Dearest Teentalker,
Kudos to you for writing in! I really appreciate your honesty and that is the first step towards gaining control and being responsible. When consumed responsibly, in small doses and in a safe environment, drinking can be fun. But as you’ve noticed, binge drinking is no fun after a point: it changes your behavior, making you aggressive and forgetful, and makes you crave more of it even when you don’t really want it.
Here are some active steps you can take:
- Explore which situations encourage binge-drinking and which situa.....
Dearest Teentalker,
Kudos to you for writing in! I really appreciate your honesty and that is the first step towards gaining control and being responsible. When consumed responsibly, in small doses and in a safe environment, drinking can be fun. But as you’ve noticed, binge drinking is no fun after a point: it changes your behavior, making you aggressive and forgetful, and makes you crave more of it even when you don’t really want it.
Here are some active steps you can take:
- Explore which situations encourage binge-drinking and which situations encourage moderate drinking
- Understand what you enjoy about drinking and what you really don’t like
- Set boundaries and rules of drinking
Experimenting with alcohol at your age is perfectly normal. At this point, it’s clear that you’re looking for help to bring the bingeing down to moderation in order to control your aggressive behavior - this means starting with a single goal and a plan. The good news is that we can have a realistic goal that simply reduces the amount of alcohol you drink in one night, as opposed to cutting it out completely. The best way to do this is to be gradual: if you’re used to drinking 5 beers a night, the next time you go out, cut it down to 4. Take your time over those 4 beers. Savour each sip, notice the changes in your body as you drink through the evening. Often when your body has had enough, it sends out warning signals, and when we are too drunk to notice we tend to overdo the drinking. So if you start your evening with the intention to simply pay attention to the physical signs, you might be alerted sooner to slowing down the drinking instead of surpassing them completely, as you have in the past.
But before all this, let’s take some time to understand what prompts you to drink past your threshold. Is it peer pressure? Is it that you’re using alcohol to numb other, painful feelings like sadness, anxiety or loneliness? Certainly alcohol does have a numbing effect, thus giving us the illusion that our problems have disappeared – until we wake up the next day and not only are our problems still unresolved, but we also have to deal with the effects of being hung-over! So how about we make a list of the pros and cons of binge drinking, as compared to drinking within moderation. Sometimes putting down our thoughts on paper clarifies them for us.
On another note, I am curious if you feel you binge on other aspects of life, like food, exercise, watching TV, using the internet, etc. I would encourage you to pay attention to whether relying on extremes in these areas is a pattern, because knowing that about yourself helps you choose which areas you are okay with continuing to be extreme with and those which you want to bring moderation into. Do think about it, and perhaps find a trusted friend or confidante who you can discuss this with too. Reading online about teens who are experiencing similar situations can also be really helpful.
Hope this helps, if you have any other query do connect online for chat between 11am-8pm or drop us an offline message.
Regards,
Expert Teentalk India
