The best thing for you is to give up drinking.' 'Yeah.. What's the next best thing?' - Anon.
Had to chuckle when I read this. My sponsor told me to change 'EVERYTHING' and it wasn't all about the drinking.
What I did learn was that I needed to quit, just for today, not for ever, not for a month, 90 days, a year, but one day at a time.
Found that drink took me to other things, places, and to people that were not healthy for me. So if I gave up drink, a lot of those other things were no longer in my life. Certainly the people didn't want me to be there if I didn't drink. They didn't want me to admit to a problem, because if I had one, then they might need to look at their own drinking, so best I leave and they can stay in their denial.
Just for today, I choose not to drink. It is an inanimate object until such a time as I choose to injest it in some form or another.
When my disease starts saying 'more' I start looking for something else to give it a new flavour. It always means more, and it keeps taking more to get to where we want to be, and then we can't stop, because we still want more, because alcohol stops working for us.
