Read · 7 minutes
Drinking a bit more
than you'd like
No lectures, no units-per-week table and no insinuation that you have a problem. Just treat this resource as a means to ask you some honest questions about where the line sits for you.
It's rare for men to consider themselves alcoholic. They're holding down a job, a family and a mortgage. However, they've noticed that the two after work has become three, that it's every night now rather than some, and that they don't quite feel right.
This is not a page about stopping; it's a page about noticing and then working through it to create a healthy balance in your life.
The question that matters isn't how much
Rather than purely considering the quantity of alcohol intake, ask yourself what is it doing for you? A drink that's genuinely a pleasure and a drink that's masking a situation you want to avoid are two different things, even when it's the same beer in the same glass.
Take some time to reflect and be truly honest about which of these habits around drinking fits:
- Taking the edge off a day you couldn't otherwise put down
- Getting to sleep
- Being able to talk, feel something, or stop feeling something
- Filling an evening that would otherwise be very quiet
- Or genuinely — you like the taste and the company
If it's one of the first four, it's important to note that alcohol is the solution you've created for a different issue. Now that you know what actually needs attention, you can take purposeful and intentional steps to rectify your issue(s).
The sleep trap
This one catches out a lot of people, so it's worth spelling out. Alcohol does genuinely help you fall asleep…only to then wreck the second half of the night, suppressing the deep restorative stages and waking you at 3 or 4am with your heart racing.
So, you wake up shattered. And a shattered day is much harder to get through, which makes the drink at the end of it more appealing; it's a vicious cycle. Recognising it as a detrimental loop is what helps you step out of it.
A fortnight's experiment
Pick two weeks and write it all down. Notice your sleep patterns/consistency, your mood by the middle and end of the week, and your temper. Make sure to reflect on your mornings, too - how easy is it to get up? how do you feel? Are you immediately reaching for the coffee just to get through the next couple of hours?
What you learn is useful no matter what. If it's easy and things improve, you know what to do if/when sleep quality ever diminishes in the future. If it's much harder than you expected, talk to your GP about it and make positive, supported changes, rather than pushing through it alone.
Signs worth taking seriously
Not to alarm you, but because these drinking habits may require a bit more attention:
- You've tried to cut down and haven't managed it
- You're being careful about how much anyone else sees
- The drinking occurs earlier in the day
- Someone who loves you has raised concerns to you more than once
- You get shaky, sweaty or badly anxious the morning after
If you're not ready to change anything
That's allowed and that's your decision. Noticing is a real step on its own, as this shows that the 'doing' is possible. The support is available, professionally or personally, when you're ready to make that step
Somewhere to think about it out loud.
Coaching isn't treatment for addiction — but it is a confidential place to work out what the drink is doing for you, and what else might do that job.