|
Context: I still drink, but significantly less than I used to; I don't think I ever qualified for an alcoholism diagnosis. I'm also very much into coffee, tea, and good food: everything that involves olfactory pleasure, basically. (Caffeine addiction is also something I'm acutely aware of.) I got into alcohol originally for the taste — the same reason I got into coffee and tea — and realised early on I simply didn't enjoy the hangover/morning after, and since my personality is such that I have expectations of myself in terms of productivity in a day and I usually get my best work done in the morning, I realised that was highly detrimental to my emotional well-being: I would end up disappointed and frustrated the day after firstly because I wasn't processing things as fast as I knew I could, and secondly because a pounding headache tends to make people cranky. So I started analysing why it is that I often ended up drinking more than I "should" at night and came up with a big reason: boredom. My olfaction needs stimulation. Since I can't sleep after consuming caffeine (my hard cut-off for coffee/tea is 4pm) and I don't know of any drinks that are both non-alcoholic and caffeine-free that have the same complexity of flavour, I go for fermented stuff. I found supporting evidence for this when I realised that, if I had a project I'd started in the morning that somehow hadn't drained my brain by lunchtime and that I was determined to continue into the evening, I would basically forget to drink, even if there was a glass right in front of me. The same has happened to me with forgetting to drink coffee in the morning or even eat all day on those occasions when I've gotten into The Zone shortly after waking up. Since I drink alcohol for the flavour first, and don't even like most of the effects of ethanol, I also don't drink when I'm tired, because I don't have the cognitive capacity to process the flavours: it becomes a waste of money, a waste of time, and a needless toll on my body. Being tired enough to forego the evening drink often comes from doing exercise during the day; by contrast, if I go to the gym after dinner, I often end up in a situation where I (can) drink a lot, because I'm so energetic after the exercise that I need something to do. So for me, reducing the amount of alcohol I consumed came down to:
- Making sure I had other things to do (whether projects or obligations)
- Getting a suitable amount of physical activity into my day
- Constantly reminding myself that olfactory pleasure was the original reason for spending so much money on good wine, and that I can't afford, financially, to get addicted to alcohol. In your case, it sounds like peer pressure also plays a role; I can't offer much on that because I long ago embraced the grumpy introvert side of me and stopped caring so much about that (which I appreciate isn't going to work for everyone). |