By Julia Bainbridge
- Jan. 15, 2021
Seven years ago, Laura McKowen started a drinking journal. She knew alcohol was an issue for her — she knew it when her 4-year-old daughter helped her clean up the morning after a blackout, and she knew it the 10th time she drove to work hung over — but she needed to see it.
“Something very interesting happens when we put things on paper,” Ms. McKowen said, “because we have a lot of cognitive dissonance around drinking.” She couldn’t deflect around what she saw on the page, though: two bottles of wine a night. She got sober, and went on to help others do the same through coaching and teaching workshops.
Last January, Ms. McKowen published “We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life” and in March, she began hosting free sobriety support meetings on Zoom. By May, she had 12 employees and a company called The Luckiest Club, which offers classes and access to its community.
It’s no surprise Ms. McKowen found an eager client base. According to the 2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, more than 14 million American adults suffer from alcohol use disorder (A.U.D.), which is a term medical professionals prefer to alcoholism.
You don’t need an A.U.D. diagnosis to find your drinking problematic, though. Alcohol can impair sleep, cause weight gain, exacerbate anxiety, or subtly change your personality. A study conducted by the RAND Corporation in September suggests Americans are drinking 14 percent more often in response to pandemic-related stress, especially women, whose heavy drinking days increased by 41 percent in 2020.
“When we go to work every day during non-pandemic times and don’t have an inordinate amount of stress, it’s fairly easy” to limit drinking to Friday nights, said James G. Murphy, a psychology professor and researcher at the University of Memphis who published a paper in November about alcohol and drug use during the pandemic. “When all of that structure is ripped away — when you’re worried about finances and your kids’ home-schooling and you don’t have to be anywhere in the morning, so no one will see if you’re hung over — alcohol can be way more difficult to manage.”
This is one reason you might be seeing more Dry January hashtags in your social media feeds this year. One month off from drinking can be an opportunity for the sober-curious to examine their alcohol use.
If any of this sounds familiar, here are some suggestions to help you navigate your relationship with alcohol or bring it to an end.
Get curious.
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The opinions expressed in this post are those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the FASD Prevention Conversation Project, its stakeholders, or funders.