If you consume alcohol when you’re sad, worried, lonely, or depressed, you may be using it as an emotional crutch. Dr. Streem suggests starting with the World Health Organization’s Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT). It can be a particularly helpful way to help you get a clearer understanding of your drinking habits and your relationship with alcohol. It’s a 10-question screening test that gives you research-backed, personalized advice for quitting or reducing your intake of alcohol. Talk to your doctor or a drug treatment specialist about what to expect as you experience alcohol withdrawal.
Plan Your Journey Home
The fiber-rich, complex carbohydrates in whole-grain breads and foods like brown rice, quinoa, barley, and farro are digested more slowly, which help keep blood sugar levels steady. This is key to keeping cravings under https://ecosoberhouse.com/ control, especially when your body is used to using alcohol as a quick form of fuel. When taking disulfiram, drinking even a small amount of alcohol can produce effects such as flushing, headache, and nausea.
- Alcohol use disorder (AUD) affects both the individual with the condition as well as others in their life, including their loved ones and families.
- Ria is a more practical alcohol treatment program that can help you cut down on your drinking.
- It may even help if you spend time with other nondrinkers for a while so you can support each other.
Improve your own health
Find activities that are mentally and emotionally nourishing and bring you joy, and identify ways to connect socially with friends, says Witkiewitz. Within just a month of not drinking, your body can begin to reap the benefits. Your liver can start to heal, your risks of heart disease and cancer go down, and you may begin to sleep better. To stop drinking alcohol, you first need to understand your relationship with drinking. From there, you may need social support, consistent self-care, and new routines that can help redirect your mind. Your loved one will need to continue practicing sobriety, and the changes they go through will affect you in big and small ways.
How to Control Your Alcohol Intake
Meditation, practiced on your own or via guided meditation, can help you learn to react less to alcohol cravings (8). This can be a key to breaking the hold that your triggers to drink have on you. Bananas are rich in vitamin B6, which the body needs to produce and use serotonin.
- Programs like Al-anon, Alateen and Families Anonymous offer opportunities for emotional support.
- But that advice changes if you’re living with alcohol use disorder.
- If your body is used to a certain amount of alcohol, you may feel certain effects when you stop.
- Cutting back has many benefits—to your health, your career, and your personal life.
- Dairy products in general are good sources of calcium, vitamin D, and other vitamins and minerals that you’ll need to replenish to stay healthy and fight cravings.
Counseling, medication, support from family and friends, changing your diet, taking supplements, and alternative treatments may all help lessen your alcohol cravings. These cravings can be frustrating how to control drinking if you’re trying to cut down on alcohol, drink less or stop drinking completely, but they are quite normal. Ria is a more practical alcohol treatment program that can help you cut down on your drinking.
Jeremy Frank PhD CAC Addiction Psychologist
Ask your doctor or counselor for a referral and/or work together to develop strategies for controlling your alcohol consumption and drinking responsibly or quitting all together. Your safe alcohol limit is based on your blood alcohol concentration and is the amount of alcohol you can drink in a single drinking session. You will need professional assistance to determine what this safe limit is for you. Information provided on Forbes Health is for educational purposes only.
