I Had My First (Alcoholic) Drink in Over 420 Days
Here is how you can create an effective plan to help control your drinking habit.
For the past 14 months, I’ve been actively trying to convince people to quit drinking. And just a couple of days ago, I had a glass of wine.
The plan was never to quit forever. 14 months is actually 4x longer than I was planning to quit.
The goal was to gain control over my drinking. I stayed sober for much longer because I fell in love with having control.
But, now that I will be having alcoholic beverages again, a plan is needed in order to make sure my drinking does not get out of control.
With a solid plan, it is much easier to balance pleasure and order.
My first drink wasn’t that great
It’s not that it didn’t taste great. I had a great glass of (J.Lohr Cabernet) red wine and it was delicious.
After about 3oz, I had a buzz. That’s crazy considering I used to be able to drink 70+ oz of wine in a night.
Once I finished that glass of wine, I was buzzed for about 30 minutes, then quickly got tired.
My plan was to go out to a show and socialize with people who I hadn’t socialized with in a while… Instead, I went home to sleep.
Needless to say, the drink was not as enjoyable as I imagined it would be.
The next morning I woke up and realized that my drinking wouldn’t get out of hand in the future. That’s because I much prefer being sober and being in control.
So, while I will enjoy a beverage here and there, I don’t imagine having 50 shots of Jameson in a night ever again (or even 5).
Regardless, you never know what could happen, so it is best to make a plan to ensure drinking never gets out of hand.
Let’s get to it.
How I plan to control my drinking
This is actually extremely simple. To create a plan, I had to first decide why I would be drinking in the first place.
Social occasions (Christmas, cocktail parties, networking events, poker games, etc)
A little scotch while I play chess
To test drinks for businesses I open in the future (restaurants, bars, etc)
That’s it.
That’s really the only time I would be drinking.
Next, I needed to decide parameters that would allow me to enjoy myself, but still help me maintain control.
How much would I need to enjoy these scenarios in order to enjoy myself?
Social occasions: One or two drinks to sip, and one shot to cheers with others.
Chess: 1-2oz to sip throughout the evening
Test drinks: 1-5 drinks, but I would not need to finish any of them.
Upon analyzing this, it’s easy to see that on no particular night would I need to drink more than 2 beverages.
But, how often should I be drinking?
Drinking can slow you down, make you hungover, and is just all-around bad for your health. A long frequency is important.
With that in mind, I settled with max 7 drinks in a week but figured I would have an exception if I am travelling.
For example, when I go to Thailand to visit my brother, I might want to have a couple extra.
To ensure that doesn’t get out of hand either though, I decided to place a rule where I can only make a travel exception once every 3 months.
And lastly, I created a punishment in case I broke any of these rules. You have to hold yourself accountable after all.
The punishment is 1-6 months without alcohol depending on the severity of the breakage.
There is no reason having 3 drinks in a night should have the same punishment as 20.
So, to summarize, these are my rules:
No more than 2 drinks in a night
No more than 7 drinks in a week
Travel exceptions once every quarter
Punishment of 1-6 months without alcohol (depending on the severity of breakage) if I break my rules.
This is how you can create a plan of your own
Your plan to help control your drinking needs to be based on your current drinking habits.
When I quit, I was drinking 120 oz+ every week. Crazy, right?
If you’re going from 15 oz to 6 oz a week, there is no reason you need the same rules as mine.
However, I recommend using similar parameters.
Number of drinks allowed in a night
Number of drinks allowed in a week
Exceptions
Your punishment if you break your rules
Let’s go over a couple of examples.
If your goal is to simply stop getting drunk because those hangovers are killing you…
Well then, you should focus on the number of drinks you’re allowed in a night.
You can limit it based on the number of drinks in a night, or based on whatever timeframe makes the most sense to ensure you aren’t crippled the next day.
To dive into that a little further, let’s say you’re watching Sunday football with the boys. You might have more than 2 drinks throughout the day, but you could limit it to 1 every 2 hours.
That means you could have 4 beers, but it is unlikely to cripple you because you timed them more appropriately.
I would also recommend having water in between each beer as well in that case.
Your plan would be very different if you were someone who has a bad habit of having drinks every day.
For example, you have 2 beers every day, but never really get drunk.
In this case, you should limit the total drinks you have per week and create a plan that allows you to drink on specific nights, but not every night.
The obvious way would be to say you can have a drink on weekends, but not on weekdays.
To summarize again, your plan should work within the parameters.
Number of drinks in a night
Number of drinks in a week
Exceptions to your rules
Punishment if you break your rules
It is very important though to make sure this plan is something you can follow.
Your whole plan falls apart if you don’t hold yourself accountable!
Accountability
As you saw above, I hold myself accountable by placing a strict punishment if I screw up. But, I also announced my rules and punishment on social media.
By doing that, everyone who knows me has now become my accountability partner. They are easily able to call me out if I break my rules or don’t punish myself.
Now, you might not want to announce publicly that you want to control your drinking because you’re afraid it’ll make you look like an alcoholic.
Understandable!
Once you pick your punishment, find an accountability partner you can trust to hold you accountable.
Preferably someone who likes to call you out on your bullshit.
A girlfriend (or boyfriend), your parents, friend, sibling, business partner, or whoever. It doesn’t matter as long as they will hold you accountable and will know if you broke your rules.
Accountability is key.
Conclusion
Controlling your drinking is one of the best things you can do to improve your life. Alcohol has a bad tendency to ruin your health and mind.
Although quitting completely is ideal, it’s not always realistic for people and is a hard step to take.
Instead, a much easier path would be to make a good plan to control your drinking and hold yourself accountable.
How do you control your drinking? Share below!
Thanks for reading
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