Currently doing a month off it.
I try and do it once a year.
The biggest help to get over that hump is not having beers in the fridge. Not looking at it makes it easier.
After the first or 2nd weekend I find it easier.
Soda water or hop water are decent, obviously not the same but part of it is also trying to avoid empty calories so I avoid the NA options.
Being in a pub makes it harder but less of those social engagements in winter
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Im coming up on 3 years sober. Still drink 0% beer when out, which fulfils the keeping up with rounds thing. The one pub we have in the village has Heine which I really don’t mind. By far the hardest personally was the first couple months, but getting it out of the house solved a lot of it, plus obviously having moved interstate and going out with new friends who had no history of getting tanked with
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The home thing has always been my challenge with booze (and probably forever will be) so I have now adopted not having it in the house.
If I want a drink, I have to make a conscious effort to go out and do so… which with a wife and 3 kids isn’t easy and takes immense planning
When I would have a crate in the house, it was far too easy and tempting to throw 4,6, 8 beers down watching the nrl on a Thursday or Friday night
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+1 for non alcoholic beers. I quit for a few months last year and still only have 1-2 after football each week. The NA beers get around the social pressure to have 1, and seem pretty readily available at most joints
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I haven’t found a pub down here that doesn’t have a couple options. The local in our tiny village now offers 2 NA beers, 3 wines, a champagne and two mocktails.
Heine or Asahi are the go-tos if I can get them. The second option at the local is Great Northern, which is every bit as terrible as its alco version
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Motorcycles. I ended up finding that riding motos on the weekend helped with the depression and had the added benefit of wanting to be getting up and riding on Saturday and Sunday really helped sa motos and hangovers suck on an unbelievable level.
I’ll also tend to not keep beer in the house. I am drinking a JD and coke atm, but I forget I have spirits more often than not.
I also found that through 2022 and 2023 I could be at work at 10am in the morning and fucking craving a beer. After losing my job at that shit hole at the start of last summer I realised a couple of months later that I don’t do that anymore. So maybe look at the stressers in your life?
And weightlifting. Deadlifting heavy to the point of frying your CNS can also help. Cause all you want to do then is eat and sleep.
But I’m also a binge drinker and not a steady drinker. It’s kinda easy for me to just turn it off for months.
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I found it was a habit thing for me and not so much that i craved the alcohol. Gaming with mates was the biggest, id look over and not even realise id smashed through 6 beers in a few hours. Ended up replacing it with a pot of herbal tea.
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It’s so weird we all go through the same shit.
Fwiw I have been/ am a steady binge drinker. Thankfully never craving during the day, let alone drunk in the day. But one or two drinks in the evening could turn into 6… Or 7 (or 8?) when my mentals were low.
So funnily enough getting your mental health right is important, if that’s a problem. Talk to a GP. Exercise really does help. Get your 10k steps. I’ve been lifting heaps. You probably have to find your own routine.
The other thing that might help, depending on your situation, breaking it down a bit? Quitting during the week was a good place to start for me.
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I think the key is to find something that immerses you so much that it replaces and overtakes whatever potentially harmful habit or feeling you have. I make it a real mission to make sure that I stay away from alcohol during times of depression, and sometimes that can be for weeks or even months.
I don’t have someone with me to bounce off or let off steam with, which would probably be the ideal solution, so in the end I find that gaming, darts, writing, physical exercise, are the go-to activities for me if I really need to clear my head or at least escape to some other physical or mental place for a while. It has helped me in some dark times. Those go-to activities will obviously differ from one person to another but it helps to really have a plan.
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All great advice, thank you!
I should also add I’ve already been to a psychologist about various things, so that is also an option worth considering if you’re in particularly tough times and nothing else seems to be working. So its a matter of adopting the mental tools I had gained or been reminded of from those sessions during difficult times.
One thing to take into account about the 0% beers is that, technically, they’re not actually alcohol free.
A beer can claim to be alcohol free if the ABV is below 0.5%.
You are still consuming alcohol so if you’re trying to break an addiction it may not be the most successful way of doing it.
I guess it would be similar to trying to give up cigarettes by going from Winfield Reds to Winfield Whites. Yes, you’re getting a lot less nicotine but it is still there.
I’m happy to be corrected, but I think that is where the naming difference of being ‘no alcohol’ versus being ‘0.0%’ comes in. 0.0 is what is says, if it says anything word based, it won’t be fully free
‘
Surely the 0.0% wouldn’t be sold in the supermarket soft drink aisles if they had a percentage of alcohol in them?