How to go from binge-drinking to "controlled drinking"

The festive season is upon us, and just as the ordinary Friday or Saturday nights see many of us drinking more than we know is healthy, Christmas and its lot of office parties and uncomfortable family gatherings tends to bring out the binge-drinker even in the tamest of us.

What is binge-drinking? It is drinking alcohol in order to get drunk, with a hang-over the next day in the best case scenario, a few hours missing due to black-out or waking up next to a stranger in the worst...

Binge-drinking is not to be confused with alcoholism. There is usually no compulsion to drink every day, but rather an inability to stop where the sober version of you knows is your limit.

So how can you move, from systematically getting trashed back to enjoying yourself?
Here are a few tips:

• Set yourself a limit when you go to a party or a function, and count your drinks
• Start with water or a soft drink if you're thirsty - only move to alcohol when your thirst is quenched
• Make every second drink a glass of water. Not only does that halve your alcohol intake, but you avoid the nasty dehydration headache the next day
• Switch to low-alcohol beer or wine and avoid spirits 

To allow your liver to regenerate (yes, it is the only organ that can heal itself, but only if you give it a break), have an alcohol-free day, ideally two in a row, each week.

Aim for 2-3 low-alcohol days per week - what that means depends on your drinking capacity. For me it might mean one standard drink, for others three. This is a particularly good exercise to reconnect to pleasurable drinking as opposed to drinking to get drunk.

The good news is that by lowering your overall intake your tolerance to alcohol will actually decrease over time - you'll need less for the same effect, and your body will thank you (and your wallet too).

And the piece de resistance, as always, is mindfulness: 

• bring back the focus on the pleasure of drinking, the smell, the taste, the colour, as well as the company you're in, rather than absent-mindedly "throwing them back": "festive drinking" as opposed to bingeing.

It's about finding ways to enjoy the "silly season" without needing to get drunk to do so.

Should you find that despite trying to control your intake you still struggle with binge-drinking on a regular basis, there may be some deeper stuff going on - maybe some anxiety you're trying to cover up, or a learnt behaviour on how alcohol is used in your family to deal (or avoid dealing) with emotions, or a fear of social situations.

Please reach out if you would like some help with that.