The catalyst was a hangover. Sarah Davis woke up cringing from the night before and resolved to take a break from drinking.

As the months rolled by, she realised there was no reason to go back.

"I was just a normal drinker," she said. "It would be a glass of wine most evenings, maybe two, with some more at the weekend and the occasional big night out.

"But it just wasn't adding any value to me or my life. At the time I was working in the fitness industry and I just didn't feel authentic.

"It didn't sit right with me for a whole lot of reasons."

Ms Davis, 42, had quit her packet-a-day smoking habit years earlier, but this was easier.

She enjoyed the amount of time she created by not drinking and came to value the mental resilience she developed by using a drink to unwind after a stressful day.

"It was one of the best decisions I've ever made," she said.

The Global Drug Survey 2015, which was conducted in partnership with global media organisations including Fairfax Media, has found that Australians were most likely to want to reduce their drinking, with nearly two in five indicating they would like to cut down.

Australians were also among the most likely to cite social embarrassment or humiliation as the main factor that would get them to reduce their alcohol intake, with 32 per cent saying that would be the thing that changed their behaviour.

It was the second-most cited factor after having a physical condition that would be worsened by alcohol, which 42 per cent said would have the most impact.

Thousands of women are struggling with their own, often hidden battle with booze. Photo:iStock

Survey founder Adam Winstock, a British consultant addictions psychiatrist,  has designed an app that gives people an Alcohol Related Social Embarrassment (ARSE) score based on  how they answer questions about their behaviour while drunk.

He said younger people were not deterred by the prospect of being fat or unfit or unhealthy, but the idea of social embarrassment was anathema to them.

"I think this is something the Australian government has been aware of for a long time.

"Their advertising campaigns around things like alcohol has always been really smart."

A focus group participant from Sheffield University felt her social life was over after earning the nickname "Para (paralytic) Hannah" in her first two weeks of university, he said.

Australians were the second-least likely after New Zealanders to be served at a licensed venue if they had had too much to drink.

The survey found that with cannabis, ecstasy and cocaine, most people did not  make a conscious decision to stop using but that it just happened.

However, tobacco smokers and drinkers stopped suddenly and definitively.

Proportionately more females said they stopped using because they split with their partner or no longer saw the people they used to take drugs with, suggesting a tendency for women's drug use to be more relational than men's, the survey found.

Unharm director Mark Tregoning said deciding to stop drinking required a more conscious decision to be made because alcohol was such a part of Australian society, unlike drug use, which was done mostly by people in their 20s.

"A lot of drug use is social, so people take their cues from the behaviour of people around them and want to participate in a social situation," Mr Tregoning said.

The natural pattern of uptake and decline across people's lives suggested more law enforcement was not necessary, he said.