“We have a really strong impulse to treat anxiety as if it’s a problem in and of itself — like, ‘I don’t want to be anxious, how do I get rid of the anxiety?’ And I think that’s really harmful,” Dr. Fisher said. Anxiety can be a beautiful teacher when you lean into the feeling, he said, and “really listen to it.”
To cut down, remember how hang-xiety feels.
One question I (of course) asked experts was whether there’s a way to drink alcohol and somehow avoid the next-day nastiness. The answer I got was pretty much “no,” but Dr. Vora reminded me that it helps to eat a healthy meal before drinking and to stay hydrated — she suggested alternating alcoholic drinks with non-alcoholic ones.
Still, these fixes will only do so much, so if you’re sick of feeling yucky after a few cocktails, the obvious solution is to quit drinking. But that can be said easier than done, and sometimes the message to “just stop” can backfire, Dr. Brewer said. People who have trouble going cold turkey may feel ashamed of themselves and wonder if there’s something wrong with them, he said, which makes change even harder.
Another problem is that people often convince themselves that drinking isn’t the cause of their morning-after woes. “It’s easy for our brains to say, ‘Oh, no, it’s not the alcohol. You can keep drinking. It’s something else,’” he explained. When his patients want to stop drinking, Dr. Brewer advises them to focus on how they feel the morning after they drink, and to compare that to how they feel after nights they don’t. In doing so, they can more easily pinpoint the cause-and-effect relationship and decide that drinking isn’t worth it.
“They see that it’s just not that rewarding, and that’s what helps them change,” he said.
That’s not to say drinking occasionally is the worst thing in the world, but if it is causing you hell the next day, it’s not a bad idea to weigh the benefits of scaling back. I’m still going to have a few glasses of wine at social gatherings, but on other nights, I’ll remind myself how much better I will feel the next day if I drink seltzer instead.
Key Tips for Making New Friends
In her new book “Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make — and Keep — Friends,” Marisa Franco, a psychologist, argues that despite what we might assume, most people are open to new friendships, especially at certain times of their lives. But you do have to put yourself out there, she says, to forge meaningful connections.