Well done.

Do you have any advice to share for pedes who are about to walk the same path?

I'm three years sober. For years I promised myself to "stop drinking tomorrow" and one day I realized that rather than never drinking again, all I had to do was choose not to drink tonight.

The big thing for me was to replace my hobby of drinking with healthy interests like learning to cook quick and healthy meals and going for a long evening walk instead of sitting in front of the TV and drinking.

This may sound like bad advice to some and it's not great but it helped me on a few occasions: during low times in my life during the first few months, my brain would use my other life problems as an excuse to have a drink. A few times I felt that I wasn't going to make it to morning without a drink, so I had half a non-prescription sleeping pill. Just a half dose. Made me sleepy within half an hour. I didn't like doing it because it felt like a failure of will power, but it also felt like a better option than relapsing.