Open your mind to ketamine?

We were surprised and excited to see this research out of the University College London.

It appears that ketamine may have a powerful impact on a person’s desire to drink. People who took just one dose of ketamine (after a memory exercise in which they were reminded of their drinking habits) halved their drinking - not just ten days later, but a full nine months later!

It apparently works by reducing urges to drink by rewriting memories of drinking.

Now, some quick qualifiers: the test only followed 90 heavy drinkers, which isn’t a lot, and some of the observed effects may have been down to people simply signing up to an experiment that made them more aware of their alcohol consumption levels. The researchers caution that there has to be a lot more testing before people start using ketamine as a treatment for alcohol use disorder. But ketamine has shown promise for treating depression and PTSD as well, so it’s not entirely far-fetched to imagine it might really be effective in this case, too.

We love the core theory of why it works, too: the idea is that drinking problems arise from our brains automatically rewarding us for drinking because of its association with other fun times. We spend time with friends, we dress up, we dance, we play games, we toast our families…. and we give all of the credit for all of the fun to the booze. We then start to anticipate it, and trust that good times will flow if we have it. That resonated with us. We know we associated drinking with fun, with glamor, with freedom - and that stopping drinking required disabusing ourselves of those misguided notions. Ketamine may help in this process by affecting memory, allowing people to question and re-examine their past memories of drinking.

We hope to help people break out of those habitual drinking patterns without the help of a substance, through reflection, teaching and encouragement in the Drinker’s Helper app.

Drinker’s Helper is an app that provides motivational exercises, drink tracking and insights into why you drink, and a support group of your peers to help you make needed changes. Try it free for a week before joining!

Death by alcohol in America is up

We were saddened but not surprised to see this new Center on Society and Health report sharing the fact that American life expectancy has decreased for the third year in a row, in part due to rising alcohol abuse.

(For the record, the average American is expected to live about 78.6 years, which is below the OECD average of 80).

To be clear, the report also cites other causes for the reduced life expectancy in America beside alcohol abuse, including rising suicide rates and drug overdoses. But between 1999 and 2017, the age-adjusted death rates for alcoholic liver disease increase by 41%. That’s a LOT.

What’s more, the increases are concentrated in states like West Virginia and Ohio that have experienced economic challenges in the same time period. In other words, what it looks like to us is despair. People appear to be losing faith that things will get better for them, and turning to drugs, alcohol, or suicide as an escape.

Alcohol offers a temporary reprieve from whatever is going on, but it offers that escape at a price. If anyone in your life is showing signs of relying on alcohol to deal with emotional problems, we encourage you to help them deal with their problems in healthier ways. Also, if they decide to make changes to their drinking habits over the holidays, we’d love to help them cut back or quit.

Drinker’s Helper is an app that provides motivational exercises, drink tracking and insights into why you drink, and a support group of your peers to help you make needed changes. You can try it free for a week before joining!

Alcohol use disorder has genetic causes

We believe based on everything we’ve read that alcohol is an addictive drug, and that anyone who drinks above a certain level runs the risk of becoming addicted.

However, it has also been proven that everyone is not at equal risk of becoming addicted at all levels of drinking.

New research (robust research, using multiple studies on twins, children, and on bodies, run on over 2K people) suggests that people who drink too much may have less gray brain matter in key areas of the brain related to addiction. This difference appears before they start drinking to excess; the underlying cause of this brain matter deficiency is genetic.

This genetic cause could help explain why some people find it so much harder than others do to stop drinking, as the affected parts of the brain play key roles in the decision-making and the rewards systems of our brains.

Just because the cause is partly down to brain matter, it does not follow that the solution to alcohol use disorder is brain surgery. In fact, one of the studies examined in the research included cases of twins with the same level of deficiency but drastically different drinking behaviors. That means other factors, including social and environmental factors, matter a lot, too. Cognitive behavioral therapy, delivered via an app like Drinker’s Helper, can also help rein in those self-destructive decision-making patterns.

If you’re making changes over the holidays, we’d love to help you cut back or quit. Drinker’s Helper is an app that provides motivational exercises, drink tracking and insights into why you drink, and a support group of your peers to help you make needed changes. Try it free for a week before joining!

Alcohol-induced optimism

Although we are of course skeptical of any study involving fewer than a hundred people, we thought this study out of the University of British Columbia was interesting.

They studied gamblers’ behavior under an alcohol and a placebo condition. SIde note: they used tonic water as a placebo, and we highly recommend tonic water for those who are new to not drinking. Its bitterness makes it a solid substitute for an alcoholic drink.

What they found was that gamblers (who in this case were playing roulette) were more likely to chase losses (bet bigger after losing money) when intoxicated than sober.

That just sounds like something a drunk person would do, doesn’t it? It’s not just that the action is irrational; it’s that it’s optimistically so.

Intoxication leads to feeling uninhibited, but it also apparently leads us to be even more illogically optimistic than we humans normally are. That could help partially explain why people do so many risky things (from driving to getting in stupid fights to having unprotected sex) when they’re drunk.

If you’re making changes over the holidays, we’d love to help you cut back or quit. Drinker’s Helper is an app that provides motivational exercises, drink tracking and insights into why you drink, and a support group of your peers to help you make needed changes. Try it free for a week before joining!

Much more than a drink tracker

We’re thrilled to bring you an all-new Drinker’s Helper.

By way of background, Drinker’s Helper is an iOS app that provides motivational exercises, drink tracking and insights, and an anonymous support group to help people cut back or quit drinking. It’s used by people in a wide range of situations, from those sticking to moderate drinking limits for their health and fitness, to those using the app as a complement to in-person therapy in between sessions.

The app has always included a basic drink tracker for free, and provided more complex stats to members. But we’ve spent the last few months designing, building and testing an entirely new, much-improved experience for people using Drinker’s Helper. The new version is heavily based on the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy and motivational enhancement therapy. It is intended to help people convince themselves to change over time.

The new Drinker’s Helper includes:

1. A new way to reflect on why you drink and how you can change: Now, when you track drinks, urges to drink, or sober days in Drinker’s Helper, you also track the triggers that make you want to drink and the strategies that help you stick with your goals. As you use the app regularly, you’ll quickly get a clear sense of what drives you to to drink and what helps you to keep urges at bay. This process is so important because everyone’s triggers are unique, and you need a plan to deal with them that works for your situation. Maybe you’re in the restaurant industry and have to be around drinking all the time, so you need strategies to stay motivated in tempting circumstances. Maybe you do most of your drinking at home alone, so you need new ways to entertain yourself that make drinking unappealing. The goal is to find what works for you.

2. A new way to convince yourself to change: In addition to tracking your strategies and triggers, the new tracker encourages you to reflect on what you enjoy about sobriety or moderation, and what you dislike about excessive drinking. We know how helpful it was for us when we quit drinking to reflect regularly on how good we felt without drinking. Now, anytime you’re tempted to lose control, you can look back on your own words about the benefits of changing for motivation to stick with it.

3. A long-term view of your drinking and urges to drink: Now, you can see how much you’ve had to drink, and how many urges to drink you’ve had, over the past weeks and months. You’ll also see key stats like the percent of days you’ve spent sober or below your limits. All of this is designed to help you see signs of progress, even when they’re sometimes hard to see. Maybe your urges are getting weaker or less frequent. Maybe you’re having more sober days. We want you to see the encouraging signs of progress you’re making so you know it is possible for you to change.

4. Inspiration from others to cut back or quit drinking: We put a lot of work into making sure that members are matched with a support group of similar people who will really help them cut back or quit drinking in Drinker’s Helper. But we realized that with a growing community, we have an opportunity to allow every member to benefit from every other member’s success. That’s why we’re introducing Community Insights, a place to discover both new strategies to cut back or quit and new benefits to sobriety or moderation from the anonymous insights of other members. This way, as each member tracks their drinking or sobriety, others have the chance to learn from them.

If you’re thinking about cutting back or quitting drinking, we’d love to help. Give the app a try for free for a week and if you like it, join our growing community of members.

The new Drinker’s Helper Tracking view.

The wonderful world of alcohol-free holiday drinks

The most wonderful time of the year can be a hard time to be sober.

Champagne is synonymous with celebration. A hot toddy is traditional after the ski and the hot tub. Hell, even eggnog (personally: blech) could be considered a holiday tradition.

We’ve started to see articles in a few different places recommending new and exciting non-alcoholic drinks, and we thought we’d share the ones we thought suited the holidays with you here.

Here are a few ideas for exciting alcohol-free drink possibilities:

1. Fizzy options:

   1. This soda written up in Bon Appetit sounds incredible; it’s bitter like a tonic water, sweet like cream soda, but it also smells like cinnamon and tastes like grapefruit? Sign me up.

   2. The writer of this article on The Kitchn described Tost as a sparkling NA beverage that tastes like it’s for adults. We know what she means; alcoholic beverages usually taste a little bit off, a little bit complex, a little unlike something a kid would enjoy. This sounds like it could be interesting.

2. Easy options:

   1. BYU, the college campus with a history as the #1 sober school in the country, has a bar that offers flavored milk with options like pumpkin caramel spice or raspberry creme. We’ve tried steamed flavored milk before at Cowgirl Creamery in San Francisco and it was delicious. All you need are milk (or a vegan alternative like oat, soy, or almond milk), spices, and flavored syrup.

   2. This mocktail from the little Epicurean is three ingredients, and it looks beautiful. Plus, you could easily re-use your berry syrup in other drinks.

3. A hot option: Seriously, we cannot get enough of mulled cider. It can be made in a saucepan or in a slow cooker, and you really only need an orange, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg to make it taste impossibly good.

We hope this list helps inspire you to come up with your own awesome non-alcoholic drink ideas. If you’re making changes over the holidays, we’d love to help you cut back or quit. Drinker’s Helper is an app that provides motivational exercises, drink tracking and insights into why you drink, and a support group of your peers to help you make needed changes. Try it free for a week before joining!

Drinking will NOT help you speak another language

We have wanted to write about pro-drinking culture for a while, but it’s hard to know where to start. How do you capture the challenge that is constantly wading through memes and references to alcohol as a cure-all, a social lubricant, a health drink?

This article, though, we thought was a great example of how articles that encourage us all in our bad behavior with regard to drinking can be misleading.

A reader might be forgiven for thinking that drinking will help you learn French based on the headline of the article, “Drinking Alcohol Can Help You Speak Foreign Language Better.” Let’s head to the bar for some tequila and learn Spanish while we’re at it, right?

Wrong. We must always train ourselves to question these headlines. When we want to justify drinking, we absorb them without question. But our media in general is biased toward alcohol, so headlines that support drinking are more common than they should be.

Here’s what’s wrong with the picture painted by this article:

1. The study in question had only 50 participants. That’s really, really small; hard to make a definitive argument with 25 people per study cell.

2. The participants who had alcohol were only rated higher on pronunciation, not on grammar, vocabulary or argumentation. I’ve spent enough time studying Spanish to know that the people in my class who spoke it most fluently were those with the strongest vocabulary and grammar - not always the best pronunciation.

3. The participants had about one drink. How often do you just have one? I’d guess the picture would be different, even after two.

In short, if you plan on learning a new language, the first step isn’t a trip to the wine cellar. It’s a trip to the App Store for some Duolingo or to Google to find an in person class.

If you’re starting to question the pro-drinking culture, and question the role of alcohol in your life, we’d love to help you cut back or quit. Drinker’s Helper is an app that provides motivational exercises, drink tracking and insights into why you drink, and a support group of your peers to help you make needed changes. Try it free for a week before joining!

How triggers work

We spent a lot of time when we were first quitting drinking thinking about our triggers for drinking.

What were the circumstances - people, places, emotions - that led us to drink? Once we knew what ours were, we could develop alternative activities to take the place of drinking. For example, one trigger we had was celebrating when good things happened, so we brainstormed new ways to celebrate minus the champagne.

Cognitive behavioral therapy has long posited that there are triggers that lead people to drink, and that people should develop new strategies to deal with their triggers if they want to change. It’s one of the core therapies behind the exercises in the Drinker’s Helper app. But new research has uncovered a bit more about how triggers work.

Researchers studying mice found that when a byproduct of alcohol called acetate travels to the brain, it activates genes important for learning. Researchers found that by affecting the level of the enzyme that deposits the acetate in cells in mice, they could encourage or discourage them from spending time around alcohol. The researchers describe the finding as saying that people “learn” to drink in certain situations because alcohol teaches the brain to crave it. That means triggers may be built into our brains as we drink.

This research validates the importance of understanding why you drink, and in particular what situations are triggering urges for you.

If you’ve decided to cut back or quit drinking, we’d love to help. Drinker’s Helper is an app that provides motivational exercises, drink tracking and insights into why you drink, and a support group of your peers to help you make needed changes. Try it free for a week before joining!

Cool it, Coors Light

We sincerely advise Coors Light to cool it on its latest ad campaign.

We live in and are used to a ridiculously pro-drinking culture. Mommy needs wine mugs, childrens’ birthday parties where the prosecco flows, and memes about not trusting non-drinkers abound. Apparently alcohol in Tide Pod-like containers is now a thing? It’s simply too much… but we digress.

The Coors Light ads, which you’ve no doubt seen if you’ve been keeping up with your football, include:

1. A group of men “playing golf” just to drink beer

2. A woman taking off her bra and enjoying a beer at the end of a long day

3. Two men drinking beer and watching the game… on a Saturday morning

There was a bit of a backlash against the last one, mostly because many people think drinking in the morning is a sign of alcoholism. In fact, drinking in the morning as a “hair of the dog” remedy for a hangover is one of the official DSM-V signs of alcohol use disorder, but there’s no indication that the ad specifically referred to a “hair of the dog” type of situation.

But we have a problem with all three ads, more so than we do with other alcohol ads we’ve seen lately. Why? Because they reinforce common excuses people make for drinking. And once you start making excuses to drink, it’s just a few more steps to get to a problem with alcohol.

The men who aren’t “drinking,” they’re just “playing golf”? They may discover in a year or two that they don’t have any real hobbies anymore, because they really just enjoy drinking (whether on the golf course, at a bowling alley, or at home).

The woman who’s taking her bra off at the end of a hard day and simply must reach for the beer because hey, she’s relaxing? She will need to relax a lot throughout her life. If she reaches for a beer every time, that will lead to a problem.

The bros who have a traditional beer on a Saturday morning as a pre-game ritual? How many football games are they going to watch? Forget long term: how drunk are they going to be by the end of the day?

No one needs a drink to have fun, to relax, or to enjoy a good game. If you’re going to drink, be honest about why you want to drink, decide on how much you have with full awareness of the risks, and make changes if you find it’s difficult sticking to moderate drinking limits. Making excuses is a great way to end up drinking too much.

If you’ve decided to cut back or quit drinking, we’d love to help. Drinker’s Helper is an app that provides motivational exercises, drink tracking and insights into why you drink, and a support group of your peers to help you make needed changes. Try it free for a week before joining!

A new tool to help you change your drinking

Researchers studying alcohol- and cocaine-addicted rats found that when the rats believed there was no alcohol available, they stopped craving it, even when triggered by stimuli.

They believed there was no alcohol available because of a signature citrus scent; scientists had trained the rats to know that the scent represented the unavailability of their drug of choice. When the rats smelled it, the part of their brain associated with craving didn’t light up when it typically would have.

The first implication is that people might be able to reduce their cravings for alcohol by removing alcohol from their lives (e.g., staying away from everywhere it is sold, not having it at home, not budgeting for it, not going to parties, etc.). Especially early on in quitting, it can help to have fewer cravings (you’re at your most vulnerable early on). If alcohol is unavailable, apparently we might want it less.

The second is that there may be a way to train the human brain to believe alcohol is unavailable (even when it is) with a cue similar to what the rats got - a scent, a food, an image. It’s an obvious next step for the research, and we look forward to seeing what they find!

If you’ve decided to cut back or quit drinking, we’d love to help. Drinker’s Helper is an app that provides motivational exercises, drink tracking and insights into why you drink, and a support group of your peers to help you make needed changes. Try it free for a week before joining!

Social skills may help kids avoid drinking problems

We’re all familiar with the idea of alcohol as a social lubricant.

We used to use alcohol to feel more comfortable in social settings, or even as a way to avoid serious or deep conversations (it really lets you stay shallow/on the surface when you’re constantly going back to the bar for refills or coaxing people to get one more drink!).

But apparently, it goes a step further: poor social skills can be a factor that leads people to develop alcohol use disorders (teen drinkers at greater lifetime risk).

Researchers studied boys in sixth grade (yes, people start drinking that young) and discovered that those most at risk of becoming regular drinkers by eighth grade were those who lacked social skills. Anxiety, behavioral problems and learning difficulties were also contributing factors.

The idea that alcohol is a shortcut to fitting in isn’t revolutionary, but it has interesting implications for helping kids avoid drinking in the first place. Maybe we’ve moved on too quickly from stuffy traditions like cotillion (the custom of teaching etiquette and social skills that’s mostly practiced by the wealthy). Maybe there’s a modern version that can help kids learn to feel more comfortable being themselves amid strong social pressure, expressing difficult emotions in a respectful way, and connecting authentically with friends.

If you’re an adult who’s decided to cut back or quit drinking, we’d love to help. Drinker’s Helper is an app that provides motivational exercises, drink tracking and insights into why you drink, and a support group of your peers to help you make needed changes. Try it free for a week before joining!

We have a chance to eliminate drunk driving

Now this is legislation we can get behind.

Apparently, there is a bill being drafted in the Senate (with similar efforts in the House) to make alcohol detection on the breath of drivers a mandatory feature of all new cars by 2024. It’s called the RIDE Act (Reduce Impaired Driving for Everyone Act).

It has bipartisan support, and it should, because drunk driving is really just never OK, even in an emergency. You’re not just putting yourself at risk, but endangering everyone else on the road, including pedestrians (11,000 people were killed by drunk driving in 2017).

We were initially skeptical, because a simple breathalyzer system (called an ignition interlock) could be easy to get around (if you ask someone else to breathe into it, for example, and then get in the driver’s seat). And that’s pretty much the current state of the technology developed by automakers working with the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (a breathalyzer built into the car door). But the bill also provides funding for developing even subtler, automatic systems for detecting alcohol through touch, cameras, and breath.

Automakers have been accused of slow-walking the development of the technology and are waiting on government funding to bring it to market. They say it’s because they want to wait to perfect and test the system before shipping it.

Our take? They appear concerned, perhaps, that they will block drivers who’ve only had a single glass of wine and not just those who are impaired (and they know how much we drink as a people!). But we hope they don’t wait too long before implementing the technology; even an imperfect system is better than nothing at all. And really, no alcohol at all is safest for every driver. Let’s pass this bill!

If you’ve decided to change your drinking for your safety or happiness, we’d love to help you quit or cut back. Drinker’s Helper is an app that provides motivational exercises, drink tracking and insights into why you drink, and a support group of your peers to help you make needed changes. Try it free for a week before joining!

"All you can drink" is still not a good idea

We saw this $10-an-hour all-you-can-drink bar opening on the news, and were immediately reminded of our own past experiences with binge drinking (and eating) in San Francisco restaurants that were similarly priced by the hour.

We were curious: does the research show what we all know to be true: that “all you can drink” is just not a good idea?

Here’s what we found:

1. People do tend to get drunker when bars offer “all you can drink” specials (it was the only bar deal that did so, according to the study). In general, cheaper alcohol leads to more drunkenness; one study found that for every $1.40 price decrease in the cost of one standard ‘drink’, students at 7 college bars were 30% more likely to be legally intoxicated.

2. A study in Japan found that the amount people drank under the “all you can drink” system was 1.7-1.8x as high as normal.

So people drink more, and get drunker as a consequence, when they pay by the hour for drinks. Clearly, these kinds of promotions can promote binge drinking behavior, which as we all know can be dangerous and costly in more ways than one (the effects include long-term career issues, development of alcohol use disorders, and more impulsiveness, as well as short-term issues like physical injuries).

But sometimes, policies that target “all you can drink” bars unfairly benefit stores that sell alcohol for home consumption. So it’s not a straightforward answer to ban the practice of offering all you can drink pricing. Most advocates say a minimum alcohol price per unit is a better bet, policy-wise, for reducing drinking overall.

If you’re done with binge drinking, we’d love to help you quit or cut back. Drinker’s Helper is an app that provides motivational exercises, drink tracking and insights into why you drink, and a support group of your peers to help you make needed changes. Try it free for a week before joining!

Do drunk people maintain moral judgment?

New research shows that people make the same moral judgments about hypothetical situations when drunk as they make when sober. For reference, an example moral situation is the classic train track scenario (is it right or wrong to push an innocent person in front of a train if doing so will definitely stop the train from hitting five people it will otherwise hit for sure?).

This is the first piece of research we’ve seen on the effects of intoxication that really surprised us.

After all, we know that alcohol makes us less inhibited, which can lead to some pretty terrible decision-making. It can also make us worse at reading facial expressions, which can lead to fights that could have been avoided. It can also give us a sense of warmth and wellbeing that makes us feel close with people we aren’t actually that close with.

So it definitely can affect our judgment.

But this study suggests that some of our core moral understanding of right and wrong in the world is the same regardless of how much we’ve had to drink.

At the end of the day, this makes sense, though. The judgment calls you make when drunk (get in a fight, sleep with someone, go on a risky adventure) are ones that at some level, you fundamentally think are morally OK. Similarly, if you do something terrible when drunk, at some level, you thought it was OK; you are still responsible for what you did.

If you’re tired of questioning your judgment when drunk, we’d love to help you quit or cut back. Drinker’s Helper is an app that provides motivational exercises, drink tracking and insights into why you drink, and a support group of your peers to help you make needed changes. Try it free for a week before joining!

Tax cuts on booze are bad for you

No kidding, right?

But it’s literally true, based on new research from the University of Sheffield's School of Health and Related Research.

The UK government has lowered taxes on alcohol repeatedly since 2013, resulting in a one percent increase in alcohol consumption in the UK.

And that tiny increase in consumption? Meant almost two thousand more deaths and over 61 thousand hospital admissions over the time from 2013 to 2019. This increase (along with increases in hospital admissions, workplace absence, and alcohol-related crime) was felt most heavily in poor communities, with almost 40% of the deaths happening among the poorest 20% of the population, in part because of the types of beverages that have seen the largest price decreases.

It’s why the World Health Organization sees taxation as one of the best ways to cut back on alcohol-related harm to society. Almost every country taxes alcohol, but there’s a lot of variation in the amount and type of taxes. This research suggests the answer is to keep taxes rising in line with inflation to keep prices high across all types of alcohol.

We can’t control alcohol taxes, but if you’re cutting back or quitting drinking, we’d love to help. Drinker’s Helper is an app that provides motivational exercises, drink tracking and insights into why you drink, and a support group of your peers to help you make needed changes. Try it free for a week before joining!

How Russia beat vodka

Russia, like the USA, has had a turbulent history with alcohol. Since Tsarist times, some argue, the leaders of the country have encouraged or at least not discouraged alcohol consumption because of the tax revenue it provided. The 1914 vodka shortage appeared to lead to the unrest and eventual revolution of 1917. Mikhail Gorbachev introduced a “dry law” reducing production and restricting sales of alcohol in 1985, with similar results to those of the US’ own Prohibition. Then after the Soviet Union fell, alcohol prices dropped 30%, which led to an increase in consumption.

So it was a shock to many to see that between 2003 and 2016, the WHO concluded, alcohol consumption fell by more than 40% in Russia. Researchers also highlighted that life expectancy in Russia increased significantly over the same time period.

Our question was: how’d they do it?

We’ll cut to the chase: here’s what they did:

1. The Russian government raised taxes on alcohol

2. In addition, they introduced a minimum price per unit

3. They also restricted sales of alcohol at night (after 11:00pm) and in certain regions, after instituting a system to carefully track alcohol production and consumption

4. They introduced an alcohol advertising blackout

5. They added policies to make certain public spaces, like parks, alcohol-free

It’s encouraging that some forms government policy can have such a powerful effect on alcohol consumption, given how hard it can be for governments to reach people with health messages. Of course, some give the credit entirely to Putin’s healthy image in the public mind, and there may be other factors, like changing work culture, that made the shift possible.

We’re not out in Russia yet, but if you’re cutting back or quitting drinking, we’d love to help. Drinker’s Helper is an app that provides motivational exercises, drink tracking and insights into why you drink, and a support group of your peers to help you make needed changes. Try it free for a week before joining!

Wait, what? MEN trying for kids shouldn't drink?

Apparently, it may be the case.

We posted last month for FASD awareness month to encourage pregnant mothers-to-be to avoid alcohol entirely, because of its potential to cause harmful defects in children.

A new meta-analysis of parents’ alcohol consumption and their childrens’ health showed that regular drinking by dads in the three months before a child’s birth increased kids’ risk of congenital heart defects by 44%.

The study’s authors recommend that both men and women stop drinking for at least 6 months before trying to have kids to avoid the risks.

The study also raises questions about many studies that have claimed alcohol has protective effects on the heart. After all, doesn’t it seem logical that the same thing that causes congenital heart defects in babies would be harmful, not helpful, to their parents’ hearts?

If you’re cutting back or quitting drinking, we’d love to help. Drinker’s Helper is an app that provides motivational exercises, drink tracking and insights into why you drink, and a support group of your peers to help you make needed changes. Try it free for a week before joining!

Book review: Beyond Addiction

We just finished reading Beyond Addiction, and we really enjoyed it.

Beyond Addiction is quite different from anything else we’ve read in the space because it’s directed at the family members of the person struggling with a substance abuse issue, rather than the person themselves.

It was good to step back and consider the perspective of the family member for a bit, and get some straight, evidence-based answers about the best ways of helping someone else.

In some ways, it was what you’d expect the right answer to be. It reminded me a bit of consulting training that involved practicing speaking to clients in an empathetic, relatable way (instead of being a bit of a cold analytical fish, as new consultants are prone to be).

But in a situation where you’re either deeply concerned about a loved one’s drinking, or very angry at a loved one’s carelessness and destructive behavior when drunk, it can be hard to think clearly about the best way of pushing for change. That’s where a book like this can be quite helpful.

Here’s why we liked the book:

1. It felt practical. Like many of our favorite books, it was not dogmatic that everyone must hit rock bottom and then immediately embrace sobriety. It teaches that relapses are to be expected, not feared; that respectful conversation works better than attempts to force change through shouting; that there are options for treatment. This practical flexibility seems thoughtful and more likely to encourage people to change.

2. We share a lot of the same underlying understanding about how alcohol use disorder works. Addiction is a spectrum. Alcohol use disorder has a variety of causes in each person - genetic, environmental, social, and more. Dopamine plays an enormous role in addiction, and in particular in making it harder to find healthy substitutes for drinking.

3. It felt empathetic. It acknowledged the frustration and despair many parents or spouses may feel in pushing their loved ones to change, and anticipated concern that taking this practical, thoughtful, empathetic approach might not get through to their loved ones. It also felt like the authors understood the experience of the loved one addicted to a substance, too - acknowledging that they do perceive a benefit from using the substance; understanding that they will react poorly to feeling forced into any particular course of action.

4. We thought it was fascinating to think about the journey of the loved one or family member in the same way as the journey of the person struggling with AUD. The family member has to take care of themselves, too. The family member has to analyze what drives the subject’s behavior to figure out the best way to help them. The family member has to monitor their own happiness to ensure they aren’t pushing themselves too hard. The family member can help by thinking of rewards the subject would really appreciate for sticking with their goals, and can help them set realistic goals. It was interesting to see that these authors believe that the family member has a lot of similar work to do in order to be helpful. It makes sense - if you truly want to help someone, you have to truly empathize with them.

All in all, we thought this was well worth reading for anyone who wants to help a loved on quit drinking (or abusing another substance - this book isn’t restricted to alcohol).

If you’re cutting back or quitting drinking, we’d love to help. Drinker’s Helper is an app that provides motivational exercises, drink tracking and insights into why you drink, and a support group of your peers to help you make needed changes. Try it free for a week before joining!

Does it help to raise alcohol prices? Evidence says yes.

We’ve noticed a rash of articles about alcohol pricing (and taxation, which of course affects the price that people pay), and we thought we’d look into what the hubbub was about - in particular, whether this kind of policy change works.

The short story is: yes. In terms of government policy, some of the most proven techniques to cut back on the health consequences of alcohol are reducing the distribution, restricting the marketing, and increasing the price of alcohol.

Lawmakers in Scotland set a minimum price per unit of alcohol in 2018, and found that led to a 7.6% reduction in alcohol purchases, twice the decrease they expected to see. They saw more reduction in households that typically purchased a lot of alcohol, which is encouraging for the prevention of alcohol use disorders. They also saw a reduction in alcohol-related deaths in Glasgow of over 21%. The results are so strong that a British charity is campaigning to get minimum alcohol pricing rolled out across the country. They’ve also galvanized scientists to start new research regarding the effects of minimum alcohol pricing on the homeless - the potential reduction in alcohol-based harm, and the potential increase in substitution of other drugs beside alcohol.

Alcohol manufacturers in the Philippines saw a similar result with taxation on alcohol, with a 5.1% reduction in drink purchases resulting from a 20% increase in price from 2017-2018.

Alcohol manufacturers aggressively fight policies like these taxes and minimum prices, arguing that they reduce government revenues (a hard argument to make, given the health and other direct costs of alcohol to society far outweigh the direct tax revenue raised by the industry- see our blog post on that topic!) and that such taxes are unfair to the poor (a tough argument to make, considering the clear health harms of alcohol).

The only real problem we see with this solution is a failure to address the underlying causes of the demand for alcohol. After all, if you raise taxes or minimum prices high enough, you’re effectively just banning consumption. And we all know how that turned out in the US during Prohibition. If you don’t address the reasons people drink too much, they will find ways to continue getting that high.

If you’re cutting back or quitting drinking, we’d love to help you address the underlying reasons you drink. Drinker’s Helper is an app that provides motivational exercises, drink tracking and insights into why you drink, and a support group of your peers to help you make needed changes. Try it free for a week before joining!

Hangovers only get worse

Ok, so at a high level this isn’t a surprise.

We all know that when we hit about 30, suddenly 2 or 3 glasses of wine is enough to make the next morning… rough. Somehow, we can’t handle what we could when we were 22.

But after all, one of the symptoms of an alcohol use disorder is higher tolerance. Over time, aren’t we supposed to become more accustomed to alcohol? Less susceptible to its effects? Shouldn’t hangovers get weaker?

A new three-part study was trying to investigate the relationship between hangover frequency and hangover severity. It found clear evidence in all three parts of the study that frequency and severity of hangovers were positively correlated - in other words, the more often you have hangovers, the worse they’re likely to make you feel. This was true even after correcting for BAC, demographics, personality, and alcohol intake.

This appears to be evidence that there is actually a reverse tolerance effect - the more often you experience hangovers, the worse they get, instead of better. It’s all the more reason to change your drinking now.

If you’re cutting back or quitting drinking, we’d love to help. Drinker’s Helper is an app that provides motivational exercises, drink tracking and insights into why you drink, and a support group of your peers to help you make needed changes. Try it free for a week before joining!