163. 5 Questions to Ask Yourself About the Pros & Cons of Different Moderation Techniques

If you ever find yourself stuck in the planning phase, endlessly researching moderation techniques but never quite knowing which one to actually try, this episode is for you. 

From zebra striping to bookending to coasting, the sheer number of approaches to cutting back can feel overwhelming—especially when you're not sure if what worked (or didn't work) for someone else will work for you.

I'm breaking down the most popular active moderation techniques, complete with honest pros and cons for each. But more importantly, I'm giving you five critical questions to ask yourself that will help you identify which approach might actually fit your life, your personality, and your drinking goals.

We'll explore the difference between active and passive moderation, why one failed attempt doesn't mean you're doomed, and how to build sustainable habits instead of white-knuckling your way through rigid rules. 

Whether you thrive on structure or need maximum flexibility, there's a moderation technique that can work for you—you just need to know which questions to ask first.

2:22 The Low No Drinker Quiz - The Thinker
3:43 Active & Passive Moderation
5:41 Dry Month Challenges: Pros And Cons
7:11 Zebra Striping Explained
8:53 Bookending Your Night
9:53 Coasting With Mid-Strength Drinks
10:58 Personal Rules And Boundaries
13:45 Mixing And Matching Approaches
14:34 Five Questions To Choose Your Method
17:12 Question 2
18:13 Question 3
19:22 Question 4
21:24 Question 5

Next, listen to Ep#182. 13 Alcohol Moderation Techniques That Aren't Zebra Striping - https://www.buzzsprout.com/2229527/episodes/19391279

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🌱 Ready for real change in the way you drink? - https://www.lownodrinker.com/4weekreset

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🗝️ Become a Vault member to get access to the moderation tools that actually help - https://mindfuldrinking.substack.com/s/the-vault

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✏️ Come hang out with me on Substack - https://mindfuldrinking.substack.com/

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❓ Take the Midlife Drinking Triggers Quiz - https://quiz.tryinteract.com/#/68dd33385bb4a20015996a13

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*Some links are affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may earn a commission that helps me keep the show going. Thank you.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

From zebra striping to bookending to coasting, how the heck do you know if a moderation technique is right for you? And then once you've chosen one, do you have to stick to it? And then if you've tried one before and it didn't work, does that mean that nothing will? Today we're looking at not just the different types of active moderation techniques that you could use to take back the power of choice from alcohol, but also at the five questions that you should ask yourself to help you identify which approach might work best for you. You're listening to the Mindful Drinking and Moderation in Midlife podcast with me, Denise Hamilton Mace, your mindful drinking mentor. After 24 years of working in hospitality and drinking daily, I finally recognise in my early 40s that alcohol was no longer serving me the way it was before. Now I want to use what I've learned as a publisher, writer, and public speaker on all things moderation to help you design, build and live a life less intoxicated on your own terms. If you're ready to make a change without judgment or pressure to quit, then come with me as we dive into the world of low, no, and light alcohol, drinks, drinkers, and drinking so that you can take back the power of choice from alcohol. So, first things first, I want to uh let you know, make it clear, that this there's no one right answer to today's episode. Okay, we are all different people, we're all on a different path, uh, and what's good for the goose isn't always good for the gander, okay? And that's absolutely fine. So I want to spend our time today looking at uh briefly, first of all, at the difference between active and passive moderation. This is something that I reference on the show quite a bit, but I know that there are a lot of new listeners at the moment. Thank you. Welcome. Everybody is welcome to drink at my table. But if you are new to the show, perhaps you haven't heard me uh explain these terms before. Then we're going to look at some of the different techniques that mindful drinkers, moderators can use when we're in real life situations and trying to make different choices about our drinking. And then I want to take you through five questions that you can ask yourself that will help you determine which choices, which techniques might be right for you and which perhaps might not. So

The Low No Drinker Quiz - The Thinker

SPEAKER_00 2:22

let me tell you where all of this comes from. You've probably seen somewhere in the sphere of the mindful drinking and moderation and midlife world that in the middle of last year I created a quiz to help you understand your mindful drinking habits and triggers. Now, if you haven't taken the quiz yet, then I definitely recommend you go and do it. You can either pause now or just put a little note to yourself to do it, and the episode ends. Head on over to lownodrinker.com or, of course, click the link in the show notes. It's a really simple two-minute quiz. I think there's only eight or nine questions, but at the end of it, the result that you get gives you some scarily accurate insight into your midlife drinking persona. One of those personas is the thinker, and this episode comes from the free download that thinker types get when they complete the quiz. Now, hundreds of people have taken this quiz and hundreds of people have gotten the thinker result. But even if you didn't, even if you got one of the other ones, and I'm not going to tell you what they are, you have to go and take it for yourself. But even if you got one of the other ones, these are techniques that anybody can use to moderate their drinking when they're on a night out or even a night in. So what we're going to look at today really does apply to everybody. Now, I said

Active & Passive Moderation

SPEAKER_00 3:43

we'd start by looking briefly at the difference between active and passive moderation. So active moderation is what most people think of when they think about moderating their alcohol intake. It is reducing your alcohol via a series of set rules during things like dry January or sober October. It could be things that we're going to talk about like zebra striping or bookending. It is where you follow a certain, I guess, protocol so that it is clear when you will and won't consume alcohol. Now, passive moderation, on the other hand, is something that I think that most people would probably aspire to achieve at some point. And that is when we no longer rely on rules or protocols or systems to determine whether we will or won't consume alcohol. That's when our choices to drink become far more internalized and part of who we are as an individual, so that it's no longer weighing up the pros and cons of this technique or that technique, but actually making a decision about what fits best into your life. So let's have a look at the different types of moderation techniques that you can employ when it comes to uh cutting back on how much alcohol you're allowing into your life. We're going to go through the main ones, and also I'm going to add in a few of the pros and cons for them so that you can really think about how they can fit into the way that you want to drink going forward. And as we go through it, I want you to keep your thoughts about these pros and cons in mind because these will form the basis to your answers to the questions about which ones are going to be most suitable for the way that you want to live and which approach might work best for you, maybe now, maybe in the future, maybe not at all. Let's start with the obvious ones,

Dry Month Challenges: Pros And Cons

SPEAKER_00 5:41

okay? So the biggest, most well-known active moderation technique are your dry month challenges. These are things like dry January, sober October, sober spring. They are a fixed, predetermined length of time to take a complete break from alcohol. No booze at all. So the pros of something like this is that it's really straightforward. There's no decisions to be made. There's just one simple rule to follow, and that is no booze allowed. For some people, that works really well. The cons to this, however, is that it often leads to one-track thinking. And you can find yourself white knuckling through it, wondering when you're allowed to have your next drink again. And this is something I spoke about quite a bit in some of our recent episodes, particularly around the dry January that we've just found our way out of. Dry month challenges, they can be fantastic, and I'm all for them. But you should be aware that they can also be undone if you don't give yourself a solid plan for moving forward afterwards. Something like a dry month challenge is really best for testing your relationship with alcohol and experiencing the benefits of a clean break. You know, there is no, I feel better today, but is that because I didn't drink, or was that because of something else? You know, you know that you've had no alcohol in your system, and after a couple of weeks, you can really start to notice how that's impacting you, hopefully, very positively.

Zebra Striping Explained

SPEAKER_00 7:11

Next, we have zebra striping. So zebra striping has been all over the press for the last year or so. It's a term that was coined by research company CAM. I interviewed their CEO last year about some of the amazing insights that they've come up with into how the way that we're drinking is changing. I'll link to that in the show notes for you. So zebra striping is the act of swapping between an alcohol-free and an alcohol full drink for each drink of your night out. Doesn't matter which one you start with, you might start with booze or you might start with an AF, but your next drink will be the other type. Now, the pros to this are that it massively reduces your alcohol intake. Okay, you're not down to zero, but you are drinking half the amount of alcohol that you would be drinking if you had alcohol full all night long. The cons to zebra striping, however, is that it does require more mental focus to keep track, which obviously becomes harder to maintain the more drinks that you've had. So for the first part of the evening, when you're only having two, three, maybe even four drinks, it's quite easy for you to know whether your last drink was alcohol-free or alcohol full. If it's a slightly longer night, maybe it's a brunch or something like that, which can go on for hours, then it becomes harder to keep track of. This type of moderation technique is usually better for uh social situations where you want to join in, like that bottomless brunch situation, but you know you want to pace yourself and not necessarily go as full throttle as everyone else. Next, we've got bookending. So, bookending is starting and ending your night with an alcohol-free

Bookending Your Night

SPEAKER_00 9:41

drink, but still consuming alcohol in the middle. Now, the pros to bookending is uh the biggest pro I think is that when you start your night with an alcohol-free drink, it really sets a good intention. And there's a possibility that you might say, Do you know what? I think I'm gonna have another alcohol-free one before I have booze. There is, I think, one uh big obvious con to this technique though, and that is that it depends on how many alcohol-full drinks you have in the middle. So if you start your night with an alcohol-free one and you end your night with an alcohol-free one, but you have eight pints in between, then you're not really going to be that much better off. So, this technique is generally better for setting clear intentions with yourself and with those around you, and it is a great way of signaling when the night is done. Next, we're looking at coasting. Now, you might not be as familiar with this one. This is slightly newer, and coasting

Coasting With Mid-Strength Drinks

SPEAKER_00 10:42

refers to choosing light or mid-strength drinks throughout your entire evening. Like zebra striping, the big pro here is that it cuts your alcohol consumption in half. So even though you might be having alcohol in every drink, if you're having a 15% gin and tonic instead of a 40% gin with tonic, then obviously you're cutting your alcohol intake way, way down. The cons here is that this is still quite a new area. Not many venues carry a lot of mid-strength drinks, and even if you're having it at home, the difficulty is that because we're not quite as familiar with half-strength beverages, it might be a bit tricky to keep a track on them. Um, but this is really good for people who enjoy the ritual of the alcohol, they enjoy the taste of the alcohol, but you still want to reduce the impact. And then our next moderation technique is looking at personal rules. Now, um, there's a couple of different ones here. I've

Personal Rules And Boundaries

SPEAKER_00 11:46

put them all together because this really is down to your individual choices. Uh, and if I was to list them all out uh one by one, then we could be here for a really long time. Um, but let me give you some examples of personal rules that people have told me that they have set for themselves. So things like time limits or time restrictions, whichever way you want to look at it. Um, for example, uh I'm only allowing myself to have alcohol between 6 and 9 p.m. This sets a really clear delineation between uh when you can start drinking and when you're going to stop drinking. Again, if you're gonna um sort of binge your way through those three hours, it's not gonna be as impactful. But if you're taking your time, then that could work really well. Uh you might set yourself location limits, so only if I'm in a bar, never when I'm at home. Uh it might be the time of the week. So you might say, I don't drink Monday to Friday, um, I only allow myself alcohol on the weekend, or it might be maybe only on really special occasions, but not like, yay, I did the dishes, I can have a drink. More like, yay, I'm at a wedding, I'm gonna have a drink. Uh other things could be setting yourself a two-drink maximum, or never drinking when I'm alone, uh, or only drinking with food, only one drink per hour. Uh uh, another one that I've I've heard is on no uh no alcohol on consecutive days. So always making sure you have at least one day off between those days when you do consume alcohol. Um, the pros of these different types of techniques is that if you set yourself some precise rules, um then there's no room for misinterpretation. Okay, so they can be quite easy for you to follow. Also, you know yourself better than anybody else, hopefully, so you should be able to determine what type of rules might work best for you. The cons, however, to this, these types of um techniques is that there's often very little margin for error, and life is not clear-cut. And what I found in life is that if you are not able to bend, then sometimes you might find yourself breaking. You might find yourself negotiating with the rules that you set because you've set yourself this rule, for example, of no alcohol during the week. Uh, you might find yourself on a Friday saying, Well, okay, but does this count as the weekend or is it the week? And then you say, Okay, but Thursdays, well, Thursdays are the new Fridays. And you know, it can be quite easy to negotiate yourself out of what you've set. Uh, but these types of techniques are really good for those who thrive with uh structure and clear boundaries. And then finally is mixing and matching, which is you know, obviously combining different techniques based

Mixing And Matching Approaches

SPEAKER_00 14:33

on the situation, based on your mood and your circumstances. Pros here is maximum flexibility, the complete opposite to what before. This allows you to adapt your um guidelines to your life and to your lifestyle to make room for things that occur. The cons, however, is that it requires a really high level of self-awareness. And one thing that people can find fatiguing is that it will also require ongoing decision making. Mixing and matching, therefore, is generally best for experienced moderators, people who've been doing this for a while and understand their patterns and themselves really well. So now that we know what the different types of moderation techniques are that we can choose from, it's about figuring out which ones

Five Questions To Choose Your Method

SPEAKER_00 15:22

are going to work best for us in which situation. So I've got five questions for you, okay? Uh, and I want you to answer these to yourself. Uh, you can either um just do it in your head as we're walking along or we're working out. I'm not sure what we're doing today, but I'm glad I'm with you while we are. Um, or if you want, this might be an episode that you need to come back to and play again when you've got a quiet moment to sit down with a pen and paper and really think through your answers. So, question one: Do you thrive with structure or with flexibility? I've got two kids. Uh, Logan is eight and Isla is six. And they are very, very close and very similar in lots of ways, but they're also really different in some ways. And one of the biggest differences between them is that Logan loves structure. He loves a rule. He likes to know what he's supposed to be doing, when he's supposed to be doing it, how it's supposed to be done. You know, he feels that when he has a rule, he knows what's expected and what he's got to do. My daughter, on the other hand, well, let's say she takes after mummy. She doesn't want to be told what to do. She doesn't like a rule, she likes to be as flexible as possible. So when they get older, if they decide that they want to uh find a moderation technique that works for them, they'd probably choose very different things. If you're somebody who thrives with structure, then the personal rules that we've just looked at, or something like a dry dry month challenge, could work really well for you. If you don't want to uh risk decision fatigue, if you don't want to be tempted outside of the remits that you set for yourself, uh, and you prefer structure, then those types of techniques work really well. If, however, you're more of a flexible person, then maybe you're looking at a mix and match for every different occasion that you go out to and you make a decision based on how you're feeling, what you're going to be doing, who you're going to be doing it with. You know, it might be that, okay, I'm meeting my friends for a drink on a Thursday evening and I've got nothing going on at work tomorrow, or I've got the day off. So actually, I'm quite happy to allow myself to drink as much as I want between 6 and 9 p.m. But then on Sunday lunch, when you go for a roast with the family, you know that on Monday morning you've got a really important meeting. So you're gonna set yourself a one drink maximum. You know, it varies depending on what you're doing or what's important to you at any given time. Question two: where are you in your moderation journey? Are you early

Question 2

SPEAKER_00 18:00

on? Is this new for you, or are you perhaps more uh seasoned, more experienced? If you're early on, then you might find something like a dry month challenge is a better fit for you because it takes away that self-negotiation. Just set yourself a time, give yourself the opportunity to have a clean break and to remove alcohol altogether and see how that makes you feel. If, however, you are more experienced, perhaps you've been moderating for a couple of years now and you like the direction that you're going in, perhaps you don't need any of these techniques. Perhaps then you're moving more into a passive moderation lifestyle, where actually your default is probably to say no. But if you've thought about it and feel that a drink will enhance any given situation, then actually you might say yes on that occasion. Question three, what's your primary goal? And I think

Question 3

SPEAKER_00 19:01

this is a really important question that people don't often ask themselves when it comes to changing the way alcohol shows up in your life. What's the thing that you're really trying to achieve here? Because yes, reducing your alcohol is the goal, but actually that's um a symptom of something else that you're trying to work towards. So, for example, is your primary goal to reduce your overall alcohol intake in every area of your life? In that case, maybe something like zebra striping or coasting would work really well for you. Is your goal to prove to yourself that you can socialize without alcohol? Well, then in that case, maybe a month off is going to be the best thing for you because it's likely that in a month you're going to get invitations to several different social situations. Is your goal to find long-term sustainability? Then we're looking at passive moderation or mixing and matching for your situation. Question four: what has caused your past moderation attempts to fail? Now, this might

Question 4

SPEAKER_00 20:10

be the first time that you're trying to moderate, in which case, you know, you can skip this question. But I still would encourage you to think about what might cause your approaches to fail. So is it that they felt too restrictive, for example? In that case, avoid strict rules. Avoid the dry January where you're thinking about counting down to how many days you can have your next drink. Avoid strict rules where you don't allow yourself room to bend before you break. Um is it lack of structure that's caused your attempts to fail before? You know, is it the complete opposite? In which case you do need to make sure that you set yourself rules that you're not going to negotiate with, but really think about what they should be. What structure do you need? What do you need your moderation to look like? Is it that you couldn't maintain it long term? You know, perhaps you started moderating, you picked one of these techniques and it worked for a couple of weeks, but actually by week three you weren't really feeling it. Now, does that mean that none of them will work for you? Absolutely not. It's really important that we recognise that just because, for example, bookending didn't work, it doesn't mean that that zebra striping wouldn't. Different horses for courses or different zebras for courses, that doesn't really scan as well. Um, but focus on sustainable methods that fit your lifestyle and your personality. For example, if you set yourself the rule that there's no drinking during the week, only on the weekends, but actually every weekend you're missing out on time with your family because every Friday you, you know, have a few too many, then maybe you could think about changing that to actually no drinking on the weekends and only during the week. You know, there are different ways to assess what works best for you. And question five: how do you handle breaking the rules? When you have a

Question 5

SPEAKER_00 22:13

slip, when things don't go according to plan, how do you treat yourself? Is it with self-compassion and adjustment? Are you looking at what happened and taking the learning opportunity for you from it? In which case, I'll be honest with you, pretty much any method could work for you. It would just be a case of trialing and erroring until you've eliminated what doesn't work. If, however, the way you handle breaking your own rules is with sharing. And giving up, throwing the towel in, then I would say to avoid all or nothing approaches like dry January because life is not black and white, and you need to give yourself room to grow. So, which moderation technique is right for you? I don't know, but I would love to know which ones you've tried, what's worked well for you in the past, and if you have any tips or techniques that have worked really well for you, I'd love to hear about them so that we can share it with other people who are looking to live a life less intoxicated. And don't forget, if you haven't taken the quiz yet, you can click the link in the show notes or head to lonoDrinker.com where you can take the quiz in under two minutes. You will get your persona result. And no matter which type you get, you'll also receive a free resource or download that's going to help you to continue on with your journey so that you can take back the power of choice from alcohol. That's it from me for this week. I will see you next time. And until then, cheers to a life less intoxicated.