[Video] How to moderate your drinking
[Transcription]
00:00 Hi everyone, I'm Connor Moss, I’m a psychotherapist in Oakland and also online anywhere in California. I wanted to talk today a little bit about alcohol moderation on how to cut down on your alcohol use if you're not necessarily trying to quit completely, but if you know that your current drinking is at an unsustainable level.
There's a lot of people that want to cut down but they don't want to stop completely, and I feel like there's a lot of support for people who want to quit in 12-Step or in other areas, but there's less support for people who just want to moderate their use. For a lot of people cutting down on their alcohol use in reducing the associated harm that comes from drinking is really important. It might be hard to find support when you're not trying to quit completely. I have a couple of tips on how to try to address this type of thing. There's also a couple of online resources that might help you with this moderation process, and I'll link those in the comments below.
01:20 So my first suggestion for how to start addressing your alcohol use if you want to moderate is to start with a break. Even if you don't want to stop completely. I think it can be really helpful to start with a 30-day break where you are absent from alcohol and you can reset your system, and then afterwards maybe reintroduce alcohol in a more measured way.
It's a lot easier to reintroduce alcohol after a break than to cut down from a large amount of drinking to a small amount of drinking, you kinda need to interrupt your behavior pattern if you want to introduce a new relationship with the substance.
01:50 The other thing is that there's a tolerance that's probably built if you're drinking a lot, and resetting that tolerance through break is really going to help you maybe still enjoy drinking or still feel the effects of it without having to take so much. It's also a time to reflect, set intentions for what your new relationship with alcohol is going to be. You're really going to end your current drinking habits, take a break and then start a new relationship with alcohol, and that break helps set that intention for you.I definitely recommend a 30-day break to start, then reintroduce if you want. But take that time to reflect first.
02:36 The second idea I have for how to help you moderate is you have to set really clear rules for yourself. If you have a bit of a problem with drinking or you're drinking a little too much, it can be very easy to just say, “Well, I'm just going to drink a little bit”, and a little bit, it's so vague that you suddenly find yourself 10 drinks deep and you're passed out. So it's really important that you have really specific goals that you want to set, and during this 30-day break is a really good time to write down or record a video of yourself talking about what you want your goals to be.
With goals, I think it's really useful to talk about SMART goals, this is something I've written a blog about, and lots of people talk about. SMART goals stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. So if your goals are specific; you don't just want to cut down, but you want to stop drinking for 30 days or you want to not drink more than two drinks in a night. Measurable; it's an actual measurable amount that you can keep track of.
03:45 Achievable; this is something that's realistic for you, that you can actually stick to. Realistic; it's a goal that you're actually going to be able to reach in your life. And Time bound; there is a specific time limit on when you want to reach the school, so not just “I want to cut down forever”, but “for these next 60 days, I want to try to not drink more than two drinks a night”. Having that really specific goal-setting mentality that you write down and save somewhere that you can access is going to keep your drinking contained to what you want. Use SMART goals to set very specific numbers on what you want your drinking to look like.
04:34 The next idea I have is that once you re-introduce drinking, you really want to be tracking your drinks. It's really hard to cut down if you don't know how much you're actually drinking, and it's very easy to underestimate how much you might be drinking if you don't have a verifiable measure of it.
04:52 So especially with alcohol that can blur your memory or with these types of behaviors, it's really important to ground it in an objective measure. I definitely recommend keeping a note on your phone where each day of the week you write down how many drinks you've had. And that way you can actually track and ask yourself, “am I meeting my goals?” And “Am I able to follow through on the goals I'm setting for myself?” It's very hard to address your drinking if you're not not tracking it.
05:17 So my next suggestion, which is a huge one, is you have to find a community. You can't do this alone. Johan Hari has this quote that I love that says, “The opposite of addiction isn't sobriety, It's human connection.” I find that to be really true. The people who engage in a recovery community, whether that be in recovery meetings or harm reduction meetings, or talking to a therapist, or even just talking to a friend or a group of friends who want to address this, or if that's in an online forum. Connecting with other people around what you're going through is going to be really helpful for your success. If you're just doing this on your own, you're the only one holding yourself accountable, and it can be very easy to kind of go back on goals, you set because there's no one else that knows about it.
06:16 My suggestion is to tell a lot of people, and that can be really vulnerable. If you don't want to talk to friends about it, there's online communities. Reddit has some great forums that you can make posts on, there's Moderation Management which has some great online meetings that you can join in and talk about with strangers. I just think it's really important that you're involving other people in your recovery. For most people I work with, the people who have other people involved in their recovery have much higher success rates than people are just trying to do it on their own.
06:58 The last idea I have on how to address your drinking is that in the long run, you really need to understand what's at the root of this. If you're drinking in large amounts in your life, chances are it's kind of serving a purpose for you; that could be stress reduction, it could be a way to unwind after work, it could be socializing, you might have a lot of social anxiety and drinking helps you manage that, it could be deeper issues like unresolved trauma or depression that you really don't want to look at, and drinking helps you soothe that pain. So if you think of a house and you want to remove a support beam, you can't just take away that support beam without putting something else in its place. The same thing with drinking; if it's serving a purpose in your life and you just take it away and you don't replace it with a similar resource, it's going to be really hard to succeed in the long run. And it's going to be really hard to understand what it is you're needing if you're not aware of what's going on underneath.
08:06 Exploring the root cause of what might be leading you to drink in the first place, that's not as much a quick fix, but in the long run, that's going to be really helpful to keep you on track with your goals. I definitely recommend journaling or talking about this and support groups, or talking about this in individual therapy to really help you understand “what am I getting out of drinking and what can I replace that with?” If you're using it for stress reduction, maybe you can watch TV or play video games instead, if you're using it to mask your social anxiety, maybe there's some therapy that you can do about your anxiety, or there's some other things you can do in your social groups to help you feel more comfortable. If you're using it to mask deeper trauma, it's really important that you do the work to work on that healing, and so that you don't have to mask it.
09:04 Often drinking is the symptom of something deeper, and if you really want to succeed in cutting down on drinking in the long run, I think it's really important that you take a look and try to address that. So I hope this is helpful. Like I said, there's a lot of online resources available, especially now in the pandemic, all the support meetings that used to be in person are now online, so it's very easy to find a meeting that's available online. There's really no excuses to not get involved in some sort of support group, because everything's so available. I'll link a couple of resources below that are more focused on moderation rather than abstinence, and definitely check them out. The most important thing is that you are searching and reaching out for resources, whether it be recovery communities or individual therapies or online videos that you're finding. The most important thing is that you're trying to address this, so I really commend you on at least taking the first step and exploring what you might be able to do about this.
10:11 If you're struggling with something like this or a loved one is struggling with something like this, you're always welcome to reach out to me. I work with a lot of folks who are wanting to reassess their relationship with alcohol or other drugs, and as well as offering couples therapy and trauma therapy and drug and alcohol counseling in general, I'd always be happy to consult and see if I might be a good fit to help you.Alright, so that's it. I hope this was helpful, and I'll see you all next time. Take care.
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