Tips and Tricks for Sobering Up

NikNack

I'm a 36 year old mom and have been caught in the habit of having a "few" drinks every night after work. It's begun to escalate to the point where I think I might have a slight drinking issue. Quitting cold turkey is tough but I'm giving it a real go. These tips I've found pretty useful - 10 Myths and Facts about Sobering up Quickly - Driver-Start.com

If you have any words of advice or any other helpful tips, please let me know. I'd love to hear them.

Thanks

drdocmatt

First, congrats on thinking clearly enough to realise you may have a problem.

Second, whoever wrote that article did a bad translation from Spanish or something, it's awful. It is, however, correct. There is nothing at all you can do to sober up quickly other than drinking less in the first place. If you need to drive in the morning do the maths the night before. You may not feel drunk in the morning after a night's sleep but you will be. (And even your sleep will not be effective if you've drunk too much.)

IronGiant

looks pretty promotional to me and of course the figures on driving limits apply to the US not the UK.

PumpingtonSteel

are those tips not more for sobering up after a few/working through a hangover?
You're looking for something different - a reason not to drink

I've juggled a cocktail of vices for a long time. All I can say is each person's journey is individual.
Some drink to forget, some drink to let themselves go, others out of boredom etc.
A few tips I've picked up along the way are:
- one day at a time. Say no and you've 'won' that day. Tomorrow is another battle. Sometimes I feel like I wouldn't mind nipping out for a beer. Other times I'm dying for a beer and pulling out all stops to make it happen. The days I'm feeling indifferent are the easy days to conquer
- List out the pros and cons. In the pros, there is but one entry - it's fun. Cons is full of wasted money, acted like a dick, liver hurts, skyped my ex, got banned from Bedford town centre etc. Revisit the list when you're feeling weak (or on the fence). Something may jump out at you and convince you to stay in
- Find alternatives! Join a sports club, take up a hobby (morning gym sessions are particularly harmful to a drinking habit) (evening activities especially ones that don't involve booze are great to fill drinking time), remove yourself from certain social groups and triggers that
- understand your habit - do you drink if you've had a tough day at work? Is there something else you can do instead e.g. go for a run to relieve the stress? Do you drink more on payday? then withdraw £30 cash and don't take a card with you (ensure you have a way to get home safely, for example I have uber, contactless for bus/tube on my phone and a portable battery)
- if you drink yourself into oblivion, try to limit the number of drinks - this is similar to portion control. Drink slower (two tips central to good eating habits)
- you don't HAVE to finish an open bottle (recently I folded a half eaten bag of crisps for later! savouring it twice was much better than wolfing it down once)
- download an app called habitbull. tell it how many units you want to drink a week. log all units. monitor your intake. when i started vaping, I set myself a 5-a-day limit on rollies.....felt so good to input ZERO on some days, to see my progress charted out. Soon enough, I didn't even need to record it because I've been on zero for a while....but the app and its chart helped me track the habit and realise the jump to nothing was easy
- save drinking for special occasions
- remember that if you drink less, you'll get drunk quicker on the few occasions that you do. cheaper, and more fun, quicker!
- get support - it's been proven with weight loss that people perform better when they've recruited someone to assist, support and monitor. share the issue with a trusted group of people who can help you through it
- unless you're overly religious, just do not engage with AA in any manner at all - more than half of the 12 steps rely on the man upstairs
- be positive. i like how you refer to it as an issue and not a problem
- cold turkey is really hard unless you have a critical motivating factor (for a friend, it was health issues at a young age, but even with him, within a few months, he'd slipped back close to regular old habits)


and good luck with it

IronGiant

OP hasn't returned since dropping that link on us so I think we can assume it was spam.  Particularly as it had nothing to do with giving up drinking as you spotted.