In the festive season, it’s hard not to get carried away with the flurry of office parties, catch-ups with friends and family get-togethers. It’s often a time of excess, especially when it comes to alcohol – and it’s easy to see how the units in drinks can quickly add up.
Today, psychotherapist Noel McDermott offers tips and advice on how we can manage our alcohol intake over the festive season.
‘Festive cheer’ places a lot of peer pressure on people to conform to an increase in alcohol consumption to dangerous levels and yet alcohol is one of the most harmful substances we use; it causes anxiety, produces stress responses, depression and can be damaging to your overall psychological health. It is often misused to manage these symptoms, to help aid sleep and to manage work stress – but at what cost?
In England, among people aged 15 to 49 years, alcohol is the leading cause of ill-health, disability, and death. Alcohol misuse across the UK is a significant public health problem with major health, social and economic consequences, estimated at between £21 and £52 billion a year.
Each year there are over one million admissions to hospital for alcohol-related conditions (mostly problems in adult drinking), with most alcohol health harms emerging over time.
In 2020 alcohol related deaths rose in the UK after dropping for successive years. It is striking to note that twice as many men die from alcohol related deaths than women. Also in 2020, deaths attributed to alcohol were twice that of other drug related deaths. There’s no hiding from the fact that there is a direct correlation between amount of alcohol drunk and risk of injury, death, violence, rape, suicide on every metric and scale used.
The overall picture is that the cohort of problematic drinkers is growing, and we will see the problems with alcohol abuse increase, including rises in:
- Relationship breakdowns
- Domestic abuse
- Health concerns
- Mental health issues
- Work problems
- Financial worries
Are you drinking too much?
The single biggest thing anyone can do to reduce the harm to themselves and others from their drinking is to get real about the amount you are putting away. Study after study shows all drinkers cannot accurately estimate how much they drink and consistently under-report, which in itself is unsurprising as alcohol changes our perception of reality.
It’s a good idea if worried to record your drinking using a unit calculator or drinks tracker (the NHS have a very helpful app called Drinkaware). When you have accurate records of consumption then ensure you stay below the binge drinking levels when you drink and stay below the weekly recommendation.
Often the key to managing drinking is having better mental health hygiene and better mental health fitness. This is because problematic drinking most often starts off as an attempt to manage some form of psychological distress, something many have suffered at the hands of the pandemic.
Following good mental health practice involves a range of easy practices such as: good sleep hygiene, going to bed and getting up at a reasonable time, cutting out late night stimulants to aid sleep, stopping drinking alcohol which interrupts sleep; eating healthily and hydrating, regular exercise, talking to people who care about you regularly and talking about how you are feeling, organising fun activities, learning to meditate especially using mindfulness, learning basic CBT tools such as challenging negative thoughts and spotting unhelpful thinking styles.
Tips on managing your alcohol consumption this Christmas
- Unit calculators advise us to drink under 14 units in any one week, don’t drink all ‘your’ units in one sitting (spread them out), don’t drink regularly or habitually, doing this will only keep the risks low.
- Don’t drink regularly – the healthiest pattern of drinking is random and irregularly.
- Don’t drink to manage anxiety, stress, depression or because you can’t sleep – seek professional help if this is happening
- If you wait till you have a problem with drinking, it’s too late – be proactive in your health with alcohol
- Take regular breaks from drinking – times when you don’t drink at all
- Don’t fall into the pressure of drinking to the same levels of other people during happy hours for example – always drink to moderation when you do drink
- Use alcohol free alternatives to drink socially with others – there are a great deal of low alcohol and zero alcohol beers, wines and increasingly spirits available
What to do if you’re concerned about a loved one’s drinking
If you are worried about your drinking or that of someone you love, don’t wait till you get help. Catching these sorts of problems in the early stage vastly increases positive outcomes. There are brief interventions for alcohol use problems that can very effectively stop the problem growing into something unmanageable.
Do a rigorous risk assessment of how it might hurt you (and your kids) and make a decision to protect yourself (and your family). Be realistic about the damage to yourself of this and make a rational balanced decision if you can reduce the harms to yourself and how (be open to all options that involve your health and wellbeing and that of any children involved). The problem is with the dependent drinker, and they need to get help to stop.
Psychotherapist Noel McDermott adds: “The festive period sees a significant rise in violence, suicide and stress from unrealistic expectations and financial pressures and a lot of this can be accounted for by the increase in alcohol consumption. The best present you are going to give yourself is going sober”.
Noel McDermott is a Psychotherapist with over 25 years’ experience in health, social care, and education. He has created unique, mental health services in the independent sector. Noel’s company offer at-home mental health care and will source, identify and co-ordinate personalised care teams for the individual. They have recently launched a range of online therapy resources to help clients access help without leaving home.
This article is not intended as a substitute for the medical advice of physicians. The reader should regularly consult a physician in matters relating to his/her health and particularly with respect to any symptoms that may require diagnosis or medical attention.
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