Game Day Without the Hangover
5 tips for drinking less without feeling bored, left out or or awkward
Sometimes fall can feel like one long excuse to gather around food, football and drinks. Tailgates, football parties, Sunday games, college Saturdays, Thursday night football… suddenly there is a reason to drink approximately every day of the week.
And listen, I love a good game day. I love the snacks, tasty drinks and festivities. What I don’t love is waking up the next morning feeling like garbage because somewhere between kickoff and the fourth quarter, one drink mysteriously became five.
If you’re trying to drink less this fall, you absolutely do not have to skip the tailgate or avoid your friends. You just need to go into it with a little more intention and confidence. Remember, alcohol is not the source of your fun. YOU ARE, honey!
1. Talk to Someone and Have a Plan Before You Get There
You don’t need to announce to the entire tailgate that you are embarking on a deeply personal alcohol-reduction journey. But it can really help to tell one person what you’re trying to do. Maybe it’s your partner. Maybe it’s your friend, but at least somebody else knows the plan and can back you up.
I also like deciding what I’m doing before I arrive instead of negotiating with myself after someone hands me a drink. Maybe your plan is no alcohol. Maybe it’s two drinks. There is no magical number, the point is simply deciding while your brain is still operating from the sensible pre-tailgate headquarters. And this is also a good time to remember that alcohol is a biphasic drug. Early on, alcohol can feel stimulating: you feel relaxed, social, energetic and more talkative. But as you keep drinking and your blood alcohol level rises, its depressant effects become more pronounced. Which explains something I spent years trying to solve by drinking more alcohol:
The fun part does not necessarily keep getting more fun.
Sometimes the best part of drinking is actually that first drink or two. Drinking four more in an attempt to maintain the exact same feeling usually does not work particularly well. Knowing that has made it much easier for me to stop chasing the buzz.
2. Bring Nonalcoholic Options Everywhere You Go
If I’m going to a tailgate, barbecue or football party, I never assume there will be a good good nonalcoholic option and bring my own. Bring something you actually look forward to drinking: a good NA beer, sparkling mocktail, a drink that gives you a buzz without the booze... whatever makes you feel like you’re participating instead of being sentenced to warm club soda.
Having something in your hand also eliminates about 75% of the conversation around whether or not you want a drink. People see drink. Brain registers drink. Everyone moves on.
3. Make the Food and Conversation the Main Event
One of the biggest shifts for me was realizing how much socializing I had accidentally made about alcohol, when really there were about 97 other things happening that I was missing out on. Catching up with friends (and actually being able to ask meaningful questions and remember the conversation clearly the next day), the actual game, and of course, game-day food. Lean into all of it!!
Make a fun new dish to share or a mocktail recipe you've never tried before. Talk to people, watch the game, play cornhole. When alcohol stops being the main activity, you start noticing that it was never actually responsible for most of the fun anyway.
And eating real food before and while you drink can also slow down how quickly alcohol hits you, which makes sticking to your plan much easier.
This one took me a while, because I used to feel like leaving a party early meant I was somehow doing socializing incorrectly. You know what is actually wonderful?
Going home.
If the game ends and everyone transitions into the phase of the evening where people are repeating stories, pouring shots and discussing starting another party somewhere else… you are allowed to be done. Have an exit strategy, tell your partner beforehand that you’re probably heading out after the game (or whenever you damn well please), and feel free to say "Adios!" when you need to.
If necessary, deploy one of humanity’s greatest social inventions: The Irish Goodbye. In my book, protecting your peace and slipping out so you can go relax and put sweats on at home is always acceptable.
This is probably the biggest one. If you've been imbibing for years while watching football, it will feel incredibly hard at first to try and cut back or quit. For a long time, I subconsciously believed that choosing not to drink (or stopping after one) meant I wasn’t fully participating, or people would think I was really boring.
News flash: no one cares or really even notices. If they DO care or make a snide comment? That says a lot more about their drinking than yours...
Nothing about a football game becomes less fun because your drink happens to have 0.0% alcohol in it. Drinking less isn’t about creating a bunch of rules that make your life smaller or lame. For me, it has been the opposite. I still get the game days, the parties, the vacations, the dinners and the nights out. I just increasingly get to keep the next morning, too.
And that feels like a pretty solid trade.
Conclusion
Here's the thing: you're doing this for you. No one else, and your true friends will support you in ways that surprise you - like cutting back themselves, or making sure to have nonalcoholic beer at the next tailgate. So, raise your mocktail (or whatever you’ve swapped in) and toast to your new healthy habits. I am always rooting you (and my Seahawks) on. YOU GOT THIS!
Comments