How to Stop Drinking Every Night

It's 6:40pm. Nothing dramatic happened today, and your hand is already on the fridge door. You didn't decide to have a glass of wine. It happened the way it happened yesterday and the day before. Most nights it's one or two. Some nights it's most of the bottle.

You don't need a label or a crisis to want something different. Plenty of people who drink every night have no plan to quit for good. They want the evenings to be their choice again. Cutting back counts, and everything below applies to that goal as well as to stopping. If you'd like a quick read on where your drinking sits, the AUDIT drinking test is a good place to start.

Why the nightly drink runs on autopilot

Habits form when you repeat the same action in the same setting and it pays off. Over time, the setting itself starts the behaviour with very little input from you. Habit researchers describe it as a link in memory between a cue and a response, strengthened each time the response is rewarded.

For the evening drink, the cue might be walking in the door or the kids finally falling asleep. The response is pouring. The reward is that first loosening in your shoulders. This is why arguing with yourself at 7pm so often fails. The routine fires before the argument has started. So the plan below spends less effort on resisting and more on changing the routine around the drink.

Start with two or three alcohol-free nights

Going from seven nights to zero is a big jump. A smaller first step is to choose two or three nights this week that will be alcohol-free, and pick them before the week begins. The NHS suggests several drink-free days each week for anyone cutting down. NIAAA, the US alcohol research institute, advises deciding how many days a week you'll drink and how many drinks you'll have on those days.

Pick the nights where you have the best odds. A Monday after a quiet weekend is easier than a Friday after a long week. Write them down, so the decision is already made when the evening comes. In Unbottle, the week plan does this: you choose your alcohol-free days before the week starts.

When two or three nights feel manageable, add another. Nobody is grading your pace.

Change the cue

The same research on habits finds that old routines interfere less when the cues around them change. You don't have to move house. Small changes to the first twenty minutes of your evening are a good place to start.

• If the drink starts as you walk in the door, take a different route home or head straight for the shower.
• If it starts while you cook, make a different drink first and put on a podcast.
• If it starts once the house goes quiet, go outside for ten minutes before you sit down.
• On your alcohol-free nights, keep the wine out of sight, or out of the house.

Find your own cue first. The post on drinking triggers and the 5pm pull has a simple way to map them over one week.

Keep the ritual and swap the drink

A lot of the evening drink is ceremony. The good glass and the sound of the pour tell you the day is done. You can keep most of that. Pour something else into the same glass at the same time: sparkling water with bitters and lime, an alcohol-free beer, juice cut with soda, or one of the alcohol-free wines.

Since the habit is tied to the setting, keeping the setting and changing the contents works with the routine instead of fighting it. If a close copy of your usual drink leaves you wanting the real thing, choose something that tastes nothing like it. There are more ideas in alcohol-free drinks and swaps.

Plan the hard nights before they arrive

Some evenings are harder than others. A row, a deadline, a Friday, a night home alone. Look at the coming week and name the night most likely to go wrong. Then decide now what you'll do when the urge shows up, including who you'll message and what you'll pour instead.

An urge can feel as if it will keep building until you give in. NIAAA's advice is to ride it out, knowing it will crest like a wave and pass. A walk, a bath, a phone call or a job for your hands can carry you over the top. The guide to riding out an alcohol craving goes further.

Keep track of what happens

Keeping track is one of NIAAA's core tips for cutting down. A note on your phone works, or marks on a calendar. Log each drink and each alcohol-free night, plus a line about how you slept and how the morning felt.

After two weeks you'll have something better than a vague feeling. Look at your sleep notes in particular. Alcohol helps you drop off faster, then breaks up the second half of the night, so the alcohol-free nights are a good place to look for a difference.

When a planned night goes wrong

At some point you'll drink on a night you meant to skip. It doesn't wipe out what you've built. In the habit study mentioned above, missing one day did not materially change how the new habit formed. The same study found new habits took anywhere from 18 to 254 days to become automatic, so give this weeks and probably months.

The next night is the one that counts. Go back to the plan. If the same night keeps going wrong, change the plan for that night instead of blaming yourself. NIAAA suggests that if cutting down hasn't worked after two or three months, it's worth considering stopping altogether, getting professional help, or both. That says nothing bad about you. It means the plan needs more support.

If you drink heavily every day

If you drink heavily every day, stopping suddenly can be dangerous. Talk to a doctor first. Your body may have adapted to alcohol, and withdrawal symptoms can begin within 6 to 12 hours of the last drink. A doctor can help you plan a safe way down.

Seek urgent care if you or someone else has severe shaking you can't control, confusion, seeing or hearing things that aren't there, a seizure, or a racing heart with heavy sweating. The page on when to see a doctor about drinking covers the milder signs as well.