How to Drink Moderately - Tips from a New York Therapist and Mindfulness Expert

New York City is a city that loves to drink. We meet friends for happy hours, we eat at business dinners where a sommelier serves amazing wine, we go to trendy lounges that serve artisanal cocktails, we attend networking events with open bars, and many of us love a nice quiet drink with a delicious meal and a lively social scene seated at a restaurant bar. The beauty of it is that for many of us, all this drinking actually leads to great things: successful business dinners, mingling with new and interesting people, a sense of relaxation that happens effortlessly as alcohol immediately creates a mild euphoria that makes us open up, laugh more, and shuts off our incessant internal monologue. Alcohol has clear benefits for many of us, both personally and professionally. With all this drinking, we could probably benefit from some tips from mindfulness to enjoy moderate drinking even more!

The benefits of alcohol lead many of us to drink so frequently that it can become habitual. There is nothing inherently wrong with drinking habitually, but many clients who come to my office indicate that they would prefer to be in control of their habit rather than feel as if the habit has taken on a life of its own. It is very important to note that this is different from alcoholism or addiction to alcohol. The distinction I’m making here is that with an addiction, we tend to think of drinking away our last dollar, drinking that leads to arrests or hospital visits, or other forms of drinking that clearly suggest our normal standards of safety and personal responsibility have been severely compromised due to a desire for alcohol; those types of relationships with alcohol are generally best classified and treated as addictions. I do not treat addictions to alcohol- my practice is limited to situations where a person’s alcohol use is perfectly safe and more habit-based than addiction-based; I work with clients who are not alcoholics but simply people who want to increase their sense of purpose and control around the way they drink. Here is how many people in my practice have done this successfully:

TIPS FROM MINDFULNESS MEDITATION FOR MODERATE DRINKING ENJOYMENT

1. Decide to build your awareness: Commit to observing your drinking without trying to change your habits, at least at first. Before we can really try to change something, it’s often helpful to just observe it. This helps us to set realistic goals, and to understand our drinking patterns and triggers more fully than we might if we paid attention to alcohol only a) to drink it, or b) to control it. The idea here is to pay attention and study your drinking from a neutral, information-gathering, curiosity-based mindset before you attempt any significant efforts to change it. Once you’ve made a commitment to observe your drinking, here’s one way to do it:

2. Define your observation field: Mindfulness meditation often involves choosing something to observe and then observing it for a set period of time. This builds our observation and awareness skills, and pre-defining the time period for observation frees us to delve into the observations without second-guessing ourselves with questions like “Should I stop yet? Have I observed long enough? I wonder if I’m doing this right?”. We can apply this insight from mindfulness meditation to facilitate drinking observations in the following manner: For a predetermined amount of time (for example two weeks, two days, or whatever feels best for you), commit to observing your drinking in a neutral manner by noting down your drink counts. Your goal here is to tabulate your drinking without attempting to change it. This is actually more difficult than it sounds for many people, so be gentle with yourself if you struggle with this step. Remember: the more familiar you are with basic information about your drinking and the more capable you are of observing it, the easier it will be for you to make whatever changes you desire.

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