Support I found when I realised it was a bigger question

Coming back a year on to say it settled into something I am comfortable with, which is less and better and much less thought about.

Two landed like five for me, very early on, and it took one uncomfortable evening to work out that something had genuinely changed.

The pub is still the pub and I still go. That took a bit of working out and the answer turned out to be that the pub was never about the drink.

Something practical: I switched to something non-alcoholic that looks like a drink, and the number of questions I get dropped to zero.

I found that eating less alongside drinking was the actual mechanism in my case, rather than anything more mysterious.

What I found is that the first drink now does what three used to, so I have stopped at one and been perfectly content.

I had one evening where I was much more affected than expected and it frightened me, and I have been careful and fine since.

I read this twice. The second time was for the last paragraph.

What helped was telling one friend, so that in a group there was somebody who knew and quietly covered for me.

What surprised me was how much I did not miss it. I had expected to and I genuinely did not, and that told me something.