Go Rachel! 🙂 It sounds like you are on quite the journey and I know the road is hard because I am living some of it too.
I have been pondering quitting quite a lot lately. It makes me do stupid things and especially lately causes me to get angry for inconsequential reasons quite a lot lately. I have tarnished academics, my body, work, relationships, and straight out time with this nasty habit. One very weird effect, is that drinking actually increases my dysphoria in the immediate days post-op, especially the next day. I am on an especially long attack of dysphoria right now after drinking 2 week ago, and further drinking since then (the fourth) has not helped it. Drinking has ruined a lot of things in my life, and I want to try quitting; though these are just words, and to mean something they have to be action. I also want to quit drinking to see whether doing so alleviates my dysphoria to a level that is manageable. Consuming my day/ days after each night of drinking with fantasies about living as a woman and feeling out of place in my body is no way to live. Sometimes, I wish I quit when I started cognitively recognizing this trend about 5 years ago. If my dysphoria had continued in sobriety, I would, I like to think, be at a stage in my transition where I felt comfortable in my body and social role. As it stands, that didn't happen and the drinking and negative actions related to it continue.
Lots of hugs!
Ashley