How many times have you wanted to cut down on alcohol?

Maybe you’ve just wanted to have a detox period?

Or perhaps you wanted to cut out the alcohol altogether?

I know I’ve wanted to cut down for some time and I occasionally take a detox period where I go cold turkey.

If you find yourself being tempted into splashing your cash on something like the sandle that allows you to store alcohol within it – Get Drunk On The Beach: Booze Holding Scandle, then maybe it’s time for a break?

Before setting off around the world I had the impression that it would be a lot easier to restrict my intake of alcohol on the road. Unfortunately (especially with the cheap beer in Asia), I found this much more difficult than I had thought it would be.

Icy Cold, Cheap Beer

On many occasions during my travels I’ve found myself sat in a nice quint restaurant watching the waves lapping onto the beach, a clear sky and sparkling stars twinkling in the sky above. In the distance you could see the lights of the fishing boats on the horizon, even though it was the late evening it was warm enough for shorts and a t-shirt.

For some strange reason the conditions described above led me to the thought of a nice cold beer. Admittedly those thoughts are usually stronger when I turned around to see a waiter carrying a large icy cold larger to the table next to me. Somehow a soft drink just doesn’t do it.

Party Animal

On top of the lure of cheap beer is the social aspect of traveling . Socialising often leads to alcohol consumption, I find it almost impossible to stay on the non-alcoholic drinks.

I thought it would be easier whilst traveling as at home even before I had made it to the bar there would be a beer waiting for me that I hadn’t even asked for.

After three months on the road, I couldn’t remember the last evening I had spent where I hadn’t had a beer.

Step 1 – Pick A Goal

– Do you want to cut down on the amount of alcohol you consume?

– Or do you want to take a break from drinking altogether?

– You may even want to give it up completely.

Choose your goal and be clear about what you want to achieve.

Step 2 – Pick A Method

Method 1 – Settling In One Place

One of the best methods for cutting down on your alcohol consumption is to stay in one place. Move out of the hostel, rent a room in a house, work and basically remove yourself from the backpacking scene for a while.

What the aim is here is to remove yourself from the places and situations where drinking is most likely to occur.

The crazy social aspect of staying in hostels and the whole backpacking scene will usually involve a large amount of drinking.

By getting away from that scene and filling your time with work you’ll tend to be pretty worn out by the end of the day and opt for an early night. If you intend to work on your travels you’ll already be half way to cutting down on your alcohol intake.

With the routine and stability of working, you’ll have less time for drinking and less tolerance for a hangover before work.

Method 2 – Keep Busy, Always On The Move

With this method you may find it difficult to abstain from drinking alcohol altogether but it could help you to cut down.

By keeping yourself busy whilst traveling you’ll have less time to sleep in recovering from a hangover. Plan so that you have plenty of sight seeing for the following day, only returning to the hostel/guest house in the evening.

By doing this you’ll find that you’ll be pretty tired after a hard day seeing all the sights and in turn you’ll want an early night.

Following up the sight seeing with a tight schedule will force you into having an early night and you’ll be less likely to consume too much alcohol because of the early morning rise.

The key to this method is to keep busy and always on the move.

Both these methods require you to remove yourself from situations where you could have a drink or be more likely to drink more. If you can find other ways to avoid situations where you’ll be exposed to a drinking culture then you could try them and they maybe equally effective.

Why Cut Down At All?

While alcohol can be a very social drug, it also has health implications if it is abused. Moderate drinkers tend to live long than excessive drinkers and surprisingly longer than complete abstainers.

As a budget traveler you usually need as much spare cash as possible, by cutting down on the alcohol front you could save quite a bit of money for other activities.

Personally I can always tell the next day if I have had a drink the night before. I’ll feel very sluggish even if I have only drank one or two beers.

Here is a great article for men on alcohol consumption from Malehealth.co.uk – http://www.malehealth.co.uk/userpage1.cfm?item_id=146 .

Do you want to give up alcohol for a month?

Do you fancy cutting down on your alcohol intake on the road?

Let us know by commenting below…