Here in the
UK, Cancer Research UK are encouraging people to give up alcohol for the month
of January and raise money for the charity through sponsorship or by pledging
the money saved by not drinking. What a great thing to do after the excesses of Christmas and the New Year.
Drinking
alcohol is not just linked to increasing your risk of cancer, it is also linked to
a variety of diseases and injuries associated with accidents. Although giving up alcohol for a month will
not have a lasting positive effect on your health, it may break an existing
habit and get you into a different way of enjoying yourself.
If you want
to get started make a commitment to yourself and then tell a friend or even
better tell a lot of friends. That simple
step will increase the probability of you sticking to your resolve.
Once you have done that, think about the
circumstances and contexts in which you usually drink alcohol. What could you do differently? What alternative drink could you enjoy? If you have a drink of alcohol at home at a
certain time of day, what else could you do at that time to break that habit?
Drink plenty
of water. It will let your conscious and
unconscious mind know that you are not thirsty.
It will also help to flush through your kidneys and liver.
The deadline
for signing up for Dryathalon is 6 January but if you have missed it you can
still do this for yourself. For more
details see www.dryathlon.org.uk
I've done this a few times, either in January or at Lent. It was a very common practice in the financial sector, where people do tend to drink a lot. The only suggestion I'm not sure about is telling all your friends -- a lot of people seem to assume that if you make a big deal about going off the sauce, you must be an alcoholic!
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