Sometimes a person is not ready to completely stop drinking. This can be difficult for a loved one, however, there are still ways to help. This is when you can think of ways to decrease the harm they can do to themselves. This is called “Harm Reduction”. 

Here are strategies you can use to reduce the harm done to a person, or to help create healthier drinking habits for your loved one. 

  1. Only buy how much you want to drink.
  • If you have less alcohol on hand, it reduces the chances that you will drink too much at one time and helps control your cravings. 
  1. Choose some “drink free” days
  • Pick a few days in the week (or one) where you choose to not drink. Tell someone this plan to help you be accountable (i.e. make plans with someone that night etc)
  1. Decrease the strength of alcohol you drink. 
  • Try reducing the strength of the alcohol you drink by rotating through low-alcohol drinks for example, beers or pop (ex: ginger ale). 
  • This can also include things limiting the number of drinks, only buy the amount of alcohol you want to drink, or finding days where you don’t drink