If you are like many people, you drink as a way to relax or as part of a peer group when engaging in certain activities. Parties, concerts, and festivals are often activities that can be more memorable when you have a drink in hand. At some point, though, you might wonder: how can I stop drinking? At Promises Behavioral Health, we’re committed to helping you overcome your alcohol addiction with our alcohol addiction treatment center.
Why You Might Want To Stop Drinking
There are many reasons why you might want to stop drinking. Some of the most common reasons are that you think you’ve been drinking too much or too often. You might feel like you’ve been using alcohol as a way of dealing with your problems.
In other cases, there might be outside influences that make you reconsider how your drinking is affecting your life. Perhaps one or more of your important relationships have become rocky because of your drinking. Maybe your boss has expressed displeasure in your work performance and it’s related to your drinking.
You might have recently had a brush with law enforcement while drinking or driving. Or maybe you realized that your drinking was affecting your ability to care for your children or other people who are dependent on you for support.
How Can I Stop Drinking: Some Suggestions
Whether you think you could benefit more from quitting drinking altogether or you simply want to cut back, here are a few creative ways to do so:
1. Outline your goals
Start off by setting drinking goals. If you don’t know where to start, think about ways that quitting drinking can help your life. Will doing so improve your relationship with your significant other and/or your children? Are you trying to improve your health?
If you aren’t sure what is a good drinking limit that can help you realize your goals, consult with your physician for guidance.
2. Start a drinking diary
Over the course of several weeks or a month, write down information about your drinking each time it occurs. Make a note about how much and what you drank. Also include information about who you were with, what you were doing, and how you were feeling.
3. Be proactive
Get rid of the alcohol at your house to make it less of a temptation. Make sure that you always eat before you start drinking. Drink slowly by sipping your alcoholic beverage. Follow it up with something that is non-alcoholic such as juice, water, or soda.
4. Stay busy
Look for those times of the day or week when you would normally drink and plan other activities so you aren’t tempted. If you’ve put aside any old hobbies as the result of drinking, pick them up again. You can also start a new one that you might have had an interest in but simply never had the time previously.
5. Seek out positive and supportive people
Reach out to those people in your life that can provide you with support. These might range from family and friends to those in the medical community.
Make sure to limit your exposure to those people and places that might make it difficult to abstain from drinking.
Sometimes the above tips simply aren’t enough to help you answer the question of how can I stop drinking. If that is the case, you could likely benefit from professional assistance.
Promises Behavioral Health provides individual treatment programs that are tailored to your needs. A sampling of the many services and programs we offer includes:
- Couples counseling program
- Acupuncture therapy program
- Equine-assisted psychotherapy
- Craniosacral therapy program
Call Promises Behavioral Health today at 844.875.5609.
