Hey look at it this way. You didn't lose 25 and beyond to booze. I did. Took me to 45 to quit. Fucked up a lot of stuff. You have a lot of life left. Go live it. Stop dwelling on the past.
this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2025
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25 ain't shit. Don't sweat it
Well, sweat it. Sucks that you wasted 8 great years.
But yeah, 25 is young. Get your shit together and do what you need to do to live a fulfilling life.
First quarter of your life is figuring stuff out and doing stupid things. Literally don't sweat it.
Well, you tackled your affliction and you still have the rest of your life ahead of you. You are in a pretty good spot, even if it could have been better otherwise.
Keep up what you have achieved and work toward gaining the things you haven't yet.
Yeah could be. But how do I know how much I damaged my brain the last decade with all this drinking "for fun"?
Does it matter? If you could quantify your lost potential, would such knowledge benefit you in any way? I understand the drive to understand your major life mistakes as deeply as possible, but you've already made great strides to learn from and correct said mistakes. You seem to be on a pretty strong upward trajectory, but if you obsess over what's lost, it just might drag you back down.
The best time to plant a tree is ten years ago. The second best time is now. There's no perfect path and hindsight is 20/20. There's a reason there are so many cliches for this feeling, but you gotta focus on what you've done right and where it's gotten you since.
If it helps at all, I didn't spend my younger years drinking, and I'm still considered friends with most of the people I made friends with in my 20's. However, I almost never see and/or talk them anymore, just because life gets busy, and it becomes harder to maintain contact. It's still hard for me to find new friends and people to hang out with. I believe that particular struggle is a pretty shared experience regardless of what our younger selves did. It's entirely possible that even if you didn't spend your younger days drinking, that "friend circle" would be just as absent as it is now.
I think you're doing great, and the advice of going to the gym and finding a hobby is great advice for yourself too, that's how I met the friends I have now. it's a great way to find people who are busy with life, but have made time in their life for their hobby, and you can share that time with them, and badda bing badda boom, friendship.
I had the most wicked twenties you can imagine. I'm talking the Hangover meets Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas etc.
In my thirties I started running long distance and in my forties I'm still running and incorporated 5 days a week bodybuilding routine, cross fit, biking and swimming. For the last 30 years, each decade was the best decade of my life.
Remember fondly the parties, focus on building yourself up, and most importantly be proud of who you are (and enjoy the ride).
Booze is good fun, but not if you're prone to dependency on substances. I really like booze to heighten a mood a bit more, but there's a point where I don't like it anymore. I think there's quite a few people that never recognise their personal boundary when it approaches and then it flies on by.
Like almost everything in life—substances, exercise, sun, food—moderation is key. Enjoy too much of a good thing and it'll start harming you.
Yeah as an introvert with pretty bad social anxiety it's hard to imagine where I'd be if I was a teetotaler. I don't think it's hard to stay in control, and I'm a different person after a few drinks - all that anxiety just fades away and I'm like a different person entirely.
Bring a journal with you—or something—and write down why you feel great and not anxious.
Read it when you're feeling quiet and anxious.
Society can be a prison and social anxiety is the most common symptom of a captive. Everyone's happy when they are themselves. You can have fun with alcohol, but you can have just as much fun without it. Nothing is different except that alcohol drops your guard and makes you care less about what others think.
I've been in my backyard with headphones, dancing alone like no one's watching. I now do that all the time without booze, because clearly I want to do that to feel happy. Fuck anxiety. Don't let it become depression 😘
a finger on the monkey's paw curls
Your wish is granted, and you immediately die from 8 years of accumulated dehydration happening all at once.
The friendship thing isn't caused by the drinking. While it might be a factor, changing interests as you work out how to be an adult are a much larger factor. That they are still hanging out together is not a poor reflection of you, it shows that you have evolved and figured out what you think is important.
Finding friends is hard and gets harder as you get older. Finding other humans who like what you do and represent is part of the process of life. For some it's hordes of people, for others it's one or two.
I'm still dealing with alcoholism myself, it's hard to stop with how things are pretty much
If I may ask what made you decide you have to change something? I'm in a position where I only started drinking heavily in my mid 30s, this doesn't lead anywhere good and I'd like to stop. What's the way out?
If you want to make a change, you have to understand that you're going to fail a lot and that's ok. I don't really like to direct people to reddit, but mostly lurking there really helped me a few years ago before I even stopped drinking. https://www.reddit.com/r/stopdrinking/
I had a lot of times where I just wanted to not drink for one day for whatever reason. Then I stopped for a week here or there... then I tried it for a month to see if I could. Later, I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't drink on vacation so I'd be more present, and I kept going.
I was hoping there would be a r/stopdrinking adjacent here… damn! I’ve been off Reddit for a week and definitely miss the love and support that the sub shows for each other.
For me it was getting into counseling to find the underlying cause of my addiction, which was my grief. There's many ways addiction is percieved in mainstream society, with the biggest focus being on addiction being a "disease". I'd avoid such thinking since, I believe, it only serves to exacerbate the problem. If you're told that your addiction is a irreversable illness than you'll attack the symptoms without getting to the root cause.
Ask yourself why you feel the need to drink to excess, what is it that you feel you are missing in your life? We tend to utilize addiction as a way to cope with uncomfortable realities in our lives. If we can figure out what that uncomfortable truth is, we are better equipped to make better, healthier decisions on how we chose to cope with that feeling.
I recommend checking out any of Lance Dodes' books on addiction, which focus on a evidence-based approach to confronting and coping with addiction. Good luck. Feel free to DM me if you ever have any more questions ;)
I think I asked myself what happens if I do this another decade and where I might be.
I saw my belly fat, my chest fat, looked at myself and signed up for gym. Reading into gym and how to progresse efficiently gave it all an end cause I need protein, I need healthy fats I need good carbs and the most important: Water, Rest (good quality sleep) and no stress.
All this doesn't allow for weekends drinking or drinking in general. Yes I do drink on vacations a beer or two but I notice after a beer I actually don't like the taste. My cheat drink now is cappucinos lol.
Such is life. You are always going to look back and have regrets and imagine how you could have done better. Reassess and use that knowledge to do better in the future but don't get hung up in the past
I had a drinking phase 15 to 17 yo, then I got afraid of intoxicated people and them being my social event of the week. I don't cope well with self-harm combined with active peer pressure. I stopped and stuck with teetotaling since then.
Parties run on sleep deprivation already anyway.
but it's soooo hard to find friends
Go do stuff! Like, find a hobby YOU like to do, the friends will come with it.
If you like the gym, maybe sign up for a spin class so you get thrown in a room with 30 people who also like the gym.
Took me until 27 to figure out I wasn't making friends because I was going to "social venues"; I'm not a social person. Once i started hanging out at crestive venues to do my art, or browsing at the library (and making one or two unprompted remarks about my fellow patrons choice In books) the circle of friends started to fall into place!
Edit: I spell like a toddler
Congratulations on no longer drinking! personally, instead of regret I would be happy to have experienced that kind of life and then turn it around.
Is it common and easy to own your own home in your 20's in Germany?