Drinking Council History
For two weeks, I chose to monitor my drinking and focus on the protective behaviors I use and how they work out for me. The three I chose to use were to just simply choose not to drink on that given night, alternate my alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, and to determine, ahead of time how many drinks I would allow myself. I chose the three I did because they seemed like they would be the most challenging for me and also because they were the ones that I doubted the effectiveness of the most. I wanted the self-experiment to be somewhat beneficial to me, so I could not choose the protective behaviors that I already currently exercise when I drink.
What I found when I tried simply not drinking was that it wasn’t as easy as it sounded. Simply not drinking is not easily done when you find yourself in an environment where drinking is present. The pure pressure and eagerness can be too much to handle sometimes, a strategy would be much easier to follow. After using that tactic, I tried alternating my alcohol and non-alcoholic drinks and that proved to be much more effective. It will be a strategy that I put to use in the future, as it was very effective and I felt a lot better the next morning. I was alternating water, alcohol, water, alcohol; I was also not able to drink as much presumably because I filled up a lot faster from the non-alcoholic beverages I was consuming. It was also quite a bit easier than the first strategy to stick to because people weren’t so quick to ask why I wasn’t drinking. The third and last plan of action was to set a limit before the night started, how many drinks I would allow myself to drink. This was, obviously, the least effective because as we know, one of the things that happen when we drink is our decision-making plummets and becomes very reactionary and less intuitive. Once we hit that mark where we are supposed to stop drinking, we are having too much fun and start saying to ourselves, “Just one more!” Through the experiment, I learned which protective behaviors I can count on, and which ones are not going to be effective for me.
For the most part, my drinking experience was a more positive one when I was focusing on my protective behaviors. The negative experiences that come with drinking are usually a direct correlation from drinking more than you should or coming into contact with someone who has had too much to drink. Most of my negative experiences usually come from either me, or someone I come in contact with getting agitated causing a verbal altercation, never physical, as I am not a violent person. My peers reacted in a very positive way to me exercising