If you would love to change your drinking habits, AA and total abstinence aren’t your best alternatives. Research from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism indicates that almost all of folks who trade their ingesting behavior achieve this without AA or rehab. Many decide that quitting completely is their exceptional choice, but simply as many, if now not more, resolve their problems by way of cutting back or becoming more secure drinkers.
1) Safety First
If you’ve got engaged in any risky behaviors when ingesting alcohol, inclusive of inebriated driving, unsafe sex, inebriated dialing or any of a host of others, there a is a way to help you to keep away from this in the destiny. Get a sheet of paper and make a listing of the volatile behaviors you’ve got engaged in and rank them in a hierarchy–bear in mind that it’s miles maximum critical to avoid the riskiest behaviors first. Then make a written plan to avoid your high risk behaviors earlier than you ever take the primary drink. For example, in case you need to drink at a bar, take a taxi there so that you will should take a taxi domestic. You cannot pressure if your car isn’t always there. Remember: suppose before you drink. It is usually a terrific idea to put protection first. The life you store may be your personal.
2) Decide What Kind of a Drinker You Want to Be
Many people find that quitting alcohol altogether is their excellent alternative. It does now not matter how a great deal or how little you drink, anybody can make the selection to abstain absolutely from alcohol. Others find that moderate consuming is their great goal and they may pick to have a intention of ingesting reasonably and never turning into intoxicated. Even the ones folks who are unwilling or unable to refrain from drinking to intoxication at instances can paintings at turning into safer drinkers through planning ahead. Safer ingesting can be an important damage discount aim for those people, considering that any plan to be more secure is constantly an development over hazardous ingesting. Safer consuming, decreased ingesting, or abstinence from alcohol are all legitimate harm reduction dreams and they’re all higher than making no exchange at all. Also remember that your intention isn’t set in stone–many people who pick goals of safer drinking or decreased consuming decide later that switching to abstinence is their pleasant wager. Life changes and it is ideal to be flexible and alternate with it.
