Topic Tuesday // Alcohol // Tuesday 23rd November, 7:00- 8:30PM AEDT

@Paperdaisy we have found that people use alcohol to numb the bad feelings but it also numbs good feelings. Long term it can impact other domains in someone’s life, including relationships, finances and work. Often ongoing stress becomes really problematic because we can start to feel out of control of our time and lives - we are constantly in a state of responding to things, rather than being able to plan for how we want our day to be. Alcohol can be something that we use to control our mood and how we feel, but we know there are real down-sides to this as alcohol is a depressant.

One way to look at managing this is in terms of replacement behaviours. One thing that can really help is to structure your day in a way that ensures you are managing whatever stress comes up. It might be helpful to consider:

• Morning exercise (boot camp or even walking to work/early morning bike ride).

• Ensuring you are drinking water and eating regular and nutritious meals (to avoid sugar highs and lows and

  dehydration which can make stress response feel even worse in the first few weeks of reducing or

  abstaining from alcohol).

• Some kind of exercise at lunch, such as a run or 20 minute walk.

• Something at the end of your day which gives a good sense of closure to your day - whether that is some

  cheese and olives while having a non-alcoholic beer, or something that you enjoy and reduces stress (eg.

  listening to a podcast or your favourite music on the way home from work).

• Listening to some mindfulness recordings at points of the day - sounds silly but it is a really good way to shift

  away from feeling frazzled and stressed, and towards feeling more focused and switched on (we recommend apps like Headspace and Smiling Mind which are both free to download).

  It might be helpful to read this article about the links between stress, anxiety and alcohol:

  https://www.hellosundaymorning.org/2017/10/10/stress-anxiety-drinking/?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.googl e.com.au%2F