5 ways to improve your relationship with alcohol in 2024

With Dry January having come to a close, people are (literally) returning to their patterns of yesteryear which means reinstating the wine-with-dinners, the Friday happy hours, the beers-with-the-boys. However, with the continuous growth of the sober curious community and the explosion of mocktails on restaurant menus, people are questioning their relationship with alcohol and wanting to make healthier choices. Head below for five ways that you can improve your relationship with alcohol in 2024.

Review the CDC guidelines

For many, drinking a bottle of wine over the course of an evening feels like nothing; if you start at 6:00 p.m. and you get home by midnight, you’ve averaged less than a glass of wine per hour. If you’re a woman, though, those four drinks in one night are considered binge drinking.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines binge drinking as “a pattern of alcohol consumption that brings the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to a level .08% or more,” which equates to about five drinks for men and four drinks for women in one sitting.

As for what the CDC defines as “excessive drinking,” this includes binge drinking, heavy drinking, alcohol used by pregnant women, or alcohol drank by someone under the age of 21. The CDC is careful to note that not everyone who drinks excessively is an alcoholic. An alcoholic – or someone who suffers from alcohol use disorder – is a person who identifies with one or more of the following traits:

• Inability to limit drinking.
• Continuing to drink despite personal or professional problems.
• Needing to drink more to get the same effect.
• Wanting a drink so badly you can’t think of anything else.

If you are someone who enjoys four or more drinks in one night – or maybe you enjoy four or more drinks multiple times throughout the week – you may be someone who drinks excessively.

Eat before you drink

You know those people who, when it hits 4:00 in the afternoon, will be like, “I forgot to eat lunch!” How many of those same people will meet up with coworkers for a happy hour after work before having eaten anything since the early morning? I don’t know the actual numbers, but I’m sure it’s a lot!

When you drink on an empty stomach, the alcohol hits you faster because your body doesn’t have food inside of it to absorb the alcohol, causing you to get drunk more quickly or perhaps not realize that you’re drunk until you stand up to go to the bathroom. Having 1 or 2 drinks on an empty stomach isn’t the worst thing, but binge drinking on an empty stomach will rapidly raise your blood alcohol level.

If you’re going to drink, drink while you eat. If nothing else, giving yourself something to focus on other than booze will slow down your alcohol intake.

Stay hydrated

Christine Byrne, a registered dietician, confirms what I’ve always been told to do while I drink: Consume one glass of water for every one alcoholic beverage (I don’t actually do this, but I do try to remember to stay hydrated when drinking). Byrne says:

Not only does it hydrate you, it also slows you down, and that can be helpful.

Alcohol is also a diuretic, meaning it dehydrates you, making it all the more important to stay as hydrated as you can while imbibing.

Understand that alcohol is unsafe to drink

It was in January of 2023 that the World Health Organization (WHO) released a statement declaring that no amount of alcohol was safe for us to consume. The WHO noted that alcohol has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, joining the ranks of the other Group 1 (re: most toxic) carcinogens including asbestos, tobacco, and radiation. Dr. Carina Ferrerira-Borges, acting unit lead for Noncommunicable Disease Management:

We cannot talk about a so-called safe level of alcohol use. It doesn’t matter how much you drink – the risk to the drinker’s health starts from the first drop of any alcoholic beverage. The only thing that we can say for sure is that the more you drink, the more harmful it is – or, in other words, the less you drink, the safer it is.

Knowing and understanding that no amount of alcohol is safe for us to consume won’t change society’s relationship with alcohol, but if we can understand that on an individual level, maybe we (myself included) will eventually decide that it’s not safe – or cool – to drink ethanol.

Reflect on when – and why – you want to drink

The thing about our culture (and I mean like the global culture, writ large) is that people will drink for any reason. It’s so pervasive that we act as if it’s normal to have hard liquor at 10:00 a.m. on a Sunday simply because it’s dressed down amidst the tomato juice, olives, pickles, bacon, and Tobasco sauce. (Imagine if we skipped the Bloody Mary ingredients and people exclusively drank vodka. A bottomless vodka-only bar at 10:00 a.m. on a Sunday. Would people still partake?)

Whether it’s a wedding, a funeral, a Saturday, because someone got a promotion, because someone got a demotion, because it’s a holiday, because depression is real, because it feels good to feel good, and on and on and on forever, there are a million reasons why people choose to drink and they are, of course, valid.

The key I have found is figuring out when to avoid alcohol, and for me, that is whenever I am feeling Not Good Enough (cc: sad, frustrated, angry, lonely). If I can’t get through a tough night with lots of big feelings without relying on a glass of cabarnet to numb my pain, then I’m denying myself an opportunity for growth. If instead of crying I crack a beer or four, not only will my problem still be there in the morning, it will be compounded by the fact that my body will be recovering from having been poisoned the night prior.

Figuring out why you drink is a key component in having a healthier relationship with alcohol – maybe at the end of the day, all you want is an aesthetically pleasing mocktail so that you don’t feel left out.

Wrap-up

It’s not always easy when you want to improve your relationship with alcohol, especially given how normalized it is within society, but taking any one of these five pieces of advice will lead you on the path to the healthier relationship you are seeking.