Why Did We Drink?

We started drinking for a reason.  We, all of us, addicted or not, drink to get the endorphin rush.  It's happiness on tap.

Something in our pasts or our presents made us chronically unhappy.  We drank too much, and rewired ourselves into addicts.  At that point the addiction itself became our main problem, but once we extinguish the addiction, we're back where we started.

For a lucky few, our lives actually improved in other respects during our drinking years.  If we drank to deal with a temporary source of unhappiness, and that source is now gone, we're golden.

The rest of us have some work to do.  If we don't address those original causes, we're likely to swap in some other source of temporary happiness.

I don't have any sage advice.  If I knew how to get over trauma and be content, I probably would never have become addicted and you wouldn't be reading this now.

With less time lost to drinking, there's more time available for solving problems.  Finding the solutions can be the tricky part.

I suppose a good first step would be to identify the issues.