475: What if you just love drinking? [Listener Q&A]
episode
Take a Break from Drinking: Practical Tools to Drink Less & Change Your Relationship with Alcohol
17 min
1 speaker
3 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Why does saying “I just love drinking” miss the real story?
I know what it's like to desperately want to drink less and have so many reasons why you should cut back, but to still find yourself thinking, the problem is I just love to drink. Now, most advice will tell you to focus on all the reasons why alcohol is bad for you, but I'm gonna make the case for doing the exact opposite. This is episode four hundred and seventy-five, and we're exploring why getting curious about what you love about drinking, not trying to talk yourself out of your enjoyment is the key to changing your relationship with alcohol. Whether you want to drink less or stop drinking, this podcast will help you change the habit from the inside out. We're challenging conventional wisdom about why people drink and why it can be hard to resist temptation.
No labels, no judgment, just practical tools to take control of your desire and stop worrying about your drinking. Now here's your host, Rachel Hart. Today, we're answering a question from a listener. Lynn wrote in with this What if you just love drinking? Not necessarily the taste, just the love of the habit of drinking. Sharing a drink with friends or my husband is one of my favorite things to do. I'm actively reducing and listening to your podcast. I know all the health risks and reasons to stop and reduce, but I keep struggling with. This is such a good question. And I will tell you, it is one that I struggled with myself for the longest time. And I know a lot of you out there listening can also relate.
Here's the thing conventional wisdom says that you need to focus more on the downsides of drinking too much. You need to remind yourself again and again of the health risks. You need to remind yourself of all the consequences and the things that you've regret. You need to remind yourself how bad alcohol is for you and remind yourself why you want to cut back. Basically, you need to convince yourself that drinking just isn't worth it. But I wanna take Lynn's question in a completely different direction. So what if instead of focusing on the downsides and trying to make the case for why you shouldn't love to drink? What if you leaned into the part of you that loves to drink? What if we didn't make that part of you wrong, but instead got really curious about why exactly you love it?
Because I don't think that Lynn's problem is that she loves to drink. I think the problem is when our brain has stopped being curious and stopped asking questions about why specifically we love it. So let's go back to what She wrote. Lynn said, I just love the habit of drinking, sharing a drink with friends, or my husband is one of my favorite things to do. Now, you might phrase that in a slightly different way, but I bet a lot of you out there. feel similar, right? Have a similar way that you would talk about it. What I would have Lynn and all of you do is just get more specific about what exactly you love. Because the statement, I just love to drink, it sounds like a complete explanation. But what I want you to consider is that it's really just a label for a much bigger experience.
And I think it might be easier to understand this concept if you take it out of the context of drinking. So, you know, you might think, well, I just love the beach. I just love the holidays. I just love skiing. Those statements actually tell us very little about a truly complex experience and what specifically you find appealing about it. And the same is true with a statement like, I just love to drink. I want you to consider what specifically do you love about it? Now, when I ask you that question, notice if your brain wants to immediately kind of wave it away by just saying, I don't know everything. I just love everything about it. But what if you had to tell me in very specific detail? What if you had to really paint a picture for me about what you specifically enjoyed?
Where would you start? What would you tell me? If you couldn't be vague, if you couldn't generalize, how would you explain it to me? Now I will tell you, most people, myself included, just never get all that specific.
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Chapters
3 chaptersSpeakers
1 identifiedMore from Take a Break from Drinking: Practical Tools to Drink Less & Change Your Relationship with Alcohol
481: Wanting to prove you can drink less
480: Tolerating the discomfort of not having another drink
479: How do I get back on track after I slip up and drink too much?
478: I've made so much progress with my drinking. So why doesn't it feel any easier? [Listener Q&A]
477: Chasing the Sweet Spot with Your Drinking
476: Why You Can Always Find a Good Reason to Drink