Tips and Tricks for Drinking Moderately

alternatively, pick one day of the work week to have 1 or 2 drinks and abstain on Sunday. Wednesday aka hump day is a good option to reward yourself for making it half way. If you can't control the urge to chase a buzz then save it for the nights before off days or consider if you have a problem.

 

I think this is the most powerful statement in regards to this topic! I have made it a top priority in my life to fellow this mission to the best of my abilities. Thankful I also work out, listen and create metal music as a way to compress, and having a beer is that much better tasting for me!

 

I started out limiting myself to 2 beers a day. Now I don't even drink beer every day. I'm in the 4-8 beers a week category. I think I enjoy my beer more now by drinking less.

 

Hell yeah. I play music myself (drummer). Having hobbies that are meaningful and stimulating are huge.

 

Except when all the best local gigs are at… breweries.

 

My biggest fear as retirement approached was that I would turn into a raving alcoholic and drink myself to death like my brother did. But instead I am more active with hobbies other than homebrewing so I almost never drink before 5 or 6 PM. Also my wife still worked and she had a 45 mile drive on a wildlife infested road so I never drank a drop until she was safely home. So now 2 years into retirement I drink 1 or 2 pints of beer before dinner and a small glass of Scotch an hour before bed.

 

I have several bombers of imperial stouts that have sat in the fridge way to long because I won't open it until I have somebody to share it with and there's nobody around me that will help me out.

 

We spent almost 5 months in France, Sept 2021 until the end of January 2022. During that time we drank vast quantities of Cabernet franc and Bordeaux, with a couple dozen bottles of sparkling wine per week. Whisky before lunch and dinner. So once we got back to the States Dry January turned into Dry February, March, April and most of May.

 

100%. I’m sure folks will call me an asshole for saying this, but it seems overwhelmingly clear that there are a few folks up in here with a substance use disorder. That’s to be expected, given the nature of the site. But I really think BA needs to have links to resources for people who think they might have a problem. I’m not saying we need moderators and folks calling people out, just a simple link at the bottom of the webpage that links folks to resources and supports.

 

Another thing worth pointing out: many people, males in particular, tend to use substances like drugs and alcohol to deal with stress and/or mental health issues.

In these instances, it's not only a matter of kicking the dependency on the drugs/alcohol, but also addressing the underlying impetus that compelled them to drink in the first place. Sometimes that can mean something like therapy or medication, and being honest and open with yourself about mental health is something that again, not to be sexist, but we males in particular tend to struggle a lot with. If the medication route sounds too intimidating, you can first try "natural" mood-lifting remedies such as exercise and meditation which also have proven results over the long-term.

So just chiming in to say that addressing a drinking dependency for someone also dealing with mental health issues should be a two-pronged approach.

 

A couple of people have mentioned a "standard drink equivalent" which is a 12oz 5% ABV drink. I call this the "Bud factor". Most of us starting drinking Buds or similar 12oz beers as teenagers, so we all should have an idea how many we can drink and still function or drive. When I'm out having a beer, I always do the math and know how many Bud factors I've had so I know whether I can/should still drive. When you can't do the math in your head, you've overshot your limit. Or you just suck at math.

 

I stay pretty aware of my alcohol consumption. I started brewing commercially as a 21 year old and have been at it for 11 years now. Really early on in my career I noticed how easily it could become a problem being around alcohol. When I first started I was manually bottling on a four head bottle filler with the parents of the owner of the brewery I was at. We would start drinking beer right away (their rule was when they finished their crystal light it was time for a beer) and we would drink until we stopped bottling. I noticed how much I hated cleaning up and moving beer to storage when I was drinking and noticed I had to force myself to keep working since my natural inclination while drinking is to be lazy. My rule became no beer until the last mash of the day was done or until cleanup started on packaging days. Eventually when I was the one managing the production there I made a no beer until 3:00 p.m. rule for all employees. Packaging crew normally was done at 4:00 and at that point and I would have normally been at the brewery for 11 hours by then and ready to wind down.

Early on I frequently would take week long breaks from beer, with the exception of my superstition that you don’t brew beer without drinking a beer. I was told that on my first batch of homebrew and believed it ever since. So on a brew day I would have a single beer, normally a 200 mL Kölsch since the small volume still counts as a full pour.

Over the years though I’ve noticed periods where I’m not doing a good job managing my alcohol consumption and I go overboard for days or weeks at a time and I’ll begin to notice a dependency. The first time I noticed that was actually during the early stages of the pandemic when I started day drinking as a sort of joke only to realize a month or two later that I was at a point where if I had one beer, I was going to keep going until bed time. When that happens I try to reset and take a break. As of 3 weeks ago in fact, I’ve been taking a break and other than my brew day beer, I’ve had no alcohol. My personal goal is to keep away from having alcohol consumption a part of my daily ritual but rather a few nights a week have a drink or two at most unless there’s a celebration or family gathering.

 

As we all realize alcohol is a very dangerous drug, right up there with heroin. In fact junkies can recover, and some live long lives (think William Burroughs), while alcohol addiction quite often leads quickly to one's demise (although with fentanyl nowadays taking any opiate is really playing Russian roulette). But we all also realize that in very moderate amounts (think the cliche of French wine drinkers--though there has always been a "fléau" [scourge] of alcoholism in France as well--Camus wrote about it) alcohol is nice: it relieves stress, encourages sociability and conviviality, helps you get through the day--and imo is fairly harmless. The great challenge is keeping the beast tamed--enjoying it without harm while staving off the catastrophe of addiction.

 

Also having hobbies or passions to keep busy helps a lot. I raise or hunt all of my family’s meat, garden, show my 3 year old all the projects I’m working on, I cook all of our dinner, and I’ve got a young puppy with high exercise requirements (future quail dog). If I am drinking I just read about that stuff or watch YouTube videos about it. If I’m sober I’m actually doing it and maintaining a much higher motivation level which is far more rewarding than drinking and laziness, which in turn feeds the motivation to abstain from alcohol.

 

That's impressive. Over the last few years I've gotten into puzzles - 500/1000 and even 2000 piece. Frequently I have a beer during puzzle time. It takes a very long time to finish the beer (even if it's something light) as I'm extremely honed in on the puzzle, not really thinking of anything else. If I'm just sitting on the couch the tendency is to drink a little more.

 

Retirement is one of the main reasons I drink less now. Not as much disposable income, inflation and health are all contributing factors in my case but there are always ways to work around those obstacles. Unless someone has a physical dependency, whether it's alcohol, nicotine or coffee, willpower is an effective tool in moderating behavior.