Six years after I stopped drinking every day, I found myself back in the old habit.
I wasn’t getting drunk or waking up hungover. I was just having a glass of wine–on a Monday. Then again on Tuesday. Also on Wednesday and then why not have one on Thursday because it’s almost Friday?
This went on for a few weeks. And what rattled me more than anything was that I knew exactly what was happening. I’ve helped thousands of women interrupt this cycle. And there I was, stuck in it anyway.
Luckily, I knew not to overreact. I didn’t beat myself up or assume something was wrong with me. I didn’t try to force myself to stop because I know using willpower to ignore your desire for alcohol doesn’t make it go away — it makes it stronger.
You Do Have an Off Switch — Alcohol Is It
Let me say something that might be a relief to hear. You do have an off switch when it comes to alcohol. No matter how bad your drinking has gotten, there is always a line you won’t cross. Maybe that line is that you’re not drinking cheap beer. Or opening a second bottle of wine when you have to be fresh and on-point tomorrow morning. You most certainly pace yourself when you have to drive or when you’re mother-in-law is eyeing you like a hawk.
Your off switch may not work the way you want it to, but you do have one.
Which is why repeatedly telling yourself that you can’t stop once you start is bullshit. If that was true, you’d be dead from alcohol poisoning.
So the problem isn’t that your off switch is broken. The problem is that alcohol IS your off switch. It’s the only way you know how to shut off the noise in your brain. To feel like it’s okay for you to take a break and relax. You don’t know how to give yourself permission to stop go-go-going and do-do-doing. So you’ve come to rely on alcohol to do that for you.
So it makes a lot of sense that one drink is never going to be enough. Running through life like a chicken with your head cut off does not result in “mindful” drinking.
And here’s what relying on willpower to control yourself or even an extended period of sobriety can’t fix. Your need for something to help you cope with all the pressure and stress you feel is still going to be there.
I know that from personal experience. I gave up drinking for almost three years. And I was still stressed, still anxious and still looking for an escape. Removing alcohol from the menu hadn’t fixed the reasons I needed alcohol in the first place.
And that’s why I ended up back in the same pattern six years later when the demands of my life exceeded my capacity to cope with them.
Drinking Is the Last Domino, Not the First
Here’s what you need to understand. Trying to control yourself at the end of the night — once you’re already a couple of drinks in and your brain is telling you one more won’t hurt — is like trying to stop the last domino from falling. By the time you need willpower, it doesn’t really matter whether you win or lose the round. (And your brain knows that, which is why you think “fuck it” and just keep going.)
Think about a typical day. You wake up, look at your phone and realize you’re already behind. So you skip breakfast, chug coffee and race through your morning. Your brain is three steps ahead of your body all day. You’re saying yes to things you should say no to because that’s easier than setting a boundary. You’re not taking breaks because you’d rather just push through. You’re holding your breath through back-to-back meetings. You’re not drinking water. You’re not even peeing when you need to pee.
By evening, your stress bucket is overflowing because you haven’t done a single thing to empty it.
And then you pour alcohol on that?!?
Of course you’re going to be three drinks in before you even feel the buzz. Because you’re not feeling much of anything. You’re in the habit of ignoring anything that isn’t a full on hammer to the head because you’re stuck in survival mode. It feels like your nervous system is screaming for your attention (because it is). And alcohol is the fastest, most familiar solution your brain knows to help you feel better.
Your drinking is not the cause of your problems. It’s the effect. And as long as you’re focused on the last domino, you’re missing the hundred dominoes that fell before it.
The Cycle of Stress
Here’s what’s actually happening over the course of your day. Every time you push through a feeling instead of processing it — every time you agree to something you don’t actually agree with for the sake of keeping someone else’s peace, you sacrifice your own.
The stress doesn’t disappear. It gets postponed. And it accumulates.
And when you use alcohol to manage that stress — to force your nervous system to disregard or numb the feelings you haven’t processed (made sense of) — the internal pressure builds. You might escape it temporarily. But biologically, you’re making things worse. The problems you’re dealing with get heavier. Your capacity to solve those problems gets smaller. And your desire to pour another glass of relief intensifies.
This is why morning-you makes promises that evening-you can’t keep. Because morning-you hasn’t yet lived through the day. She’s hopeful, ambitious and goal oriented. But evening-you has no fucks left to give. She doesn’t care about morning-you’s opinions about drinking. But that’s not because she doesn’t care. She can’t care. Her body doesn’t have the capacity to make a better choice. Because your nervous system lives only in the present moment. Her job is to help you survive today — whatever it takes— tomorrow doesn’t matter.
And that’s exactly what happened to me last winter. My business took a financial hit that drained my cash flow. My dog died. My dad got sick. It felt like everything that could go wrong was going wrong. So it was easy to justify pouring a drink at the end of the day because what else did I have to look forward to?
You Have to Address the Conditions, Not the Symptom
Over-drinking is not self-indulgent. It’s actually a sign of self-neglect. The desire to pour alcohol down your throat tells you something very important — you’re running on a deficit. You’re giving more than you’re taking in. You’re holding your breath –– thinking that things have to get better before you can let yourself feel safe again. And you can only hold your breath for so long.
The counterintuitive solution isn’t to “cut back” on your drinking. It’s to improve the conditions that are making alcohol feel like the only obvious answer at the end of every day. You have to go upstream. You have to stop trying to prevent the last domino from falling and look at the chain of events that lead to the inevitable.
And I’ll be honest. That’s not a small ask when you probably don’t even know what I’m talking about. You’ve lived this way for so long. You’re probably wondering what it even means to stop pushing.
The bottom line is that this is about nervous system regulation. And I promise you that it’s very possible (and pleasant) to learn how to move through even the most stressful day without feeling like you’re in a dumpster fire of anxiety. The pressure you feel in your body is coming from your mind — not the outside world. And learning how to give your body what she needs throughout the day is how you can avoid falling into a bottle of wine every evening.
When you’re stressed, you drink like someone who is stressed. When you’re regulated, you drink like someone who’s regulated. It’s really just that simple.
How Nervous System Regulation Reduces Alcohol Cravings
I’ve helped thousands of high achieving women reduce their drinking by learning how to control their stress response, which increases their capacity to operate at a much higher level. This doesn’t happen overnight–it takes about a year to fully embody the changes. Change is a process, not an event.
Here’s what some of them have said.
Two weeks into the program, one client wrote: “I’m still drinking every day, but I see it differently now. I woke up around 4:30am and instead of letting my anxiety take over, I caught it. I said to myself — I’m not doing this anymore. I got up and walked around my house in the dark. It felt so peaceful. For the first time, I’m actually giving myself permission to just be where I am.”
Six weeks in, another wrote: “When I joined I was drinking every single night. Last Saturday I was at a dinner party and decided to finish my dinner before I had a glass of wine. Since then, I’ve had two alcohol-free nights. I know I’m not there yet but this nervous system work is legit.”
At ten months, one woman wrote: “I’ve reduced my alcohol consumption by 80 to 90 percent. But that’s not even the point. I’m so much happier. My overall outlook on life has improved dramatically.”
And another: “I joined to fix my drinking problem and discovered I was just living the wrong life. Since I left my marriage, my issues with drinking have mostly disappeared. I don’t worry about it anymore. I know it’s really not about the alcohol.”
That’s what’s on the other side. Not deprivation. Liberation. Alcohol loses its appeal when you become your own source of peace.
What to Do Next
The most useful thing you can do right now is to have an honest conversation about how alcohol is helping you. That’s right, helping you. Because if drinking didn’t serve a purpose, you wouldn’t be doing it. Which is why I offer free discovery calls to every woman in my community. Talking to someone you don’t know — who has no agenda and who isn’t going to use this against you, can have a huge impact on your perspective of both the problem and the solution.
Click here to schedule
your discovery call.
Book a discovery call
And if you want to learn more about my “Take it or Leave it” Methodology, check out these additional resources:
Free Masterclass
The Science of Take It or Leave It: Why Some Women Can and How You Can Too
It’s Not About the Alcohol podcast
EP337, Why Drinking Every Night Destroys Your Confidence (and How to Stop)