Drinking Alone at Home: When It's Worth a Closer Look

The kids are finally asleep. The kitchen is quiet, the dishwasher is humming, and you pour a glass of wine. Nobody else is having one. Nobody needs to. It is the one part of the day that belongs to you.

There is nothing strange about that moment, and plenty of people have it. But drinking on your own at home works a little differently from drinking with others, and it can creep up without much noise. Here is why, what is worth noticing, and a few small changes that make a difference.

Drinking alone is common

A 2021 review pulled together studies of adults who drink on their own. In most of them, somewhere between 30% and 40% of the people studied reported drinking alone. On its own, that tells you very little.

The same review did find a link, though a small one. People who drank alone tended to drink more and to report more alcohol problems. Drinking alone also went with drinking to cope, using alcohol to take the edge off stress, sadness or worry. The authors note that most of the studies were snapshots in time and of generally low quality, so the link is a reason to pay attention and no more than that.

The patterns that sneak in

Home drinking rarely starts as a decision. It slots into a gap in the day. A few common ones:

• A glass while you cook, which becomes a second with dinner.
• The glass after the kids are in bed, the first moment that is yours.
• The drink that ends the working day when you work from home and there is no commute to mark the switch.
• The weeknight bottle that seems a shame to leave half full.

Each of these is tied to a time and a place. NIAAA's advice on cutting down treats times of day like these as triggers you can plan around. Our piece on drinking triggers and the 5pm pull looks at why the same hour keeps calling.

Why it drifts up at home

Out with friends, the evening has a shape. People leave, the bar closes, someone orders water. At home none of that applies, and three things tend to push the amount up.

The pours are bigger. When US researchers asked people to pour their usual drink at home and measure it, the average glass of wine and the average spirits drink held more alcohol than a standard drink. The average spirits drink held about one and a half standard drinks. The glasses have grown too. A study of wine glasses in England found their capacity has gone up about sevenfold over 300 years.

There is no outside pace. When the pandemic kept people at home in 2020, US adults in one national survey drank on 14% more days than the year before. Among women, days of heavy drinking went up by 41%.

And the reason for drinking can shift. A glass that started as a treat can turn into the way you wind down from a hard day, and drinking to cope is the pattern the research ties to drinking alone.

When it's worth a closer look

These signs don't put a label on you. They are signals that your drinking may be doing more than you want it to:

• You find it hard to stop once the bottle is open.
• You feel guilty or uneasy about it the next morning.
• You reach for a drink mainly to cope with stress, loneliness or a low mood.
• Someone close to you has said they are worried about your drinking.
• You need a drink in the morning to get going.

Most of these come from the AUDIT, the set of screening questions the World Health Organization developed for doctors. It also helps to count. In the US, NIAAA defines heavy drinking for women as four or more drinks on any day or eight or more a week, and for men as five or more on any day or 15 or more a week. A large glass of wine at home can be closer to two drinks than one.

Small changes that help

You don't need a big plan to start. Small changes to the routine are a good place to begin. These come from NIAAA's advice on cutting down and from trials of drinking at home:

• Decide your drinking days in advance, and how many drinks you will have on them. The UK's chief medical officers suggest several drink-free days a week as a good way to cut down.
• Measure your drinks at home, as NIAAA suggests. Your usual pour may be bigger than you think.
• Use a smaller glass. In a UK trial in 260 households, people drank about 6.5% less wine from smaller glasses, though the evidence was not conclusive.
• Keep less alcohol in the house. NIAAA's advice is that if drinking at home is a problem, keep little or no alcohol there.
• Plan something for the trigger time. If 9pm on the sofa is when it starts, have a different drink, a bath, a call or a walk lined up for that slot.
• Keep track. A note on your phone works fine.

If the nightly glass is the one you want to change, our guide on how to stop drinking every night goes step by step.

See where you stand

If you are not sure whether your home drinking is worth worrying about, the drinking self-check asks the ten AUDIT questions and takes about two minutes. It shows which risk zone your pattern falls in and what usually helps at that level.

If you decide to cut down and you drink a lot, go gently and get support. If you drink heavily every day, stopping suddenly can be dangerous. Talk to a doctor first.