I am working toward that too. I actually got into a really bad habit just over a year ago of not being able to sleep ,and would take a couple sleeping pills after work. I then began adding alcohol to the mix and it just became a "way of life". It got to where I was up to 4x the recommended dosage of the pills, and was still drinking with them.
It hit me just over a month ago that the last year has really been a blur, and my only conscious efforts were to hold it together enough to pay my bills, and not mess up my career. Everything else was really just "whatever". That's really what hit me, I thought about friends and family that I had just pushed aside, the money wasted, and I also did a lot of major bucket list stuff and I just don't feel like I appreciated any of it.
When I decided to stop though, I made the mistake of going "cold turkey" on both immediately, and the first night I passed it all off as "insomnia". The second day I got really bad headaches, and I took some aspirin and it was a long night. The third day I got extremely sick, I ended up looking some things up online about withdrawals, and I ended up calling my mom who used to be an addiction counselor for advice, and was told slowly decreasing is the best way to go about it. I should be completely off by Christmas.
The hardest part is changing my habits and routine, like forcing myself to drink more water/eating better ,or going to the gym after work, and not just watching tv/playing xbox while drinking. I wish you and anyone else luck, keep your goal(s) in mind and you can do it!
