The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'd never suggest this to most patients, but you are a motte poster so I have to imagine you are quite a bit more clear thinking than the average person.
Think about if the juice is worth the squeeze and use that to motivate you. Alcohol is a poison AND it's bad for you AND it has enjoyable effects AND you can enjoy it with full awareness of all this and no guilt if done sensibly and with deliberation.
Identify what an appropriate amount of consumption is for you and use the knowledge of the above to stick to it.
If you can't do that, then attempt to be honest with yourself as to why - are you normally on top of your self-regulation in this way (and is therefore alcohol different), or perhaps you are the kind of person who needs to cold turkey instead of reduce (or vice versa).
Keep an eye out for worrying patterns of use. Not necessarily likely, but very important because the risk is high. Things like: escalating pattern of use (maybe this counts, maybe not), people commenting on your use, using to cover up for bad feelings, stress, life events and so on. Basically have an honest ask with yourself about alcoholism, again not because it's likely but because it's one of the worst ways to die and you want to make sure it's not happening and you aren't lying to yourself about it.
I mentioned elsewhere but I think once a week is a good balancing point where I'm getting something enjoyable out of alcohol and not overdoing it. That is where I'd like to be where I can have a fun social outing with drinking once a week, and otherwise I'm not drinking. And if the social outing doesn't happen I don't want to feel the desire to drink anyways.
I've been at that point before. It just morphed slowly over the last two years to where I'm now at. Now that my wife isn't drinking I very quickly noticed "oh, I'm drinking just about every day".
I've seen my dad get to a worse point with his drinking so I know that's in my genes, but my dad has also lately been where I want to be where it's just a few drinks for social things once a week or every other week.
All that is reasonably reassuring, and putting aside direct health effects and addiction concerns it may be worth asking why you are starting to slide into this habit change. Down about something? Bored? Replacing another habit you used to do that is out of season right now (idk, NFL?).
May be something you can use to push yourself into picking up a new hobby or making a positive lifestyle change or sumthin.
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