Quitting alcohol wasn’t the issue for us. We did it all the time. The problem was we kept quitting on quitting. The problem was the witching hour.

The witching hour is that time when we routinely poured the first glass of wine or cracked open the first beer. By 5pm, after another busy day of work and parenting, it was on. If there were activities or responsibilities that delayed that first drink, we were irritable and crabby.

What we personally experienced and hear from all our AF sisters is that we’d feel like we needed that drink (and the ones after) to get through the night, and we’d put off quitting for good until tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Those tomorrows added up to years.

There will always be an excuse today. A stressful day at work, bickering children, bad marriages, arguments, birthdays, holidays, family problems, vacations, happy hours, girls’ nights out…

We couldn’t control and enjoy our drinking anymore though. If we had to control it, we didn’t enjoy it. If we enjoyed it, we weren’t in control of it.

We decided to stop and just focus on getting through the witching hour for another day. Here are some things we tried that helped: taking a bath, going to a recovery meeting, taking long walks with the dogs, running errands outside of the house, doing sit-ups or pushups, gardening, working on a vision board, organizing the closet, and physically removing ourselves from our usual drinking zone.

We woke up sober and gave it a go the next day. And all those sober days added up to years too. We aren’t looking back. Life is so much more manageable now.