You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

Hey everybody, it's Mariel.

Alcohol is everywhere in our culture.

Think about how many bars and liquor stores are in your city or town.

How many ads you see on social media and on TV,

how many times your favorite character on your favorite show pours themselves a nice glass of bourbon or sips an ice-cold beer?

Understandably, then, it's easy to forget that alcohol is really not good for us.

Drinking increases your risk of certain types of cancers and other chronic diseases.

In fact, the World Health Organization says there's no safe amount of alcohol to drink.

In the short term, drinking can also give you hangovers, interrupt your sleep, drain your wallet, and sometimes hurt your relationships.

So what do you think about taking a break? Some people do this for a month. Dry January, sober

October, some do it for longer. Casey Davidson is a sobriety coach and host of the Hello

Someday podcast for sober curious women. She quit drinking about a decade ago. And at the time,

she was drinking a bottle of wine and night, seven nights a week. That's weirdly not as unusual as you might

think it is. Casey acknowledges that it can be scary to stop drinking, even for a little while.

You're afraid that you won't know what to do with your time, that you won't be fun anymore,

that your life will be empty or you'll seem boring. If you have based a lot of your connections

at work or with friends or with dates on drinking, it's okay to be a little uncomfortable doing it alcohol-free.

I mean, you should expect that you will try to figure out what to do with your hands or what to think about or what to talk about.

But she says there's another side to life once you get over that hump.

You will connect with people more deeply.

You will get to know yourself better.

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