Congratulations! You’re a week into a your experiment! I’m so curious as to how you are feeling? Has anyone around you noticed that you’re not drinking? If so, have you decided to make it public? Have you let people know that you’re in the midst of an experiment?

It’s interesting, isn’t it? The amount of shame that surrounds turning down a drink? My heart breaks every time I hear or read a story about a young college kid who is ‘hazed’ and it ends in a life lost. Alcohol is inevitably involved. I always wonder “did that young man/woman want to say no, but just couldn’t”? The sad part is, we congratulate a smoker for kicking the habit. But our society shames the individual who passes on a drink.

So, we’ll examine this. What is the reason that our friends and maybe even our family don’t want us to quit drinking? Or even cut back? Perhaps they don’t want to lose their drinking partner/buddy and they fear that they will have to cut back too or find someone new to fill your role. It could also be that they feel their own drinking should be questioned, but this puts them on the defensive.

Whatever the reasons that you have held back on telling your friends/family, just know that you don’t have to apologize. There are several different ways to handle this. You can handle it in a lighthearted manner and just say you’re giving your liver the much-deserved break it needs. Or maybe you can view this as a social experiment along with an alcohol experiment and write down your observations of who responds how and then come back to this at a later date.

Stay strong - we’re all in this together!