It's Alcohol Awareness Month (April 2011). This is the time really think about your alcohol consumption. How much are you drinking? Do you think you can cut down.
One of the things that you're supposed to do during this month is to take a day off from drinking every week of the month. That means nothing. Not a beer. Not a glass of wine. No mixed drinks.
But I'm going to go one further on this. Can we track how much alcohol we drink during the month. It's harder than you think. But here's what a propose (something I teach my students in alcohol awareness classes). Try to track your alcohol every day of the month.
Sound easy? It is! Once you get yourself in the habit. Here's what you need to do.
- Get yourself a little spiral notebook. Something small that you can fit in your pocket.
- You need 5 pages of the notebook On for every week of the month (the first week has only 2 days in it)
- Divide each page from top to bottom into 7 lines. Put the days of the week on each line. Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat and Sun.
- Then carry this notebook everywhere with you. Every time you have a drink mark a tic on today's line.
That's all there is to it! Now a couple of things you have to remember to make this work. First make sure that you carry this notebook with you whereever you go. even if you don't think that you'll be drinking, it's still a good idea to have it with you. It will help you think about drinking. Or be "aware of drinking" as the month is supposed to be about.
At the end of the month you'll have a notebook filled with tic marks. Or maybe not too many. It doesn't matter.
You've done the first step. You're aware of your alcohol consumption. That's great.
Now at the end of the month (May 1), I'll have an exercise for you on what to do with the tics that you've been tracking. So it will be a good exercise.
In the meantime, good tracking and good alcohol awareness!