Best Treatment Hacks for Binge Drinkers: Recovery En-Route

By Your Health Magazine

Binge Drinking is the practice of drinking more than a surplus of alcohol within a few hours. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), you can call it binge drinking when you are drinking five or more drinks at a time. For women, the count is four or above.

# The Immediate Harm

Binge drinking deteriorates your health in due time. However, the effect can be observed in a short time, too. Firstly, it elevates the BAC levels to around 0.08 g/dL within months of binge drinking.

Most importantly, there is no decisive age for binge drinkers. Today, 19.8% of the young adults who drink are binge drinkers. However, the problem is more apparent among middle-aged men.

Do You Understand Your Binge Drinking problem?

It is a question that needs answering immediately. Here are some quick stats that act as a meter for you to understand how deep you are into the problem.

First, let’s understand the problem at its basics. If you are drinking 5 or more drinks within 2 hours, that’s binge drinking for sure. But that’s the rule for men. For women, the limit is 4. But what is heavy drinking vs. Binge drinking?

Binge drinkers consume liquor at a greater rate. Heavy drinkers are people who consume 4 to 5 drinks every day. However, binge drinkers do that in hours. But how do you define the volume of one drink?

Sipping margheritas from fish bowls or beers from boots doesn’t make them equivalent to one drink. In the US and other countries, the standard drink is composed of 14 grams per serving. It may also be:

12 ounces of beer, which is 5% of alcohol by volume
5 ounces of wine if you have a taste for that (equal to 12% alcohol per serving)
1.5 ounces of any distilled spirit, or 40% of alcohol, each volume

How to Prevent the Health Risks of Binge Drinking with Simple Treatment Hacks?

A basic hangover is never the real problem of binge drinking. The real issue begins when you start experiencing reasoning issues, health imbalance, and balance issues. If you’ve reached that limit, it is time to find help for addiction.

The list of problems is endless. You may encounter accidents and injuries due to unrestricted drinking, keeping you tipsy all the time. In trauma centers, around 75% of the injuries are alcohol related.

That’s not the end of the list.

You can easily catch an STD when you are into binge drinking. Moreover, anxiety, depression, and suicidal tendencies may also hit you at an early age, due to binge drinking.

Last, but not least, you may die from an alcohol overdose. When the alcohol levels in your blood are more than the limit, the brain loses control over basics like breathing, heart rate, and muscle management.

The bottom line is that you can die from organ failures when you binge drinking for a long time.

Certainly, the best treatment is rehab therapy. But if you want to give yourself time to steadily come out of the problem, here’s what you have to keep doing.

On one hand, keep reducing your drinking rate. At the same time, do blood tests for liver cancer, esophageal cancer, and breast cancer. The two tests that would be significant here are the USG and PSA tests.

If you have ulcers, the USG can detect that as well. Meanwhile, induce habits like having less spicy food. Reduce the oil levels in food. You should not consume more than 250 ml of oil in a month.

Best Tips to Limit or Stop Binge Drinking

It is not easy to turn down the next drink. Especially after you have started feeling more in control after some days of controlled drinking. Let’s think of a preemptive strategy to keep all your health concerns at bay.

It starts with a quick shift to mocktails or fruit beers. Here you can easily switch your alcohol to soda or water. But if you can’t keep away from drinking, you have to keep a close track of how much you are drinking.

But how can you track your pegs so easily? The solution is to use a tracking card. Just slip the card in your pocket. Meanwhile, you can also use free apps to keep track of your drinks.

At the same time, you can measure the amount of alcohol that goes into each drink. To do that, you can take note of the standard drink sizes. My take would be avoiding beer or wine. It is really hard to measure standard drink sizes if you have these two.

In addition, don’t stray away from your prime goal. As a binge drinker, your ultimate goal is to be free from your drinking habit. Until you aim for the clean sweep, you can’t restrict drinking. When you aim to stop drinking completely, you will see a gradual reduction in the number of drinks.

# The Closure

So, it is better if you do the switch from alcohol to non-alcoholic drinks. You may also engage in other activities. For example, try to take a walk at night or after your gym session, to avoid the alcohol sessions.

If nothing else works, try to seek support. Join group therapy sessions for free. If you search online, you will find a lot of groups offering therapy and consultations for total detachment from alcohol.

However, these are peer help groups only. Often, these groups have specialists to take care of the worst cases of binge drinking!

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that binge drinking is a critical issue. It is, however, preventable, even in the middle stages. All you need to do is follow the tips that I came up with. The rest should fall into place.

If you think you are beyond remedial therapies, you can seek common over-the-counter medications. These meds can, however, help you avoid unhealthy drinking habits!