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Darkness of Cutting or Quitting
- MenSaid
- Oct 8, 2025
- 2 min read
I'm starting this off without even knowing what I am going to say, but I feel the need to say it anyway, and it's about the darkness of cutting back on alcohol or even quitting. I've been a big whisky drinker for a good few years now, but always had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol for a good 30 years (so from mid teens), but now is finally the time in middle age to face into it and either get in under control using strict rules (which I will be good with), or failing success with that quitting all together. For a few weeks I've went with a drastic reduction, which is not the first time, but one of the recurring symptoms of the cut back is the DOOM... after 3 or 4 days I get this incredible sense of despair, and depression. An incredible low which sits on you like a genuine weight, as in your can feel it on your head and shoulders, and you are flooded with dark thoughts. You can also not find any good thoughts, as joy leaves you entirely and you just literally want to be isolated and in the dark...
Fortunately i've had this a few times, so know like all things, it will pass (i've got a tattoo on my hand of a ship to remind me that whether it's good time or bad times, just like storms and calm seas, they will always pass), so I am able to handle this pretty well as I recognise it all as a pattern, but even still, it's tough, it really is.
I'm going to come back and add to this post and use it as a thread over the coming weeks, and hopefully someone in a similar boat finds it, and it can help them somehow? perhaps recognising the same thing, I don't know, but that's the first part. Please comment if you have anything to share or say on the subject....
I adore alcohol in most of its many varieties, but since the pandemic and retiring I've been drinking far too much. Turms out working really did stop me becoming an alcoholic! Not willing to give up altogether, but not drinking by myself appears to be the key - the wife hardly ever drinks so that almost means no drinking at home. Not banning myself from drinking outside the house in pubs, restaurants, at parties etc. So far it's going pretty well, though I really, really miss my gin!
Cutting down on smoking never worked for me. No amount of smoking is healthy, cutting down was a cop-out, not a commitment towards stopping. When I REALLY wanted to stop, I just stopped. And that was the end of it. I think drinking is different. We can cut down to less damaging levels and still enjoy it. Many share your relationship with alcohol, yet we don't believe we have a problem as such, because we don't see ourselves as the old soak in the corner with dead eyes and pissed pants. We are probably functional alcoholics. The scary thing is, and i read this the other week, is that the damage from overindulgence cannot be mitigated by compensating with other…