The unbelievably simple hack to cutting back your alcohol intake – and the tricks I use to abandon my wine after just three sips

Haven’t decided on your tip yet? Maybe a velvety merlot or a crisp cosmopolitan?

If you’ve made it through Dry January and made it through the work week without drinking, you may be counting the hours until your first Friday night drink of the year tomorrow.

I say congratulations, how about waiting a little longer?

Because even though prolonging your sobriety might feel like an age, extending your sobriety can cause you to radically recalibrate your relationship with booze—transforming you from the kind of drinker who can’t imagine socializing sober and never feels like having enough, to someone who can take it or leave it.

At least that’s what happened to me.

Until four years ago, I considered drinking an integral part of my identity; It was as important for getting through a stressful day as it was for looking radiant at a party. I drank most weeks, often to excess, for almost thirty years, and until I was 43 I thought I would drink forever.

But three sober spells in the last four years have completely changed my drinking habits. And with each period of abstinence, I wanted to drink less when I started again. I’m 47 now, and last Saturday I downed my second margarita after three sips; This was something that seemed impossible.

I believe that ‘intermittent drinking’ reduces my cravings for alcohol, similar to how intermittent fasting has been shown to reduce cravings for unhealthy foods.

I recommend it to people who don’t like to quit drinking but know that cutting down will benefit them.

In fact, since I started writing about my relationship with alcohol, many women have told me that they have lost much of their desire to drink without going for long periods of time.

I don’t believe a month of drinking is enough to break the decades-long psychological link between alcohol and socialization, stress relief, and self-care that’s ingrained in middle-aged women like me.

For starters, appetite has been shown to increase before decreasing. A study of inpatient alcoholics showed that alcoholics peaked after 60 days of abstinence.

Another study found that it takes an average of 66 days of consistent repetition for a daily habit to become automatic.

Among sobriety experts, 100 days is often cited as a logical milestone because it’s long enough to learn to enjoy life without alcohol.

Like many others, I practiced Dry January as an exercise in self-restraint for years. In January 2022, exhausted after a particularly boozy Christmas, I listened to my body and acknowledged that I was enjoying the better sleep and calmer mood my sobriety provided.

When she started drinking in January 2024, Antonia was worried she would return to binge drinking.

So I continued to view my sobriety as an adventure. I learned to socialize soberly, turn off with loud music instead of sauvignon, and sit with my emotions without fear.

I never planned to quit drinking forever, but with surprisingly little effort, that one month turned into two years.

But our relationship with alcohol may be more complex than those who advocate the benefits of complete sobriety suggest. After a while, being sober started to feel like another form of perfectionism.

I knew that the pedestal I had placed myself on, the longer I abstained, the more painful it would be to fall. Instead, I started thinking about moderation.

When I started drinking in January 2024, I was worried I would return to binge drinking.

But I no longer felt the same urge to drink. Mid-week drinking has disappeared and the connection between Friday nights and wine has been severed. The alcohol tasted unpleasant most of the time, and I found myself going weeks without alcohol.

The few times I got drunk that year were mostly due to curiosity; The hangover was a reminder that the pain was rarely worth it. My tolerance for alcohol dropped, even one glass disrupted my sleep, and the initial buzz quickly gave way to irritability, so I quit again for 100 days last January. The break felt more like self-care than sacrifice, and when I started drinking again I became even more hesitant about drinking.

Antonia now has a stronger sense of how alcohol makes her feel; often talkative, then grumpy, then lethargic.

The third alcohol-free period, from September to December, required less effort. After all, it wouldn’t last forever. And of course, intermittent drinking has other benefits, too, from plumper skin and lower blood pressure to better focus and a more balanced gut.

While there are no studies on whether repeated periods of abstinence reduce cravings, my behavior suggests Stanford psychiatrist Dr. It is behavior that Anna Lembke describes as ‘self-binding’ – our aim is to put up barriers against compulsions, whether through abstinence or moderation.

Then I get a stronger sense of how alcohol makes me feel; often talkative, then grumpy, then lethargic. I know that if I drink when I feel sad I will soon feel worse, and when I am stressed it will only delay my panic.

While having a single glass of wine on New Year’s Eve may be enough, it still makes sense to have a drink to celebrate. As I sipped it, I was amazed to the psychological point that I thought it was impossible, but now the belief is open to most.