Who I work with
Cheap beer, no structure, nobody who knew you before.
It is not a coincidence and it is not a character change. Almost every brake you used to have was environmental, and you left all of them at home.
Some of this will sound familiar.
- It is cheap enough that cost has stopped being a limit, and cost was doing more work than you realised.
- There is no Monday. The week has lost the shape that used to contain it.
- Everybody you have met here met you like this, so nobody has a before to compare it to.
- Drinking at four in the afternoon is normal here, and normal is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.
- The people who would have said something are eight time zones away and you send them the good photos.
You did not lose control, you lost the brakes
At home there was a commute, a boss who saw you at nine, a partner who noticed, a price that stung, and a friend who had known you for fifteen years and could tell. None of that felt like a restraint at the time. All of it was.
Then you moved, and every one of those disappeared in the same week. Nothing about you changed. The container did.
Why Bali in particular
I live here, so I will be specific. The drinking culture is constant, it is cheap, it is social, and it starts in the afternoon. Everyone is transient, so nobody accumulates enough history with you to notice a trend. Work is remote and unstructured for most people, so there is no fixed point in the day that a hangover has to survive.
And there is a story available here about wellness and freedom that sits very comfortably on top of drinking every day, which is a combination I have watched take people apart slowly while they described it as living well.
What is actually available if you are not going to a facility
The search results for this are almost entirely residential rehabs, most of them ten thousand dollars and up, which is why so many people conclude there is nothing for them and stop looking.
There is a lot between doing nothing and checking in somewhere for a month. A doctor, if your body reacts when you stop, and that comes first and is not optional. Online meetings in your own language and time zone. A therapist by video. Or somebody like me, which is a call a week and a person on WhatsApp on the nights that are hard.
Before you change anything
If you shake in the morning, sweat through the sheets, feel sick until the first drink, or have ever had a fit when you cut down, talk to a doctor before you stop drinking. Alcohol withdrawal can be dangerous, and it is treatable. That is a medical decision, not a coaching one.
United States and Canada: 988 (call or text)
United States, SAMHSA: 1-800-662-4357, free, 24 hours, confidential
United Kingdom and Ireland: 116 123 (Samaritans)
United Kingdom, drugs and alcohol: 0300 123 6600 (FRANK)
Netherlands: 113 or 0800 0113. Alcohol Infolijn: 0900 1995
Australia: 13 11 14 (Lifeline). Alcohol and drugs: 1800 250 015
Anywhere else: findahelpline.com gives you your country's number in about ten seconds
This site is not emergency care. If you or somebody else is in danger, call your local emergency number now.
Questions people ask me
Is it just that alcohol is cheap here?
That is part of it and it is not the main part. Price was a brake, and losing it matters, but the bigger loss is structure and witnesses. No fixed week, and nobody who knew you before. Those two things together will escalate almost anybody's drinking, regardless of what it costs.
Should I just go home?
Sometimes that is genuinely the right answer and I have told people so. More often the move is not the problem and going home would just remove the current setting without touching what you are reaching for. Worth working out which one you are before you book a flight.
Can I do this while travelling or moving between countries?
Yes. It is video or voice, so the only thing that matters is whether we can find an hour. I am in Bali on UTC+8 and I keep early and late slots. Several people I work with are moving around constantly.
What if I need a doctor here and I do not know where to go?
Then ask me and I will point you at something real, and I take no fee from anybody for doing it. If your body reacts when you stop drinking, that is genuinely the first call to make, before any conversation with me.
Fifteen minutes, free
There's nothing at the end of it to buy. If I'm not the right person for you, I'll say so and I'll tell you who is.
Peer recovery coaching, not medical or mental health treatment.
Also worth reading
Nothing has gone wrong yet. That's the trap.
You function. That is exactly what makes this so easy to keep doing, and it is why nobody is going to stop you.
The two hours that are supposed to be yours.
It starts as a reward for getting through the day. Then it becomes the reason the day is survivable, and those are not the same thing.
The stress is real. The solution isn't.
You are not drinking because you are weak. You are drinking because it works, immediately, on a genuine problem. That is precisely why it is hard to give up.