How to Drink Less and Have More Fun.

By Simon Poulin, CEO & Co-Founder Upside Drinks

For a long time, I assumed drinking less meant having less fun.

Not in a dramatic way. Just in a quiet, obvious way.
Fewer drinks = fewer laughs = fewer stories. And earlier nights.

It felt like a fair trade. An unfortunate one, but a real one.

Once you believe that, drinking less stops being a small choice and starts feeling like you’re giving something up.

And people are terrible at choosing things that feel like losses, even when they know those things are probably good for them.

What finally changed for me wasn’t willpower, or rules, or a new identity.

It was realizing that most of the fun I was trying to protect wasn’t actually coming from the alcohol.

The invisible fear

When people talk about drinking less, the conversation usually jumps straight to health.

Better sleep. Clearer mornings. Fewer regrets.

All true. But those benefits live after the fact.

The real resistance shows up before the drink:

• Will this dinner be awkward?
• Will I be bored?
• Will I leave early?
• Will I feel like I’m missing out?

In other words, we’re not afraid of drinking less.
We’re afraid of having less to say, of being more timid, of being less fun.

The mistake: making it a “thing”

Most attempts to drink less fail because they become a thing.

A declaration.
A rule set.
An identity.

Suddenly there’s pressure, internal and external. Every social situation turns into a decision. Every drink feels symbolic. Every exception feels like a failure.

That’s exhausting.

And ironically, it makes alcohol take up more mental space than before.

A quieter shift

What worked for me - over time - was much less dramatic. And I say “over time” because I learned it the long way.

I didn’t quit.
I didn’t announce anything.
I didn’t set rules I had to defend.

I just changed a few defaults.

I stopped drinking at home most nights.
I drank more slowly when I did drink.
I cared less about keeping pace with other people.
I left things earlier instead of staying and forcing it.

None of this was about discipline. It was about friction.

Lowering the effort required to drink less,  without raising the effort required to have fun.

What I noticed

Here’s the part that surprised me.

The fun didn’t disappear.

If anything, it moved.

Conversations were better because I was more present.
Dinners were more enjoyable because I actually remembered everything. 
Nights out ended before they dragged.
Mornings stopped feeling like damage control.

Most importantly, I realized how much “fun” I had been outsourcing to alcohol.

Once I stopped doing that, fun became less fragile.

Fun isn’t fragile, energy is

This was the real reframe.

Fun isn’t created by drinks.
It’s created by energy. 

And alcohol borrows energy from tomorrow to make tonight feel louder.

Drinking less didn’t make things boring. It made the right moments stand out more clearly and made it easier to skip the ones that weren’t actually that fun to begin with.

The upside

The goal isn’t to drink never.
And it’s definitely not to be righteous about it.

The goal is to enjoy your life without turning enjoyment into a performance or a recovery project.

Drinking less can be simple.
Quiet.
Unremarkable.

And when it is, you might find that you didn’t lose any fun at all.

You just stopped needing alcohol to prove it was there.

SP.