This post is just personal stuff on quitting, so feel free to skip it, I don't mind
Thankfully I never became an alcoholic, but I was well on the way. As I passed 30, hangovers started taking too much time, so I decided the good times weren't worth it. Every night out seemed the same anyway. It was socially quite hard to stop, and it still makes me feel like an outsider how much time people around me spend talking about drinking: what happened, how sick they feel, when they're going to drink next. Us Finns seemed to travel to foreign countries based on booze pricing.
It's almost appalling how many of my co-workers read tabloids and make fun of celebrity drunks, and still they probably wouldn't be able to stay off the bottle for even two weeks. I'm not trying to be holier-than-thou, it's just an observation, and I used to be just like them.
Quitting alcohol has made me happier, I feel like I'm living a life instead of wasting one. It wasn't tough, but like I said, I wasn't an alcoholic. Quitting smoking took some effort, but I made it. Due to an ailment I'd like to quit coffee as well, but that's VERY hard. Strange withdrawal pains, mainly in the legs.