Drinking, most evenings

Most people who want to drink less are not in trouble with it. They are somewhere more ordinary: a glass or two most evenings, nothing dramatic, and a quiet sense that it has become automatic. Advice written for the dramatic version does not fit them, and advice about willpower fits nobody for long.

The book below takes a different line. It does not ask you to stop, or to count units, or to decide what kind of drinker you are. It asks what the drink is actually doing — because almost everything people credit to alcohol turns out, on inspection, to belong to something else. The relaxation is the relief of a need that the last drink created. The confidence was yours. The sleep is the first half of the night, paid for out of the second.

That matters because a habit held in place by a belief does not respond to effort. You can white-knuckle your way through a dry January while still believing the glass was doing something for you, and you will be back in February, having proved only that you can go without something you still want. Take the belief apart and there is much less to resist.

None of this is medical advice, and it is written for someone who is able to stop and keeps not stopping. If your drinking is beyond that — if stopping frightens you physically — that is a conversation for a doctor, and a safe one to have.