Our culture is obsessed with alcohol. It’s everywhere. You can’t even run a marathon without being offered a beer at the finish line. Or join a yoga studio that doesn’t feature Vino Vinyasa classes.
At the core of the obsession is the belief that there’s a difference between “normal drinkers” and “alcoholics.” Normal drinkers can drink as much as they want. Alcoholics can’t drink without fear that they will destroy themselves and everyone around them.
Yet everyone seems to ignore the fact that alcohol is an addictive substance. Which means the more you drink, the more likely you are to experience some level of dependence. It’s no different than caffeine or opioids or your phone. The more you rely on the thing that gets you through the day, the more you miss it when it’s gone.
Of course there are genetic factors that make it more or less likely that alcohol will become your “drug of choice.” Just like two people can eat the same junk food diet and one person gets fat and the other person doesn’t.
And here’s the most important thing you need to know. Science shows that the number one predictor of alcohol use disorder (the updated term for alcoholism) is not genetics, family history or childhood trauma. It’s the belief that some people lose control when they drink, and that for whatever reason, you’re one of them.
But loss of control is a myth. Studies show that even hardcore meth addicts can abstain when they are properly motivated. You don’t lose control so much as you surrender control because you’re conditioned to think that having an unlimited supply of alcohol is “fun” or “relaxing.”
This is a thinking problem, not a drinking problem. And wasting your time asking, “Am I an alcoholic” prevents you from asking more intelligent questions like, “how is alcohol helping me?” (because if drinking didn’t serve a purpose, you wouldn’t be doing it). And “what do I want more of in my life that would actually make me happy?”
Why the “Am I an Alcoholic?” Question Is Keeping You Stuck
God forbid a successful woman raises her hand and admits to having a drinking problem. We all know what happens then. You’re surrendering–waving the white flag. Admitting you’re powerless. You’re told to go directly to AA and get a sponsor. Read The Big Book and work the steps. Make a list of amends and go to sobriety meetings for the rest of your life.
And my sister, I’m here to tell you — fuck that. You don’t need to surrender your power. You need to take it back.
Because nothing is wrong with you. You’re not broken. You’re not helpless or incapable of making good decisions. You don’t need other people telling you what to do. Alcohol has just become your primary coping mechanism. It’s like medicine–a fast and efficient source of relief. It makes you feel better–at least temporarily.
Which means that your nervous system is simply wired to drink. And wiring can be changed.
But first you have to understand why it got wired that way. And I promise you, it’s not what you think.
The Reason High Powered Women Don’t Connect Their Drinking to Their Emotions
Successful women pride themselves on being rational, logical, and data-driven, and calm and cool under pressure. When things get tough, we get tougher. So it makes sense that you don’t see yourself as an “emotional” person.
But it’s impossible to not be an emotional person. Emotions are the glue in your neural pathways. They hold your memories, your instincts and your opinions. Saying “I don’t do feelings” is about as enlightened as saying you never have to poop. That’s not a thing.
If you are operating in a human body, you have emotions. Full stop. Because you have a nervous system. And emotions aren’t just for the dramatic – crying-in-the-bathroom or screaming in the parking lot. They’re biological sensations in your body. Every thought in your head generates a feeling in your body, whether you’re paying attention to them or not.
Which means you don’t get to choose between being emotional and not emotional. The real choice is between being aware or unaware of how your emotions affect you. There are two types of people in the world: the type who manage their emotions and the type who are managed by their emotions.
The mistake that most high achieving, successful professional women make is to think that controlling your behavior is the same thing as controlling your emotions. In reality, when you’ve been trained to leave your emotions “at the door,” that means you’re actually suppressing your emotions–ignoring them–even fearing them. Women are taught that negative emotions like anger, apathy and overwhelm make us less capable – less rational. And that’s dangerous.
Which is why we crave alcohol to soothe or even numb ourselves. Because we’re afraid of our own feelings! Unwanted emotions feel like a threat to our very survival.
Three Red Flags That Your Drinking Is More Than a Habit–It’s a Survival Strategy.
You probably don’t identify as someone who is drowning in emotional overwhelm. So you tell yourself that the reason you drink is just because you enjoy it. It helps you relax. You like the ritual of it. Pouring a drink is your reward at the end of a long day. And you’re not alone in that. I told myself the exact same story to explain why I drank every day for fifteen years.
Here are three questions that helped me understand what was really going on.
Do you say yes when you really want to say no?
You agree to host the thing or take on the extra project. You tell people “it’s fine” when it really is not fine. And you probably think you’re just being nice, being easy to work with, being strong and capable instead of demanding and difficult.
But what you’re actually doing is avoiding your own emotions. You’re afraid of the discomfort you’ll feel if someone else is disappointed. It’s easier to tell yourself no than someone else. You respect other people’s feelings and boundaries at your own expense. And then you carry the resentment and the frustration and the overwhelm that comes from giving more than you take and expecting yourself to act like it’s no big deal.
By the end of the day, you have a backup of feelings that you’ve pushed down and refused to acknowledge. You just don’t see it that way because you don’t think of yourself as an emotional person. You label that dumpster fire of intensity in your nervous system as a stress problem — and blame it on everything you’re dealing with “out there” instead of taking responsibility for your own choices. And then you judge yourself for needing to pour a drink just to take the edge off some of that pressure.
Here’s a reframe that makes this simple. Pouring a drink when you’re stressed is not about saying “yes” to alcohol. You’re just continuing to say “no” to yourself.
Do you ignore your body’s basic signals? If you’re so busy that you don’t have time to pee, eat lunch, or step outside for a breath of fresh air — you are avoiding the annoyance you feel about being interrupted, even by your own bladder. Think about that for a second. Your body is carrying you through life. And you’re letting your crazy brain drag her into all of these situations where her needs are never the priority. And when she sends you a simple signal — hey, can I go to the bathroom? — you override it. You say, I don’t have time for you, we’ll get to that later.
You have literally trained yourself to ignore yourself. So is it any wonder that when your body tries to tell you something about alcohol — hey, I need some water and a good night’s sleep. I’ve had enough–this isn’t even fun — you don’t even notice? Or at least you don’t honor the request.
Over-drinking is not about self-indulgence. It’s straight up self-neglect.
The reason alcohol has evolved into one of your primary coping mechanisms is actually because you don’t know how to give yourself a break. So you need alcohol to do it for you.
Do you have trouble transitioning into real rest? Are you in the habit of staying up too late, drinking, watching Netflix, scrolling on your phone? The most obvious reason is that you can’t even tolerate feeling something as basic as being “tired.” Think about what happens at ten o’clock at night. You’ve had a huge day and you know you’re going to have another one tomorrow and you should be going to bed. But instead, you pour another glass and start another episode.
Why? Because going to bed means being alone with your thoughts. It means transitioning from doing to just being. And when you don’t know how to make that transition, it feels really uncomfortable. So you drink until you pass out because you don’t know how to downshift your nervous system. You’re using alcohol, television or your phone to stimulate you and keep you awake. Together, they let you stay in this numb middle zone that keeps you from feeling anything. Not the tiredness, not the frustration, not the lack of purpose or connection in your life.
You don’t want to know what’s waiting for you in the dark. Because you’re scared that feeling your emotions means being consumed by them. And if you start crying or screaming, you may never stop.
What’s Actually Happening in Your Nervous System
Shame thrives in secrecy. That’s not a platitude — it’s what the research shows. It grows in silence and darkness. But it can’t survive when it’s spoken out loud in the presence of compassion and understanding.
Which means the antidote to shame is the one thing shame is telling you to avoid at all costs: tell the truth.
Not to everyone. Not all at once. The first person you need to tell the truth to is yourself. And then, at some point, to one other person you feel safe with.
Here’s how these three red flags connect. When you don’t process your emotions — when you suppress them, power through them, ignore them — they don’t disappear. They accumulate. They back up and create pressure that starts leaking out sideways. The passive aggressive comment. Snapping at your kids. Pouring the third glass of wine. The existential crisis that comes with having everything you’re supposed to want and still feeling like it’s not enough.
I like to call this “emotional constipation.” Because it explains why it feels like you’re living in a pressure cooker. And also why alcohol feels like a release valve.
Your body keeps the score–whether you’re paying attention or not. And every time you say yes when you mean no, pressure builds. Every time you ignore your own basic needs, pressure builds. Every time you numb yourself to get through another evening, pressure builds. And then you wonder why by Friday night, one glass turns into the whole bottle almost immediately. Why you can’t seem to stop even though you’re not a fan of “sick and stupid.”
You’re not weak. You’re not lacking discipline. You’re so disciplined that you have no idea how to just relax and unwind. And by the time you’re standing in your kitchen at seven o’clock at night, arguing with yourself about whether or not you’re going to pour the drink, it really doesn’t even matter. Because the need for relief is real. You’re nervous system is dysregulated. You’ve crossed the line from being stressed into being overwhelmed. Which means your thinking brain is basically offline. And your nervous system doesn’t about tomorrow or your long term health or your opinions about what you should or shouldn’t do. It’s only job is to help you survive — today — to get you relief by any means available.
That’s not a character flaw. That’s dysregulation.
What Actually Changes This
After helping thousands of very successful, high achieving women permanently change their relationship with alcohol, there’s one thing I know for sure: Willpower isn’t enough. You need to learn how to regulate your nervous system. Because the version of you who can genuinely take or leave alcohol — she already exists. You get glimmers of her. She’s the one who signs up for the yoga class. She’s the one buying the vegetables at the grocery store. She’s the one reading this right now.
The bottom line is that the more regulated you are throughout the day, the more you’re going to drink like somebody who’s regulated in the evening. That’s not a theory. That’s biology. And it’s so much bigger than your drinking. How you do one thing is how you do everything. Becoming someone who can genuinely take or leave alcohol will translate to being someone who can take or leave anything — a relationship that isn’t working, a career that’s lost its meaning, the obligations and unfair expectations that are draining your energy.
That’s what doing this work actually gives you. Freedom — not just from the urge to drink, but from everything you’ve been tolerating because you haven’t given yourself the space to explore the options.
What to Do Right Now
The most useful thing you can do if this landed — if you recognized yourself in one or all three of those red flags — is to get out of your head. Have an honest conversation with someone who won’t flinch or judge you or give you condescending advice like, “just quit drinking.” Because you already know it’s not that simple.
This is why I offer free discovery calls to every woman in my community. Because high achieving women need a safe space to speak freely. Which is why talking to someone you don’t know – who isn’t going to use your story against you because they’ve been through this themselves – can feel so liberating.
I’m not going to tell you this work is easy, but I will tell you from my experience that the work it takes to create a whole new reality for yourself — a reality where it doesn’t even occur to you to pour a drink after a long hard day because that’s the last thing you want — begins with allowing yourself to be seen as you are where you are.
And I want to leave you with realistic expectations. Having a private conversation with one of my certified coaches won’t immediately change your drinking. But it will change your perspective of both the problem and the solution and give you a roadmap to follow that actually moves you forward.
Watch the free masterclass here
If you’d prefer to talk to someone who’s been through this, book a free discovery call with one of my certified coaches. Having an honest conversation with a woman you don’t even know–who isn’t going to judge you or tell you to quit drinking–is the fastest way to get clarity on what you really want.
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This quiz takes about 3 minutes. Your results will reveal which of the four drinker types you are—and what’s really been driving your cravings for alcohol.
No fluff. No judgment. Just clarity.
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EP340 Why your drinking makes perfect sense (and how to actually rewire your brain)
It’s Not About the Alcohol podcast