Imagine a world where you have to get off the couch and leave your apartment more often than not. Where you eat more vegetables and doughnuts. Where you have money in your bank account. A world where you have to stop drinking.
But wait, don’t stop reading! This is a good thing!
Apps are everywhere now, and most of them are free. New ones launch every day, it seems. But which ones can help you finally quit drinking? We’ve got the lowdown on five of the best apps out there to help you quit drinking alcohol for good.
Best Apps For Quitting Drinking
Alcohol addiction is a complicated disease, and there’s no substitute for treatment. But finding strength, support, and positivity in an app — which is there whenever and wherever you need it — can offer day-to-day reinforcement and accountability.
Healthline chose these apps for their high-quality content, reliability, and positive user reviews. We hope you find them helpful tools for finding and maintaining sobriety, or helping a loved one do so.
Twenty-Four Hours a Day
iPhone: 4.9 stars
Android: 4.9 stars
Price: Free
Twenty-Four Hours a Day helps you find inspiration whenever you need it with 366 daily meditations. Access today’s message and swipe forward and backward to read more. Bookmark your favorites and search all messages by keyword. Shake your device to summon a random message of inspiration and support. You can even customize font size for easy reading.
I Am Sober
iPhone: 4.9 stars
Android: 4.8 stars
Price: Free with in-app purchases
Use the I Am Sober app to track your sober days and milestones, build new habits, and enjoy ongoing motivation from a community of people who get it. Daily pledges can help keep you on track. A withdrawal timeline will help you understand what to expect in the days and weeks ahead. There are also additional resources designed to offer you a 24-hour companion and a wide network for your recovery.
SoberTool
iPhone: 4.7 stars
Android: 4.6 stars
Price: Free
This sobriety tool was developed by a Harvard-educated addiction counselor. It uses proven techniques to help you stay sober. Features include daily motivational messages, a search engine to help you find relevant content, a tool to avoid relapse if you have a craving, a chat forum, and much more.
Nomo
iPhone: 4.8 stars
Android: 4.4 stars
Price: Free
Parker is a guy in recovery who created Nomo to keep himself on track and motivated. The app lets you create and share sobriety clocks — as many as you need — to track the number of days you’ve been sober, unhealthy habits you’ve gone back to, or whatever else you want to track. Find detailed breakdowns of your progress to the minute, and earn chips when you reach milestones in your recovery. Send notifications to partners when you’re feeling tempted, and share your successes directly to social media.
Sober Grid
iPhone: 4.9 stars
Android: 3.8 stars
Price: Free with in-app purchases
Sober Grid is designed to serve as your sober social network. It connects you to sober people nearby, offers a 24/7 peer support group, tracks your recovery with check-ins and quests, and includes a sobriety counter. Your information on the app can be as private or as public as you choose.
Recovery Box
iPhone: 4.7 stars
Android: 4.6 stars
Price: Free with in-app purchases
The 12 Steps program is broken down into many seemingly minor but significant actions you must take to make progress on your journey to recovery. The Recovery Box app helps you navigate every single one of these steps, both expected and unexpected, with detailed descriptions of each of the 12 steps, hundreds of pages of readings from the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book, and the ability to instantly chat with your connections for support.
Joe & Charlie
iPhone: 4.9 stars
Android: 4.7 stars
Price: Free with in-app purchases
Need a guide to the many complexities of the recovery journey? Just want some background noise or music that you can listen to during a quiet moment in your day, or when you’re struggling with a recovery challenge? Joe & Charlie is a great resource. With thousands of hours of audio content, including readings and meditation sounds, Joe & Charlie can help you learn how to take the next steps in your recovery with an enormous list of helpful resources for the ups and downs of your journey.
Simple Habit
iPhone: 4.8 stars
Android: 4.7 stars
Price: Free with in-app purchases
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the anxieties and uncertainties of recovery. The Simple Habit app gives you a quick, easy resource to help relax your mind and your body with guided meditation courses, a progress tracker to see how much time you spend being mindful each day, and motivational tools. The app helps keep you accountable to your own goals in recovery and helps you build healthy, positive habits like daily meditation and coping tools.
Sober Time
iPhone: 4.7 stars
Android: 4.7 stars
Price: Free with in-app purchases
If you’re in recovery, you know that every hour, every day, and every month that passes not giving in to your addiction is a huge milestone. This app makes sure that you can count every minute along the way with powerful timekeeping tools, personalized goals for helping you achieve your sobriety milestones, and a community of support from those who have been there.
I Am
iPhone: 4.9 stars
Android: 4.8 stars
Price: Free with in-app purchases
It can be easy to forget that you are at the center of your recovery: That what you do and how you do it is central to your success in overcoming addiction. And sometimes, you just need a gentle, thoughtful reminder to yourself that you can do this — I am offers a wide collection of affirmation exercises that allow you to speak your anxieties, your concerns, and your fears out loud so that you can learn to cope with them.
BetterHelp
iPhone: 4.7 stars
Android: 4.5 stars
Price: Free with in-app purchases
If you want professional help and aren’t sure where to turn, BetterHelp offers virtual access to over 3,000 mental health specialists for free counseling as well as more in-depth paid counseling. This app is designed to help you get through the ups and downs of your journey without the hassles of scheduling an in-person visit or worrying that you may have to wait weeks to see someone when you’re struggling now.
If you drink alcohol, you might have found yourself wondering a time or two, “How much alcohol is too much?”
This question doesn’t always have a straightforward answer, since every person has their own limit when it comes to alcohol. That said, certain patterns of alcohol use do pose some cause for concern.
Binge drinking, one of these patterns, involves consuming several drinks in a short period of time. An episode of binge drinking can bring your blood alcohol content (BAC) to dangerous, even life-threatening levels. As a result, you might experience a blackout, vomit, or even pass out.
Alcohol use disorder (AUD), formerly known as alcoholism and alcohol addiction, describes a long-term pattern of alcohol use that becomes difficult to control. You might, for instance, feel an urge to drink even when you no longer want to, and have cravings when you try to avoid alcohol. In short, your relationship with alcohol may have started to disrupt your daily life and activities.
Below, we’ll compare and contrast these two patterns of alcohol use in more detail, plus offer some guidance on identifying your options for getting treatment and support.
What’s binge drinking?
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)Trusted Source defines binge drinking as an episode of alcohol use that raises your blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to 0.08 percent (0.08 grams of alcohol per deciliter) or higher.
This means you have 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood in your bloodstream. At this point, almost all states consider you too intoxicated to legally drive.
How much can you drink before reaching 0.08 BAC?
That depends, in part, on what beverage you’re having. Generally speaking, a standard drink contains 14 grams of alcohol. You can get this amount of alcohol from:
12 ounces of beer
5 ounces of wine
1.5 ounces of spirits (vodka, whiskey, rum, gin, and so on)
Experts typically define binge drinking by the number of standard drinks you consume in a single period of 2 hours or less. Your age and the sex you were assigned at birth determine your threshold.
For the typical person, an episode of binge drinking would mean a 2-hour period where you consume:
Adult men: 5+ drinks Adult women: 4+ drinks
Boys ages 16 to 17: 5+ drinks Girls ages 16 to 17: 3+ drinks
Boys ages 14 to 15: 4+ drinks Girls ages 14 to 15: 3+ drinks
Of course, these categories offer only guidelines, not hard-and-fast criteria. Other factors, like height and weight, can also have an impact on how alcohol affects you.
For example, a woman over 6 feet tall may be able to safely drink more alcohol than a woman who barely clears 5 feet. Similarly, a short man with a lower body weight may become intoxicated more quickly than a tall man with a higher body weight.
What’s more, many people simply don’t digest alcohol easily, so a lower tolerance for alcohol doesn’t always relate to body size or gender.
Here’s one important distinction between binge drinking and AUD: If you binge drink on occasion, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have an addiction to alcohol. Binge drinking is best understood as a behavior, not a mental health condition. But if you binge drink on a regular basis, you may have a higher chance of developing AUD.
Fast facts about binge drinking
According to the Centers for Disease ControlTrusted Source:
About 1 in 6 adults binge drink.
Among adults who binge drink, 1 in 4 do so on a weekly basis.
Binge drinking is most common among adults between the ages of 25 and 34.
Men are twice as likely to binge drink as women.
What’s alcohol use disorder?
The most recent edition of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)” includes AUD as a mental health diagnosis.
You may have AUD if you continue to drink despite any physical, emotional, and social consequences you experience. Perhaps you even want to drink less, or stop drinking entirely, but find yourself unable to quit.
Before diagnosing this condition, a professional will consider whether you meet at least two of the following criteria:
You spend a lot of time drinking or recovering from drinking.
You often drink more than you meant to.
You sometimes have a hard time thinking of anything else but drinking.
Your drinking has put your safety at risk more than once, such as through drunk driving.
You have tried to cut back on your drinking multiple times, but you just couldn’t.
Drinking interferes with your daily activities, including work or family time.
You keep drinking even though it’s caused problems with friends and family.
You’ve sacrificed hobbies or meaningful projects because they competed with your drinking.
Even when drinking makes you feel depressed or anxious, you still can’t seem to stop.
You need to drink more than you used to in order to get the same “buzz.” (This is called alcohol tolerance).
You get withdrawal symptoms, such as shakiness or nausea, when the alcohol wears off. (This is called alcohol dependence.)
If you have:
2 to 3 symptoms: You meet criteria for mild AUD.
4 to 5 symptoms: You meet criteria for moderate AUD.
6 or more symptoms: You meet criteria for severe AUD.
As you might have noticed, none of these criteria specify an amount of alcohol. But you don’t need to binge drink to experience AUD.
If you spend most workdays hungover, daydreaming of the glass of wine you’ll have as soon as you get home, that’s still a concern. It doesn’t matter how tiny the glass is, or how little you drink before becoming intoxicated.
Fast facts about AUD
According to the NIAAATrusted Source:
Among adults in the United States, 5.6 percent live with AUD.
Among U.S. adolescents ages 12 to 17, 1.7 percent live with AUD.
Only 6.4 percent of adolescents and 7.3 percent of adults with AUD get treatment.
You’re 5 times more likely to develop AUD if you started drinking before age 15 than if you waited until 21.
What are the risks?
Even though alcohol is legal in most places, it’s still a toxin, and a potent one at that.
Excess drinking can affect your physical and mental health in many different ways.
Risks of binge drinking
According to a 2020 studyTrusted Source of young adults, binge drinking appears to double the risk of alcohol-related consequences, compared to typical drinking. Students who binge drank in the past 12 months reported the following unwanted alcohol-related consequences:
11 percent got injured or physically ill
13 percent felt depressed, anxious, or ashamed
15 percent engaged in unsafe driving
40 percent experienced conflict and other relationship concerns
60 percent behaved in ways they later regretted
Another potential risk? Alcohol poisoning. The higher your BAC level, the higher your chance of alcohol poisoning.
Signs of alcohol overdose include:
confusion
cold, clammy skin that may appear bluish, grayish, or paler than your typical skin color
vomiting
slow breathing (fewer than 8 breaths a minute)
trouble staying awake
If you or a loved one show signs of overdose, contact your local emergency services immediately. Alcohol poisoning can get dangerous quickly, and it’s sometimes fatal. The sooner you get help, the greater your chances of recovery.
Risks of alcohol use disorder
Maybe you never binge drink. All the same, consuming large amounts of alcohol over a longer period of time can still contribute to serious health issues, including:
cancers of the mouth, esophagus, liver, breast, colon, or rectum
cardiovascular disease, or high blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, and stretching of heart muscle
liver diseases, such as fatty liver, liver inflammation, and irreversible liver scarring
pancreatitis, or inflammation in the pancreas
According to the World Health Organization’s Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health 2018Trusted Source, roughly 70 percent of alcohol-attributable deaths happen as a result of health issues. The rest are due to injuries.
Keep in mind, too, that AUD can have effects that extend beyond your physical health.
Excessive alcohol use can also contribute to:
family dysfunction
relationship difficulties and conflict
worsened symptoms of mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder
changes in your performance at school or work
thoughts of self-harm or suicide
Need support now?
If you’re having thoughts of hurting yourself or ending your life, know that you’re not alone.
You can always get free, confidential, compassionate support from a trained crisis counselor by:
calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255
texting “HOME” to 741-741 to reach Crisis Text Line
Find more suicide prevention resources.
How to get help
If you want to cut back on your drinking — or quit drinking alcohol altogether — you have plenty of options.
Medication
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved three medications for treating AUD. These medications may help make it easier to quit drinking.
Disulfiram. This disrupts your body’s metabolism of alcohol and makes you feel flushed or nauseous when you drink. It creates a negative association with alcohol so you become less tempted to drink, but it doesn’t target cravings — the core symptom of AUD.
Naltrexone. This drug reduces the feelings of euphoria when you drink alcohol. Unlike Disulfiram, which causes unpleasant side effects, naltrexone discourages drinking by removing the pleasurable effects of alcohol.
Acamprosate. If you’ve quit drinking, this drug can help you stay sober. The drug is thought to “reset” the neurons affected by alcohol use, so to speak, and help reduce cravings.
Doctors typically prescribe medication in combination with counseling to address the psychological elements of addiction.
Therapy
ResearchTrusted Source supports counseling as an effective treatment for addressing alcohol use. Your options for therapy include:
Motivational interviewing. This approach can help you understand the underlying reasons why you drink and why you might want to stop. Clarifying your motivations can make it easier to commit to change.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). This approach can help you recognize specific moods and situations that trigger your urge to drink. The two of you can then devise a plan to cope with cravings and address other symptoms.
Community reinforcement approach. This approach can help you build a life beyond drinking by addressing the issues that may have driven you to start drinking alcohol in the first place. For example, your therapist might help you explore skills to cope with the social anxiety you experience during sober get-togethers.
Behavioral couples therapy (BCT). This approach can help you repair your bond with your partner, if drinking has strained your relationship, and draw appropriate boundaries around alcohol.
Mutual support groups
Mutual support groups are exactly what you might imagine: groups of people who have all engaged in problematic drinking in the past and now offer each other support in recovery.
Most mutual support associations are nonprofits. Meetings, usually run by trained volunteers, are free to join.
Well-known associations include:
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)
LifeRing
Moderation Management
Self-Management and Recovery Training (SMART)
Their web pages offer both local and online groups, so you can choose whichever option works best for you.
The bottom line
Unlike AUD, binge drinking isn’t considered a mental health condition. Still, both patterns of drinking can lead to health concerns and affect your overall well-being and quality of life.
Treatment tends to have more benefit when you address unwanted patterns of drinking sooner rather than later. So, you don’t have to wait until alcohol use feels uncontrollable before reaching out for help.
Whether you want to address your long-term relationship with alcohol or break a pattern of binge drinking, a recovery professional can offer guidance and support.
best free apps to quit drinking
Whether you are trying to reduce your alcohol intake or quit drinking altogether, there are apps to help you succeed. We have searched through apps aplenty to bring you the best stop drinking apps based on their design, usability, user ratings, and ability to help you reach your target.
Quit drinking apps are designed to help you reduce your alcohol intake, stop drinking altogether, or stay sober for good.
Around 86.4 percentTrusted Source of adults in the United States have drunk alcohol at some point in their lifetime, according to the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
Consuming a moderate amount of alcohol – that is, up to one alcoholic drink per day for women and two for men – may have health benefits, such as a reduced risk for heart disease and ischemic stroke.
However, binge drinking and heavy alcohol use are linked with car crashes, burns, falls, alcohol poisoning, violence, sexually transmitted diseases, unintended pregnancy, chronic diseases, cancers, memory and learning problems, and alcohol dependence.
An estimated 88,000Trusted Source individuals die annually from alcohol-related causes, which makes alcohol the fourth leading preventable cause of death in the U.S.
Moderating or quitting drinking alcohol involves limiting your alcohol intake as well as changing your habits and lifestyle choices, and apps can help you to achieve these goals. Here are Medical News Today‘s top 10 stop drinking apps to help you take charge of your drinking habits.
Sober Grid
Android: Free
iPhone: Free
Sober Grid is designed to connect those who want to get sober or are in recovery from alcoholism with thousands of other people who are focused on sobriety. Some individuals join the app to receive support, while others join to give support. No matter the motive, Sober Grid serves as an opportunity to stay dry while helping others on the network to do the same.
If you need help and need to speak to someone right away, you can reach out to Sober Grid’s virtual sober community for support by selecting the “Burning Desire” button. Users of Sober Grid can also find sober friends while traveling away from home, be it in an airport or a new city. The network connects people both locally or from anywhere in the world.
The Sober Grid newsfeed allows you to share your thoughts, experiences, struggles, and triumphs related to addiction recovery and sobriety. Tracking your progress and having access to peer-support is the first step on your road to recovery.
Twenty-Four Hours a Day
Android: $5.99
iPhone: $5.99
Twenty-Four Hours a Day is an app based on a book of the same name written by Richard Walker. Walker has helped many alcoholics with his words of wisdom in their daily recovery program.
The app gives you access to the 366 daily meditations from the best-selling book at your fingertips, making it easy to focus on your sobriety and the Twelve Steps for recovery.
Swiping back and forth brings up daily messages, which can also be shared with friends and family. You can also bookmark your favorite meditations for easy access. Twenty-Four Hours a Day is a roadmap that keeps you pointing in the right direction in your recovery from addiction.
ADVERTISEMENT
Online therapy can help with long-term addiction support
Find a therapist from BetterHelp’s network of professionals for your addiction recovery journey. Take a quiz, get matched, and start getting support via phone or video sessions.
Sobriety Counter
Android: Free
Sobriety Counter is a fun app full of vibrant colors and bold icons that gamify your stop drinking journey. The bright dashboard shows you how much money you have saved by not drinking. You can also set up a treat as a goal with a personal image, and the app will show you the duration until you reach your target.
Scientific statistics show aspects of your health improvement, such as blood circulation, cell regeneration, gray matter, and mental health, as well as your risk of heart disease and cancer decrease.
If you have an urge to drink, play a game on the app called Memory. It helps to pass the scientifically proven 3-minute mark to beat your desire and stay sober. You can earn 57 badges with the sobriety counter as rewards for not drinking alcohol and share your current badge with your friends in one click.
Nomo
Android: Free
iPhone: Free
Two Dads – Parker and Michael – created Nomo to help keep them on track and motivated in their recovery from alcohol. The pair wanted to design an app “that looked great, could keep track of multiple clocks, and kept us connected with the other people in our support group.”
Nomo accurately breaks down the time you are sober to the minute, which means that it can show you your sobriety time in terms of years, months, weeks, days, hours, and minutes. Every time you reach a recovery milestone, Nomo issues a chip to celebrate your achievement and keep you motivated.
You can track time and money saved on the app, as well as share your successes and new chips on social media. Your sobriety clock can also be shared with your accountability partner, so they can check in on you and see how long you have been clean.
AlcoDroid Alcohol Tracker
Android: Free
AlcoDroid is an app that tracks alcohol consumption and can be used as a drinks diary and a calculator to determine blood alcohol content. AlcoDroid enables you to take charge of your alcohol intake and alter your drinking habits.
Based on the drinks you have logged, AlcoDroid estimates your blood alcohol content and plots your levels in an ongoing chart that indicates when you fall below the legal limit or get back to sobriety.
AlcoDroid charts your drinking habits daily, weekly, or monthly, and it displays your consumption statistics. You can set up targets to see how your alcohol intake matches those goals over a set timeframe.
I Am Sober
iPhone: Free
I Am Sober is a motivational companion app that tracks your sobriety. It lets you track the hours, minutes, and seconds that you have been sober and also the total number of days that you have been without alcohol.
Daily notifications keep you focused on the path to recovery and special notifications alert you when you have reached a key milestone. For each milestone, you can add a memorable photo and save or share your achievements.
Your experience can be customized by manually configuring your sober start date, habit, and notification times. The motivation dashboard provides inspirational snippets to encourage you and cheer you on.
MEDICAL NEWS TODAY NEWSLETTER
Knowledge is power. Get our free daily newsletter.
Dig deeper into the health topics you care about most. Subscribe to our facts-first newsletter today.
Enter your email
Your privacy is important to us
Stop Drinking with Andrew Johnson
Android: $2.99
iPhone: $2.99
Stop Drinking with Andrew Johnson is a positive, relaxing, and motivational app that helps you to overcome the physical and emotional cravings for alcohol. The app aims to give you the tools to change your thinking, break unwanted habits, and regain control of your thoughts, money, health, and well-being.
Whether you are trying to cut down on alcohol or stop drinking completely, this app can help to break the negative habits that result in you reaching for a drink, instead providing the resources to achieve your goals and lead a more healthful life.
Stop Drinking with Andrew Johnson uses hypnotherapy, relaxation, visualization, and positive suggestion to enable you to make positive decisions and accomplishments.
Happify
iPhone: Free
While not strictly an app for alcoholism, Happify helps you to overcome the negative moods that lead to unhealthful behaviors. Anxiety and depression raise the risk of becoming a heavy drinker, and Happify provides the tools you need to take control of your emotional well-being, which may, in turn, help you to stay sober.
Developed by scientists and experts in the fields of mindfulness, positive psychology, and cognitive behavioral therapy, Happify’s techniques and programs reduce stress and build greater resilience. In fact, after using Happify for 2 months, 86 percent of users report feeling better about their lives.
By completing a few activities each week, Happify aims to improve your life satisfaction and empower you to fight back against negativity. The app’s games and activities can be used anywhere – on your computer, tablet, or smartphone.
Coach.me
Android: Free
iPhone: Free
Although not specifically designed for addiction, Coach.me allows you to set a goal and helps you to work toward achieving your objective. After choosing your goal, the Coach.me community can help to keep you motivated – you can even hire one of their world-class coaches.
The app tracks your progress and provides rewards when you hit your milestones. There is always someone available from the community to answer your questions and to give feedback on your achievements and pitfalls.
Coach.me say that if you join their community, you will grow in mindset, experience the benefits of positive reinforcement and external accountability, and learn to reach your goals more effectively.
12 Steps AA Companion
Android: $2.99
iPhone: $2.99
The 12 Steps AA Companion is based on the Twelve Steps that feature in the Alcoholics Anonymous personal recovery program. The app provides the Big Book of AA in the palm of your hand, and it includes more than 60 stories.
Morning and night prayers, promises on experience, hope, and strength, and notes that can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, and email are all included in the app.
The dashboard clearly shows how many years, months, days, and hours that you have been sober every time the app is opened. You can also calculate the sobriety time of all your friends.
Conclusion
Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.
Check out other publications to gain access to more digital resources if you are just starting out with Flux Resource.
Also contact us today to optimize your business(s)/Brand(s) for Search Engines