I’m 17 years without alcohol, 16 without “le drugs”, and 15 without smoking. I still have issues in my life and challenges to solve but wow, all of those would be harder and more numerous if I still behaved like I used to. I had a fairly short period of massive excess and had a few lucky moments of clarity which resulted in me quitting it all one after another. My partner and I have been together since just after I quit drinking and I am really glad they never had to see me being my worst self.
My biggest takeaway is it really does get easier with time. The hardest times were within a short time of quitting. The longer I sustained the more ingrained the change became and now I would be stubborn and resist any sort of backslide.
Absolutely not, no spirituality or religion at all. Strong beliefs about how the world doesn’t work (lots of specific debunked ideas, lots of ideas that are incoherent or inconsistent) but not sure about a bunch of stuff. I don’t think it would be meaningful to say there is a mind behind the creation of the universe because what we consider a mind and what that mind would have to be are two ideas with almost no overlap. If there is something out there magically making the universe what it is I don’t think we would be able to recognise it at all, let alone communicate with and understand it.