In reply to tombo:
I cut down massively on drinking alcohol a few years ago and it's one of the best things I ever did. I never regarded myself as having anything approaching a problem of dependency but just gradually started to wonder whether life might be better with a bit less alcohol. And I've always been fairly bad at drinking, ending up with hangovers from hell when other people seemed to have got more wasted yet be suffering fewer ill effects. I'd been pondering the then government guidelines for a while and knew I was over (like most other women I knew so hardly surprising).
Finally I made a decision when I took a day off work to go climbing and ended up drinking too much wine the night before. I still recall sitting in the carpark outside Eric's. Had to sit for a while to get rid of the feeling that I was going to throw up after driving down some bendy roads. I thought, really, this is just so utterly stupid. A day off work in the sunshine with a good friend and climbing partner is a precious thing, and I've made it a lot less fun by drinking too much wine the night before. What a loser. Being hung over enough to throw up was extremely rare for me in those days, but still I reflected on all those days at the crag (or work or wherever) were I was just a bit fuzzy headed, a bit out of balance, a bit dehydrated, full of 'empty calories', a bit out of pocket and sometimes mildly regretful. So, I decided to cut down to the government limits and starting using the drinkaware website to log my drinking. At the time I thought it would be very difficult and therefore not last long. Totally wrong on both counts. I was gobsmacked by how easy it turned out to be. Obviously you'll know how easy or difficult you find and it might be different from my experience it but I think, generally, we should try not to uncritically accept the socially conventional idea that it is crazy, impossible or too difficult to cut down. And the longer I keep it up, the easier it gets because I feel better in many ways and it just makes me so aware of how enslaved so many people are by alcohol, which increases my determination not to be.
Low/no alcohol drinks and using drinkaware (essentially anything to help you keep track) were/are key for me, I think. I rarely drink wine now as well, which is a shame because I really like wine. But it's just too strong and I'd rather have a couple of lower alcohol drinks than one small glass of wine that is gone very quickly. The problem with the new 14 units a week guideline is it might encourage people to save up their units for a binge, which is obviously not an ideal plan. If not going totally teetotal, I would ensure you set a daily limit for yourself that is not transferrable to other days. Don't do 'dry week/month' stuff. If you want to change your life and make a new normal, just do that. I think all the 'dry January' thing serves to do is keep normalising the idea that we should all be blotto the rest of the time and that it's normal to be at least slightly pissed or slightly hungover most of the time.
For me, it helps that, although a lot of my friends drink more than me, I also know quite a lot of people who don't drink very much. So, I'm not often surrounded by people who openly pester me to drink, or abuse me verbally for not doing so. I did once go on a holiday where it felt like a bit of an issue, and some people in my family are a bit difficult in that way. People are sometimes subtly disapproving that I'm not drinking more (and much more so when I don't drink at all in situations where it would be socially conventional to do so).
People who don't drink cause a problem in some social situations because their mere presence threatens the normalisation of alcohol abuse that's so rife. You might have to face the fact that some people will think you're a loser, or no fun or a spoilsport. They might also assume (perhaps incorrectly, perhaps correctly, but certainly presumptuously) that you are alcohol dependent. But it's their problem really and they might just be doing it because deep down they're worried about their own drinking and you're making them nervous. But I guess you just have to stick with what you've decided is good for you and leave them to it.