Simple Tips On How To Give Up Drinking
How many times have you tried and failed? How many hangovers could you have avoided? Are you drinking just to be social or out of boredom? Is it just the norm to drink after work or on weekends?
There are a million reasons why we all drink whether we want too or not. I am referring to the common situations e.g. finishing work on a Friday and having a drink. Drinking to socialize because all your friends drink, etc, etc.
Let me start by saying I’ve done it and not so long ago! Particularly from 2014 when I moved to Barcelona, there is a huge culture like everywhere else to go for drinks all the time. I drank every single weekend and the majority of times would end up drunk and hungover the next day on Friday or Saturday. I’ve done embarrassing things drunk: Fell over multiple times, stumbled home drunk, stayed up at house parties until 8–10am. The list goes on for all of us.
Last year, I tried a few times to give up drinking (As well as many times in the past) but I never stuck to it for a long time. I think the longest was a month and then I went back to drinking.
If you give up drinking but then one day you have a glass or two of wine or a few beers, YOU HAVE NOT FAILED. I can’t stress this enough.
Now, I’ve been sober 3+ months and continuing to do so which is now fairly easy.
So how can you achieve giving up drinking or at least take a break to get control? Here’s my advice from my own personal experience and from reading hundreds of articles on how other people have achieved their no drinking goals.
How to start giving up
1: I would highly recommend you tell yourself to give up right now. Or at least tomorrow. Don’t tell yourself “I’ll give up on Monday because I have the birthday party on Friday”. You’re already not committing to not drinking if you are doing that. So, tell yourself to start!
2. Get rid of alcohol in the house. Give it to someone else. Everyone loves free alcohol. If it’s there then there is the temptation to drink particularly after a hard day at work or in the times of COVID-19 lockdown, boredom! Get rid of it.
3. Expect that it may take some time to be in normal situations. I have found myself leaving a bit early because people are getting drunk. Do you know how annoying drunk people can be? oh you do? Yeah, you’re one of them. So was I.
4. Use an app to track your progress. Using an app can give you a visual reminder which makes you feel good as you progress from 1 day, 2 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, a month, etc. It makes you feel good. Also, you can set reminders in the app that will pop up and remind you. Some apps even ask you why you want to quit you are reminded of the reason frequently. Personally, I use the app I Am Sober but there are tons of apps out there.
Social Situations
I am still learning this one. What do you drink? Should you go the same places as normal? My suggestion here is as you are starting out, I reocmmend not going to the normal bars you go. It depends a lot on the people you socialise with and the temptation to drink inside the bar. If you feel you will struggle, then try doing other things like parks, walks, bowling, restaurants, cinemas, etc.
Having a drink is not a failure
I mentioned this in the quote above. If you are working on giving up drinking but then you have a drink or two, don’t think of it that you have to start again. Say you are two weeks in without any drinks and suddenly you have two glasses of wine. You have still had two weeks WITHOUT any alcohol! If you look back on the other two week periods and I’m sure you probably drank much more.
This doesn’t mean you can do it all the time of course otherwise you are not giving up, you are just slowing down. If you have the odd slip, then that’s ok just make sure to keep it as a temporary slip and continue from there.
Are all of your friends actually friends or are they drinking buddies?
This one was a tough one to understand. It will take you a while of not drinking to realize that some of your friends are not actually your friends at all. You just drink together. I can honestly say I spent 80% of my time with people who I thought were friends but actually we are not, we just met at the same bar every week.
It will take a while so don’t try and figure this out. You will begin to notice people who actually do things with their life other than drink and you may naturally be drawn towards spending more time with them. If not, you can work on meeting new people via events from sites like meetup.com.
How to be in situations where everyone is drinking
In the first few weeks at least you should expect to find it difficult. I read many times about telling friends you are not drinking so they understand. I found the best approach for me was to mention too one or two friends but generally just reply no to alcohol when you are in the social situation.
I found it was also good not to get into discussions about why you are not drinking, particularly while you are in a bar. Confide in your closest friend and that will help.
I also uses OYNB for a month last year. For anyone not aware of it, OYNB=One Year No Beer is a challenge not to drink. They have a slack channel where people in the same situation of giving up drinking talk about it and give lots and lots of encouragement. That will help a lot. You will also feel great while encouraging others. I found myself encouraging people I’ve never met who were on day one while I was on day 7,8,9, etc.
How to deal with the pressure from people to drink
“Hey, want a drink?”, “No thanks. I’m not drinking”, “Whaaaattt???”.
What a stupid scenario but it`s very common. If I told people I wasn’t drinking, most would generally accept it. However, you will get pressure without realizing it. Things like “so is this for a while or forever?”, “Are you sure you just don’t want one? One is fine”. This is unacceptable for people who are friends. To be fair to them, they are not understanding they are putting pressure on but you have to just say no to all of these questions also. Again I would suggest not getting into a discussion and if you are tempted to have the one, LEAVE or distract yourself with something else like a coke or something. If it’s too much, just LEAVE. Your real friends will understand.
I have many many examples of difficult situations and how I dealt with them. I have a lot of my own personal opinions on how to gain control or quit drinking completely so feel free to ask!
I will write more as I get more time to do so as I think this is a very good topic to discuss that a lot of people struggle with.
