Recommended reading

When you’re thinking about quitting or cutting back on drinking, it can feel like you’re the first person to have this idea.

Your friends may or may not be supportive; your partner may or may not be in the same boat; and all around you are signs that drinking is the norm, and that you are the odd man or woman out for not being on the drunk train.

Apart from joining online forums on Reddit (we recommend r/stopdrinking or r/cutdowndrinking), or joining a Group in Drinker’s Helper (Groups are personalized for you, placing you with others with similar past drinking habits), it can help to read books written by people who’ve gotten over drinking problems.

Authors share advice, of course, but they also share their experiences. That helps you understand that the challenges you face when cutting back or stopping drinking are normal - maybe withdrawal, but also other symptoms like mood swings.

Here are three that we really liked:

1. This Naked Mind: This is one of the canonical books to read when you want to quit drinking. Through the story of its author, it brings to life the idea of changing the way you UNCONSCIOUSLY think about alcohol. Once you stop arguing against yourself, it’s a lot easier to quit.

2. The Sober Diaries: One of the funnier reads, this book shares the experience of a woman quitting drinking after a realization that she was losing her grip on other things that mattered. It’s one of the best in terms of really describing the experience of cutting back - the physical and emotional ups and downs are so easy to relate to.

3. Sober for Good: One of the most digestible of the books, this one offers tips from an extensive survey of people who have quit drinking or significantly moderated it. It helps to give a picture that there are many ways to quit or cut back on drinking, including Alcoholics Anonymous, therapies of various kinds like cognitive behavioral therapy, quitting cold turkey without help, and many combinations of different approaches.

We hope you enjoy the suggestions, and as always, if you haven’t already, please do give Drinker’s Helper a try here! We help people quit or cut back on drinking with therapeutic exercises, drink tracking and insights, and a personalized support group delivered via our app.

The argument for quitting drinking

At Drinker’s Helper, we believe that moderation (moderate drinking at healthy levels) is a perfectly acceptable option as a goal, and increasing numbers of people agree. We did it ourselves for a while without problems, before we decided to stop drinking. But we wanted to share a few arguments for quitting drinking entirely. It’s up to you - just some input to consider!

Here are the reasons we recommend you quit drinking:

1. When you actually quit, you get a better sense of how (psychologically) addicted you are. When alcohol is forbidden, you see how much you crave it - much more so than if you can relieve that craving every few days.

2. It’s easier to make one big decision to quit than many daily decisions to drink or not to drink. When you pass an airport bar, or go on a late night snack run, you just know that booze is off limits, instead of weighing the pros and cons of drinking that one time. As a bonus, others start to know that you just don’t drink, so they don’t tempt you with offers.

3. When you stop drinking, you think about drinking much less often. When you simply moderate your drinking, you end up thinking about your next drink almost constantly (to monitor it, or to plan out your week so you stay on track). You end up anticipating your weekend drinks more than you’d like because you think about them all week when you’re denying yourself.

4. There’s no fudging. When you are moderating, you need to monitor your drinking carefully to make sure you’re staying within the recommended limits. It’s easy to forget a drink, or count an enormous double cocktail as just one ‘drink.’ With no drinks at all, it’s pretty clear to tell whether you’ve hit your goals or not.

These are just a few of the reasons we recommend quitting drinking, even though we strongly support moderation as an option.

Download Drinker’s Helper today if you decide to quit or cut back on drinking!

New options for booze-free drinking

When we were first quitting drinking, we missed cocktails the most. Something about fixing a greyhound with fresh grapefruit juice, or mixing a hot toddy with lemon, whiskey and honey felt glamorous and out of the ordinary. By contrast, water, sparkling water, or even flavored sparkling water sometimes felt,… well, boring.

But new and tempting drinks are coming to market that actually can feel like a cocktail. They are bitter, or spicy, or sweet and mysterious, and taste anything but boring (and no, we are not selling these beverages or getting paid to do so!). Here are options we know of:

1. Seedlip. We can personally vouch for this one, which we found at a specialty goods store in our neighborhood. Treat it like gin. The spice one is great mixed with apple or pear juice, and the garden one is great with tonic water or soda and lime. It’s the first thing we tried that actually felt like a cocktail. Buy it online here.

2. Curious Elixirs. We can also personally vouch for this one. We’ve tried #1 and #2, and #3 is on the way. You can figure out which one you’ll like best based on what your favorite cocktail. Buy it online here.

3. High quality mixers. There are a few of these, like Dry Soda, which was started by a mom who wanted something exciting to drink when she wasn’t having cocktails and wine. They have unique flavors like lavender, rainier cherry and vanilla. Find a place to buy them here. There are also companies like Top Note and Fever Tree making high quality tonic and ginger beer, Fentiman’s making really unique flavors of ginger beer (with crushed lime!) and tonic water (like rhubharb).

4. Belvoir Fruit Farms Organic Elderflower & Rose Lemonade. This sparkling drink was recommended to us by a store clerk who saw us buying Martinelli’s (another awesome alcoholic champagne substitute!). Really unique flavor.

5. CBD tea. CBD, now nationally legal in the US, is one of the two main compounds in marijuana. It is non-psychoactive, which is why it is more broadly legal than its counterpart, THC. It has a calming effect and there are several CBD oils and teas you can mix with water to make a relaxing drink.

We hope you enjoy these ideas, and share your own! And if you’re looking for more suggestions, try the “Mocktails” exercise in Drinker’s Helper. Download it here.

What is a "Dry January" and why should you consider doing it?

As the name implies, a “Dry January” means you don’t drink for the month of January. But where did it start, and when? And what is all the fuss about? Let’s find out:

It’s a tradition started in the UK in 2013 by a charity called Alcohol Concern with the goal of helping people establish healthier drinking habits. It’s since spread to other countries and now millions do it every year (here’s one real account, to give you a sense of what it’s like).

One often-cited study showed that people who participated in dry January ended up (consciously or unconsciously) seeing reductions in their drinking throughout the year. There a few reasons that could be:

1. You discover dry fun: If you take an entire month and don’t drink, you start to realize it’s possible to have fun without drinking. There are other ways to celebrate!

2. You become more aware of how much you normally drink. The drinks can add up. If you take a break, and realize how often that was your standard pastime, you might start making more conscious choices about your drinking in the future.

3. You learn how to ignore or fight urges to drink. This not only gives you practice exercising your willpower, but also gives you confidence that it is possible to resist an urge.

4. You learn how to relax sober. Alcohol can be a tempting self-medication for anxiety. If you fight through the post-holiday blues and stress of re-starting work without drinking, you can use those coping mechanisms to deal with stressors throughout the year instead of drinking.

If you’re considering giving it a go, download Drinker’s Helper today and see how we can help!

What is moderate drinking?

We often toss around the phrase ‘moderate your drinking,’ but what do we actually mean? After all, your Irish uncle might have his own definition…

By ‘moderate drinking,’ we mean the “low risk drinking” recommendation of the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, which is:

• For men: 4 per day, 14 per week

• For women: 3 per day, 7 per week (yes, fellow ladies, more proof that life simply isn’t fair)

This is considered low risk because very few (less than 2%) of those who drink at this level develop an AUD (alcohol use disorder).

Note: Different governments and research institutions have slightly different recommendations. The NIH in the UK, for example, says no more than 14 units of alcohol a week for both genders (that translates to about 6 drinks).

You’ll probably find studies suggesting (or being framed up to suggest) that moderate drinkers are healthier (in terms of heart health, or weight, or hospitalizations) than their sober counterparts. However, it’s important to know that many of those studies don’t correct for overall differences in income (and therefore lifestyle - exercise, healthy eating, etc.). Often, people who don’t drink are slightly less well off than those that do (perhaps some don’t drink at all because they can’t afford to?). The only conclusive evidence is that drinking heavily does serious damage to your health in the short and long term.

So quit or cut back today with us!

What are the 12 steps of alcoholics anonymous?

We know that, for many people, the first and only option they know of to quit drinking is to join Alcoholics Anonymous and follow the 12 steps.

We do not draw from the 12 steps for any of our exercises or app features, but it’s not because the program is ineffective. In fact, 12-step facilitation was shown to be about equally effective to both CBT and MET, the two treatments we do draw from in Drinker’s Helper.

It is partly because they are religious in nature, and we want to offer help to people who both do and do not have religious faith.

It is also because the first step requires people to say they are powerless over alcohol, and we believe that people do have the power to quit or cut back. However, for some people, this can be a very effective form of treatment.

For the record, here are the 12 steps, and here is where you can find more information about the program:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Does drinking cause weight gain?

Of course any amount of calories can lead to weight gain - and alcoholic drinks are no exception, ranging from about 100-200 calories a pop (creamier or more sugar-heavy drinks can run higher). But one study has shown that heavy drinkers are more likely to end up overweight. How might that happen?

Here are the facts about how alcohol contributes to weight gain:

1. It encourages you to eat more. With those lowered inhibitions, who hasn’t ordered a pizza too many after drinking heavily? But because alcohol is a depressant, you also can become less aware of your inhibitory signals that are supposed to stop you when you’re full.

2. It hurts your sleep. People who get less sleep are more likely to gain weight, and drinking can both shorten and reduce the quality of sleep you get.

3. It makes you exercise less. Not only does a wicked hangover make it hard to get up and run; alcohol also makes you dehydrated, which makes it harder to get up the will to exercise.

So if you’re looking to lose weight (based on an unhealthy BMI), consider cutting back or quitting drinking! Stop drinking and lose weight with help from Drinker’s Helper today.

Booze-free holiday drinks

We know the holidays can be a stressful time. We worry about finding the right gifts, being able to afford those gifts, and finding time to work during the holidays to be able afford those gifts. We beat ourselves up for eating too much and sleeping too much. We even beat ourselves up for not having enough fun.

It’s also a terrible time to try to quit or cut back on drinking. There are parties for hosting. Champagne feels festive. It’s one time a year when many people give themselves a pass on drinking too much.

That’s why we’ve pulled together a list of options for festive holiday drinks without the booze. Use them as options for when you’re going to a party and want to bring your own (non-alcoholic) beverage, or when you’re just trying to pace yourself from December to January. Enjoy your holidays!

Sparkling Party Punch: This family favorite party punch is both pretty to look at and shockingly sweet. You won’t even remember you’re not drinking. The instructions are also simple: put all the things in a bowl. You’re done!:

• 12 oz frozen pink lemonade

• 12 oz frozen orange juice

• 24 oz ginger ale

• 6 cups water

• 2 packages frozen strawberries

White Hot Chocolate (visit https://minimalistbaker.com/vegan-white-hot-chocolate/ for the AMAZING recipe!):

• 2 1/2 cups coconut milk (or store-bought // use full-fat for creamier hot chocolate, or sub other dairy-free milk)

• 1 Tbsp chopped cocoa butter

• 1 Tbsp maple syrup (or stevia to taste)

• 1 Tbsp coconut butter

• 1 Pinch each ground cinnamon + nutmeg 

• 1 Pinch sea salt

• 1/2 tsp maca

• 3/4 tsp vanilla extract

Designed Appletini (Find this and more in the amazing Cocktail Flow app under ‘nonalcoholic cocktails’):

• Apple juice (3 parts)

• Lemon juice (1 part)

• Sugar syrup (1 part)

We believe you can do it

We started Drinker’s Helper when we started to realize that we were relying on drinking to feel happy. Although both of us were working full-time and doing well at our jobs, we were drinking almost every night, and drinking all day most weekends. It became hard to stop after just one drink.

As we realized what drinking was costing us in terms of the hangovers, the calories, the sleep problems, and the overall loss of self-control, we searched for proven remedies online. That’s when we learned about motivational enhancement therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy, the two therapies that inspired the exercises in Drinker’s Helper.

At first, using our own app, we tried moderation, and we kept it up for a few months. But we realized we were anticipating drinking more than ever, and thinking about alcohol all the time, we ultimately decided to quit. Now, we don’t drink, and even better - we don’t want to anymore!

We want to bring the experience we had to other people, so in Drinker’s Helper, you can do four important things that help you cut back or quit drinking:

1. Monitor your drinking: We help you set healthy drinking goals and track your drinks and urges to drink over time.

2. Understand your drinking: We help you understand why you’re drinking by showing you the patterns in your drinking and urges. When we used our own app, we discovered that we drank mostly when we were happy, not when we were anxious or sad. It helped to know what to watch out for.

3. Learn skills to change your habits: Learn skills to avoid unwanted drinking based on cognitive behavioral therapy, a leading evidence-based approach that helps you manage the thoughts and situations that make you want to drink. Then sort through why you want to make a change with motivational enhancement therapy, a leading evidence-based approach to fighting problem drinking that which helps you build motivation to change your drinking.

4. Talk to others in a similar place: We got so much out of talking each other through the challenges, so we built Groups into Drinker’s Helper. You can join a group of people who have similar drinking goals and challenges, so you can help each other.

We hope you will download the app, try it out for a week, and if you like it, join our community of subscribers.