Seven evenings of honest notes can tell you more about your drinking than years of quiet arguing with yourself. The practice below asks for one week of looking at your own relationship with alcohol, with no denial and no self-condemnation. You can do it alone with a notebook, or with a small group that meets at the start and end of the week. By day seven you should be able to say, in plain sentences, when you drink, what the drink is doing for you, and what you want to bring to God and to one trusted person about it.
The practice rests on two things writer Ericka Andersen, author of Freely Sober, said in a Jude 3 Project conversation. She spent about two decades in what she describes as a very unhealthy relationship with alcohol while active in church. First, a question is enough to begin: “if there’s any question in your mind about the way you’re using alcohol in your life, I think it’s worth evaluating.” She set a limit on that right away: “that doesn’t mean, oh my gosh, you have to quit drinking right now. But it’s like, let’s explore this.” Second, the posture matters most: “the most important thing is to not be condemning of yourself, but to be curious and open and to pray that God would open your heart and mind to what he has to say to you about it.”
Day zero: write down where you are starting
Before you read anything else, take a blank page and finish this sentence in one or two lines: When it comes to my drinking, I think… Do not polish it. Then write a second line: If I found out something was wrong, I would feel…
Fold the page and set it aside until day seven. Most people begin this kind of inquiry leaning toward one of two exits. Denial decides the answer in advance, so the looking never starts. Condemnation looks just long enough to find a charge, then stops because the shame is too heavy. Your two sentences will probably show which way you lean, and that tells you which mistake to watch for.
Read the texts before you read yourself
Spend twenty minutes with three passages before you start keeping notes. Read each one twice, slowly, paying attention to what kind of writing it is and what it actually says.
Psalm 139: a prayer, not a self-audit
The psalm opens, “O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me” (Psalm 139:1). It closes with a request: “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24).
Notice the order. This is poetry addressed to God, and it begins by saying God has already searched and already knows. The closing request asks God to do the searching and then to lead. The psalmist does not run the investigation alone, and the search ends in guidance.
Observe: Underline every verb God does in verses 1 and 23-24. Then underline every verb the psalmist does. Who carries most of the action?
Lamentations 3:40: searching together
“Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the LORD” (Lamentations 3:40). The line comes from a book of grief written after Jerusalem’s destruction, and its voice is communal: “us” and “our.” Self-examination here belongs to a people, and it moves toward God.
Observe: What is the final movement of the verse? What does searching your ways lead to here?
1 Corinthians 6:12: the right question
“All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any” (1 Corinthians 6:12). In older English, expedient means beneficial or profitable. Paul is answering a slogan some believers in Corinth used to justify their behavior. He grants a kind of freedom, then adds two tests: is it good for me, and is it gaining power over me?
Observe: Write Paul’s two tests in your own words at the top of your notebook. You will use them on day six.
Where faithful Christians differ
This verse does not settle whether a Christian may drink, and believers who take Scripture seriously answer that differently. Some choose total abstinence. They point to warnings such as “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise” (Proverbs 20:1), to Paul’s concern in Romans 14 for a brother who might stumble, and to the plain fact that no one becomes dependent on a drink they never take. Others hold that moderate drinking is a freedom. They note that Scripture speaks of wine as a gift that gladdens the heart (Psalm 104:15) and condemns drunkenness rather than wine itself. Proverbs is wisdom literature, so its warning names a real danger without issuing a universal law. Andersen sits with the second group on the principle. She does not think drinking in and of itself is sinful, and she calls it a matter of personal conviction as well as personal freedom.
Restate: Before moving on, write one sentence giving the abstainer’s best reason and one sentence giving the moderate drinker’s best reason, each in words its holder would accept.
Is tracking just legalism?
A fair objection: keeping a log of every drink sounds like rule-keeping, the very legalism many Christians want to avoid. Lisa Fields, the founder of Jude 3 Project, raised that tension directly with Andersen, saying she wanted to avoid legalism and still be aware. The week answers it by what it asks for. It sets no limit and makes no rule. It gathers information you can bring to God, the way a person might note their sleep before talking to a doctor.
The practice also works for someone who does not drink at all. Fields observed that everyone copes with something, whether shopping, scrolling, food or drugs. If alcohol is not your issue, run the same notebook on whatever you reach for at the end of a hard day.
The week: keeping the record
Andersen suggests a simple notebook, approached as “looking at your life and the way that you drink as data, not some emotional, like, I’m bad or I’m good.” Use paper or your phone, and write each entry close to the moment rather than from memory the next morning. Her reason for tracking even when nothing seems wrong: alcohol “can overtake you slowly and then very quickly.” Slow changes are hard to see inside one evening and easier to see across seven.
Every time you drink, or want to
- When and where. Time of day, place, who was there.
- What happened just before. A hard call, a quiet house, a celebration, nothing at all.
- What the drink was for. Andersen distinguishes drinking with a meal from using alcohol for some other purpose. Write the purpose honestly: to relax, to sleep, to feel less alone, to enjoy the food, to fit in.
- How much it mattered. Would missing it have bothered you? A short note is enough.
Write the purpose line even when the answer is ordinary. A glass of wine with dinner because you like wine with dinner is good data too. The aim is a clear view.
Days three and four: the take-it-or-leave-it check
Andersen offers a gut check: “can you take it or leave it?” She asks whether getting or not getting a drink in the evening upsets you, and she adds, “I think we shouldn’t be emotional about alcohol.” On these two days, add one line to each entry: what you felt when you thought about not having it.
A word of care. If you drink heavily every day, do not use this week to stop suddenly on your own. Talk to a doctor first. Seeking that help is a faithful choice. God works through trained clinicians, and caring for your body and mind is part of stewarding the life he gave you.
Day five: look backward
Andersen recommends going back to how alcohol was presented in the home you grew up in. “How was it talked about?” she asks, and she also asks what your parents thought about it and whether addiction runs in your family. Her own story included a family history of addiction and an early sense, from high school on, that something was a little off in how she drank.
Spend fifteen minutes writing what you remember. The point is to learn where your assumptions came from, so you can decide which of them you still hold.
Day six: read the record as data
Lay out your entries side by side and read them as if a friend you love had written them. Then work through these steps in order.
- Circle every purpose that repeats. Most people find one or two jobs the drink keeps doing.
- Apply Paul’s two tests from 1 Corinthians 6:12. Was this good for me? Is it gaining power over me? Answer for the pattern, not for each glass.
- Name the good thing underneath. Andersen says that in addiction “we are seeking good things,” and the trouble lies in where we seek them. Rest, calm and relief are honest things to want.
- Read Matthew 11:28: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Jesus addresses tired people and offers rest as his gift. Write one sentence about where else you could seek the good thing you circled.
Now test your own conclusion. Suppose your notes show an ordinary pattern: no repeated purpose beyond enjoyment, no strong feeling when you skipped a drink. Say so plainly. The practice can return a clean result, and an anxious conscience can find guilt where there is none. Suppose instead a drink keeps doing one job, such as quieting anxiety. Andersen named her own pattern that way: “I take a Tylenol for a headache, I take wine for my anxiety.” Only the first half is ordinary care. If your notes look more like the second half, treat that as information calling for a next step, and leave your worth out of the question.
Day seven: tell one person one true thing
Andersen is blunt about handling this in secret. Of quitting alone with no support and no one told, she says, “I don’t know anybody that that’s worked for.” Her early attempts failed that way. What changed things was an online support group, where she saw how many ordinary people shared the struggle. Fields put the principle simply in the same conversation: “we don’t get through these hardships alone. We get through it with other people.” She also noted that community does not have to mean church for someone who has been hurt there. Andersen spent about two years in a secular recovery group before moving toward something faith-based.
Choose one person you trust and tell them one honest sentence about what you noticed. It might be that the pattern looks fine and you are glad you checked. It might be that you have been wondering about your drinking and did not want to carry that alone. Keep it to a small circle. Andersen, who shares much of her life online, still advised that “people should sort of earn the right to hear your story.” If what you found is heavier than a conversation with a friend can hold, add a doctor, a counselor or a recovery group.
If you are doing this with a group
Meet twice: once before day one to read the passages and restate the two views on drinking, and once after day seven. In the second meeting no one is required to share notes. Invite people to talk about what the practice was like; anyone who wants to say more can choose to. Whoever leads should model the posture before asking for it and respond to any disclosure with support and no quick fixes. If someone describes something that sounds like dependence, thank them, stay with them, and help them find professional help after the meeting.
Questions for the end of the week
- In Psalm 139, God searches and the psalmist asks to be led. How did it change your week, if at all, to think of the noticing as something God was doing with you?
- Which of Paul’s two tests was harder for you to answer honestly, and why?
- After a week of notes, which reading do you find stronger, abstinence or moderation, and what in your own record pushed you either way?
- What purpose showed up most often in your notes? What good thing were you seeking in it?
- Andersen says labels like alcoholic can keep people from getting help when they do not see themselves in the word. What label, or refusal of a label, were you carrying into this week?
- What made it easier or harder to tell one person the truth? What would make it easier for someone else to tell you?
Unfold the page
Go back to the two sentences you wrote on day zero and read them next to your day six notes. Did you start closer to denial or closer to condemnation? Did the week confirm your first sentence, correct it, or complicate it?
Write a third sentence underneath: Having looked, I now think… Then choose one concrete next step that fits what you found, whether that is carrying on as you are with a clearer conscience, keeping the notebook another month, or making a phone call you have been putting off. Bring that sentence and that step to God in whatever words you have, and to the one person who already knows.