Ask HN: What are your tips to reduce drinking alcohol?

1. Build a budget for drinking. Nothing caps it like limiting the amount that you can spend on it. 2. Have your socializing focus on activities as opposed to drinking. E.G. If you are bowling you'll be more focused on the game and than you are on the drinking. 3. Drink a glass of water in between each drink. Double bonus for reducing hangover effects 4. Buy a breathalizer. Yep! A weird one but you can keep the BAC below the driving limit and you'll be pleasantly surprised. 5. Change locations often, and walk in between locations. First this is great for getting quality time with your friends. Second, you can use this trick to save money (happy hour in one place, dinner in another). Third, there will be prolonged periods of time between each location that you will not be drinking.

Sounds like you could also benefit from just imbibing drinks that are limited in alcohol content. Session Beers, Campari spritz, some sakes etc.

1. Never drink alone

2. Socially, never have more than 2

Follow those two rules, and you should be fine.

> there are times I drink too much and forget what happened the night before

That's bad.

You may not be able to reduce your alcohol consumption. Not everyone can. But...

> I only ever drink on a weekend and not throughout the week.

That's a good sign. So what's happening here is that alcohol lowers your inhibitions. When you're sober, you have control over yourself, which is why you can get through the week. When you start drinking, you lose that control, so you keep drinking, and you pass out. Whether you can drink without crossing that threshold is an open question. Like I said, not everyone can do that. For some people, one drink pushes them over the edge.

Do this experiment: next weekend, don't drink at all.

If you can do that, then the FOLLOWING weekend have ONE drink and STOP. (That's one drink for the WHOLE WEEKEND. Not one drink on Friday and another on Saturday.)

If that works out OK, then the NEXT weekend, have two and then stop. Not all at once. Pace yourself. At least an hour between drinks. If that works out OK, then the NEXT weekend go up to three.

If at any time you find yourself thinking, "This is all OK, I can have one more" then STOP. That's the danger sign.

If at any stage in this process you find yourself making excuses for why it's OK short-circuit any step in the process, then I have bad news for you: you're an alcoholic, and if you don't want to keep blacking out you're going to have to just stop.

UPDATE: raztogt21 also had some very good advice: never drink alone. It also helps to let your drinking buddies know that you're on this program so that they can help keep an eye on you. If your friends ever encourage you to drink past your limit, get new friends.

Looks like your system is already giving negative feedback and you are reacting to it.

My take is that you're better off finding a social life that is not alcohol fueled.

I have never "blacked out" but I did get in trouble with my extended family for going to parties with an open bar, drinking too much, and acting like an ass.

That for me was a wake-up call.

Then there was the time that we made a huge amount of applejack and around the holidays I would drink consistently quite a bit and find that if I didn't drink my body felt warm and I was a little irritable and I figured that was a sign of getting physically dependent -- that was a wake up call too.

More recently I've found that I usually wake up with a glucose reading around 95 (good but not great), but if I drink alcohol and have disrupted sleep I get a glucose reading around 120 (flaming diabetic).

As a result of that it is really rare that I drink these days. Maybe I have a beer or two now and then but not on a regular basis.

For me the consequences and fear of consequences has been sufficient motivation.