I tried 4 things to cut back on wine. The one that worked had nothing to do with willpower.

I told my husband about it on January 1st, mostly so I'd actually have to follow through. I filled the fridge with the fancy non-alcoholic wine, the kind that costs almost as much as the real thing, and told myself that counted as trying.

The first few days weren't even that hard. By day five my sleep was noticeably better, which surprised me, since I don't think I'd ever really believed the wine was doing anything to it. But by day seven I was already doing the math on when January ended. Not craving it exactly. More like I was serving a sentence and counting down the days left.

My sister came into town for one night on day nine, and I poured a glass without really deciding to. It didn't feel like giving in so much as the whole month finally catching up with me. I didn't touch it again until she left, but by the time February started, I was right back to two glasses like nothing had happened.

This one I actually respected as a system. No wine Monday through Thursday, full stop, and I kept it for three weeks straight, which for me was already unusual. I noticed I had more patience with my kids on weeknights, the kind of thing you don't expect to connect to wine until you actually take it away.

But Friday turned into a different animal entirely. By six o'clock I wasn't just having my normal two glasses, I was having what felt like the whole week's worth over two nights. Saturday I told myself I'd earned it. Sunday I told myself it didn't really count since the weekend was basically over anyway. My husband started joking that I drank like it was my last weekend on earth. He wasn't wrong.

By week four I'd quietly stopped keeping the rule at all. Not a decision, more like the whole system had just stopped registering as something I was still doing.

I found this one in a wellness newsletter. Alternate a sparkling water between every glass of wine. It sounded reasonable enough that I actually kept it up longer than either of the first two, on and off for about two weeks.

Some nights it genuinely worked. I'd have my glass, then the seltzer, then decide I didn't want the second pour badly enough to justify it. Other nights the seltzer was just a formality on the way to pouring the second glass anyway, like checking a box before doing the thing I was going to do regardless.

The real problem was I had to remember to do it every single time, and on the nights I was tired or distracted, which was most nights, I skipped straight to the wine. It wasn't a bad idea. I just couldn't rely on myself to execute it consistently, which was sort of the whole problem I was trying to solve in the first place.