#Help quit drinking how to

At festivals, I would often miss half the acts because I was in a state of drunken disorientation. I have always loved live music but I used to spend at least a third of every gig queueing for the bar or the toilet. Doing fun things sober quickly becomes your new normal.” Get more value for money “At first, it can feel weird doing your favourite things without drink, but you have to try to keep doing them,” says Valli.

If you want to track your days of sobriety and calculate the money you’ve saved, I recommend the Nomo app. Other great self-care investments include a personal trainer (the equivalent cost of two rounds of drinks a week), a therapist (the price of a Wednesday night in the pub) and scented candles (the cost of a cab fare home – I drive myself everywhere these days, or take the tube and read a book). Why not spend the money you used to spend on booze to treat yourself to a massage? Photograph: EmirMemedovski/Getty Images A couple of treats like this every month and sober me was still financially better off than drunk me by a long way. Once I calculated the rough amount all this was costing me every week, I felt a lot less guilty about treating myself in sobriety: from nice meals out to occasional massages and the odd weekend away. Then there was the coffee, Coca-Cola, bacon sandwiches and painkillers I would buy in bulk the next morning to try to combat my hangover. It wasn’t just the booze itself it was the collateral costs of a night out: the taxis, the late-night burgers and, towards the end of my drinking days, the drugs I would invariably buy after my fourth pint. The money I used to spend when I was drinking was obscene.

#Help quit drinking how to

Whether you’re hoping to prolong the benefits of Dry January a little longer or thinking of going sober more permanently, here are some tips on how to keep having fun while you do so. In the meantime, it helps to have some practical stuff up your sleeve to help those early days of sobriety feel like a pleasure, not an endurance. In the years since, I have gradually become better at processing highs and lows without the accompaniment of booze. But without the option of going straight to the pub to raise a few glasses, I was clueless as to how to express my excitement. When I had been sober for three months, I received a really big job offer – the sort that warranted a celebration. It is not just the tendency to use booze to numb stress, sadness and exhaustion, it’s how to behave in the good times too.