For many, January is a month to rethink how much they imbibe, whether they’re worried about heavy drinking or just looking for a reset. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share. Seven years ago, Laura McKowen started a drinking journal. She knew alcohol was an issue for her - she knew it when her 4-year-old daughter helped her clean up the morning after a blackout, and she knew it the 10th time she drove to work hung over - but she needed to see it. "Something very interesting happens when we put things on paper," Ms. McKowen said, "because we have a lot of cognitive dissonance around drinking." She couldn’t deflect around what she saw on the page, though: two bottles of wine a night. She got sober, and went on to help others do the same through coaching and teaching workshops.

Last January, Ms. McKowen published "We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life" and in March, she began hosting free sobriety support meetings on Zoom. By May, she had 12 employees and a company called The Luckiest Club, which offers classes and access to its community. It’s no surprise Ms. McKowen found an eager client base. According to the 2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, more than 14 million American adults suffer from alcohol use disorder (A.U.D.), which is a term medical professionals prefer to alcoholism. You don’t need an A.U.D. Alcohol can impair sleep, solitaryai.art cause weight gain, exacerbate anxiety, or subtly change your personality. "When we go to work every day during non-pandemic times and don’t have an inordinate amount of stress, it’s fairly easy" to limit drinking to Friday nights, said James G. Murphy, a psychology professor Art and researcher at the University of Memphis who published a paper in November about alcohol and drug use during the pandemic.

This is one reason you might be seeing more Dry January hashtags in your social media feeds this year. One month off from drinking can be an opportunity for Art the sober-curious to examine their alcohol use. If any of this sounds familiar, here are some suggestions to help you navigate your relationship with alcohol or bring it to an end. Take note of how much you’re drinking, as well as the pros and cons of that consumption. Are you opening that bottle of Riesling because it pairs well with your Chinese takeout, or are you hoping the third glass will drown out those voices in your head that are telling you you’re mediocre? Study your own habits - and be honest about them. To give you some perspective, the federal government’s 2020-2025 U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend no more than one drink per day for women or two for men (though some suggest fewer), another-ro.com and Dr. Murphy suggests the free alcohol screener at the website CheckUp & Choices.

Take the questionnaire, which is used by health care providers, and use the score to assess your drinking. Similarly, Drinks Meter is an app with a daily calculator that helps put your own behavior into perspective using an anonymous database of over 6,000 people’s drinking habits worldwide. "You don’t have to have things figured out, aside from wanting to make a change," said Holly Whitaker, the author of "Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol" and creator of an online A.U.D. Clear out the alcohol. If you’ve decided alcohol is having a negative impact on your life, try distancing yourself from it for a while. Remove bottles from your physical spaces and booze-related content from your virtual ones. Cleanse your phone and computer of anything that might tempt you to drink. It’s not about having a siloed existence or avoiding anything that creates an urge to drink, said Ms. McKowen, it’s about dismantling the myth that drinking is what makes life fun. This data was g en​er at​ed ​by GSA  Content Gen᠎er᠎ator Dem᠎over sion.