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Help me become a purely social drinker
Kneel
Ten thick coatsRegistered User regular
Ten thick coatsRegistered User regular
Morning folks.
As some of you may have gathered from my other posts, my life can be somewhat busy at the best of times, a nervous roller coaster at worst. In a nutshell:
Ill wife for whom I am carer;
15 y/o daughter with learning difficulties, likely autistic, support workers and attends a special needs school;
3 other children aged 4-7 who attend regular primary school and, one mild case of autism aside, are pretty regular (if a bit kooky).
Several cats and dogs, the former require cleaning up after (housecats) and the latter need up to an hour of walking daily.
My go-to relaxation option has always been several beers in the evening, 1-3 nights a week. Sometimes I manage to hammer that down to once a week only, other times I've gone months without a drink at all, but I always come back to that evening habit. Whenever I get it under control, the school holidays come along and disrupt my day-to-day routine, leaving me feeling anxious, depressed, sometimes angry ( I realise that raises it's own red flags and is a discussion for a different thread) and usually results in me drinking more evenings per week.
Now, I don't want to give up my beer entirely and be the gentleman nursing the water on a night out. I drink outside of the house every few weeks, often few months, and I really enjoy meeting up with my friends when it happens. Nor do I want to continue my trend of getting rat-arsed in front of the PC several nights a week after my wife and kids have gone to bed.
So: have any of you made the transition from habitual to purely social drinker? If so, any advice on how to subtly alter my mentality towards it?
Cheers in advance.
As some of you may have gathered from my other posts, my life can be somewhat busy at the best of times, a nervous roller coaster at worst. In a nutshell:
Ill wife for whom I am carer;
15 y/o daughter with learning difficulties, likely autistic, support workers and attends a special needs school;
3 other children aged 4-7 who attend regular primary school and, one mild case of autism aside, are pretty regular (if a bit kooky).
Several cats and dogs, the former require cleaning up after (housecats) and the latter need up to an hour of walking daily.
My go-to relaxation option has always been several beers in the evening, 1-3 nights a week. Sometimes I manage to hammer that down to once a week only, other times I've gone months without a drink at all, but I always come back to that evening habit. Whenever I get it under control, the school holidays come along and disrupt my day-to-day routine, leaving me feeling anxious, depressed, sometimes angry ( I realise that raises it's own red flags and is a discussion for a different thread) and usually results in me drinking more evenings per week.
Now, I don't want to give up my beer entirely and be the gentleman nursing the water on a night out. I drink outside of the house every few weeks, often few months, and I really enjoy meeting up with my friends when it happens. Nor do I want to continue my trend of getting rat-arsed in front of the PC several nights a week after my wife and kids have gone to bed.
So: have any of you made the transition from habitual to purely social drinker? If so, any advice on how to subtly alter my mentality towards it?
Cheers in advance.
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Or simply just making the change to buy one six-pack a week and let that be your only alcohol for the house.
I totally get if that's a tough rule to abide by, but it would cut down the amount you drink if you hammer several in one night.
Best of luck!
I guess I have all the tools to hand, and I don't usuallly buy the beer in advance (ie during the weekly shop), it's my own mentality that I've got to push past.
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I guess the question I'd ask is, why do you feel the need to curtail your drinking in the first place? If it's as occasional as you're describing and all you are doing is sitting on your sofa watching TV at the end of a long day, there's really nothing wrong with that on its face.
It usuallly amounts to four large (750ml), strongish (6.6%) beers in a 3-4 hour sitting, meaning that in a week in consuming triple the recommended unit intake. I don't get blackout drunk, and i know my limit well enough to pour away any beer left in the bottle when I got that point, but there's still the monetary cost, guilt and potential health problems down the line (not to mention hangovers at 6am).
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so in regular glasses (0.3 ltr) that would be almost ten units.
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but what i'm trying to say is that at 10 standard units we are looking at a pretty large ammount of alcohol.
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That said, having read about your chaotic life, so in the longer term I agree with those who say you may want to consider alternate methods for dealing with stress.
I think that covers what I need to do, in a nutshell. No buying beer when drinking alone, avoid alcohol if I'm stressed, double down on hobbies. Plan a day out with friends every once in a while, but otherwise avoid the stuff.
Thanks for your input, guys!
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That's another adage, "Never drink your calories".
As for the drink, I suggest never buying booze for the home. Drink when out, drink gifted booze, but never go yourself to the off-license to buy booze. A simple rule, easy to follow. Usually the first drink begets the second, so if you never take the first drink, you won't drink the second. Try making a ritual of unwinding with a special drink - tea or diet coke or something.
TBH the dogs are lovable enough, just a bit noisy when someone knocks on the door, and they encourage me to get a good brisk walk (3 miles in roughly 35-40 minutes) done with them daily. The cats drive me up the wall though, and they're so old now they're pretty much set in their ways (one in particular has, I suspect, long-standing mental problems of her own that we never got addressed due to everything else going on).
Meanwhile I've not had a drink in four days which is... well, it's a start. I've focused on my painting once the kids have gone to bed and settled on a hot chocolate to look forward to in peace and quiet before I do so. No alcohol in the house, and whatever I don't spend on beer will be getting put on one side to save for a particularly large Warhammer model I've had my eye on for a few weeks now.
So far, so good.
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My good wife had already suggested that I stay dry 'til April at least, and see how I feel then, so that lines up nicely.
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Yeah I recommend at least a month of being dry before going to drinking only in social situations. Making it non-negotiable for yourself is the easiest way to do it, and you need to take some time to get used to it and establish not drinking as normal.
For me the biggest thing was realizing how much the alcohol was actually worsening my depression and anxiety. You kinda need 2-4 weeks before you actually feel that, so I never really noticed the difference when I tried to cut down or not drink for a few days.
Usually that's either through social contact in ways that's de-stressing (and not the opposite), meditation (of some kind) or physical exercise.
It can be as simple as making your evening dogwalk a moment for exercise instead of something "you have to do". Take extra time so that you're not stressed if the dog "doesn't want to poop right now". Take time to do exercises with the dog to bond and get your own pulse up.
This isn't necessarily THE option, just one of many possibilites.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden