Cracking open a bottle might seem easy in the moment, but feeling hungover is also hard. Feeling disappointed in yourself is hard. Letting other people down is hard. Not being able to participate in your life fully is hard. Never having the energy or headspace to change your life? Well, that’s also hard.
Sobriety gets a bad rap
Culturally we have this story about sobriety being very hard indeed. (Just consider how many people get sponsored to stop for a month!) The truth is that sobriety is hard in the beginning. It does require work to do something different, change a pattern, let a craving pass, figure out another way to meet your needs. All of that requires effort, of course. But it’s not like that forever.
A sober life is an easy life
When I look back on my drinking days, I can see now how hard I made things for myself! I don’t think I’m cut out for that anymore. Kudos to you if you are drinking and still keeping life going and your head above water – that takes some work. If you can figure out how to do that, you can absolutely figure out how to quit.
Next time you’re tempted to drink…
Ask yourself: “Do I want this hard glass of wine?” Or the hard 24 hours that begin as soon as you open the bottle? Are you really up for that? We have to break this association between wine and self-care, wine and looking after yourself. Drinking is the hard, painful choice.
Focus on this instead:
Why is sobriety the easy choice? Start writing a list of reasons. The chances are, you spend a lot of time thinking about why alcohol-free living is hard, but not much time talking up the other side of this and telling that story. Scroll down and let me know in the comments – why is alcohol-free living the EASY choice in the long term? Let’s get a great list going here!
Ready to create an alcohol-free life you love? Click here to learn more about my Getting Unstuck course.
“Just a few more hours of work, then a glass of wine at home.”
It’s a common train of thought. Viewing a small drink, just a glass, as a reward for getting through a particularly frustrating day, or finally finishing some work that took a lot out of you.
It’s normal for many people, but to some of us, it’s a surface-level sign of a persistent problem we’re trying to keep to ourselves.
If that one glass becomes two or three most nights – but from the outside everything seems fine – you might relate to the term “grey area drinking”.
If this sounds familiar, and you’re unsure of how to break the habit, this video is for you.
Grey area drinking isn’t dramatic. It’s far from the cliché of the problem drinker. In fact, it’s often so routine and well hidden that most people around you won’t notice it at all. To many grey area drinkers, it looks like quietly drinking a bottle of wine after work, at home, every night, then powering through a hangover the next day to prove everything’s fine.
It’s having a few drinks at the party, making a polite excuse to leave, then drinking what you actually wanted to in privacy at home, unobserved. And that’s what can make grey-area drinking feel incredibly lonely – almost no one else sees it.
If it’s a problem for you, I want you to know that you’re not alone. There are thousands of other successful, outgoing, outwardly brilliant women who carry this secret burden. It’s not a “you problem”, it’s an expected result of a society that says you can only have a good or a bad relationship with an addictive drug. We grey-area drinkers know that this just isn’t true.
Why you don’t need to be an alcoholic for this to matter
One of the most challenging things about grey area drinking is that, to the outside world, it’s often invisible. You’re doing well at work, you see your friends regularly, your loved ones are happy; you’re far from the stereotypical problem drinker, so everything must be okay, right?
But things don’t feel okay. The lingering anxiety, the internal questioning, the headspace taken up with thoughts of alcohol, it can all be so exhausting. This is a painful trap that can be so easy to fall into, waiting for things to get bad enough to force a change.
If drinking has become a problem for you, then I want you to know this: outside of labels and no matter how things might look to anyone else, you are allowed to make a change.
When I was struggling with my drinking, I constantly asked myself “AmI an alcoholic?”, as if I felt I needed to qualify for a label to justify a change. If you’ve had similar thoughts, please know that things don’t need to get worse before they get better – you can start to feel like you again whenever you are ready.
Trying to cut down
Deciding to make a change is the first step; working out exactly what that change looks like is the second. This is where the next hurdle with grey area drinking can pop up: “What does a better relationship with alcohol look like to me?”
If you’re thinking, “Well – I’ll just cut back and drink less,” then I get it. And to be honest, that’s what we all do first. It makes sense to start there and see what happens. But if you’re reading this, I’m guessing you’re a few steps ahead already. You’ve probably already tried to cut back for some time now. Maybe weeks. Or months. Or years. How has that worked out?
Alcohol is an addictive drug, but the world around us treats it like a normal part of life. For people who enjoy drinking, moderation is set up to fail. What’s worse is that struggling with moderation can make you feel like you’ve failed, particularly when you come across other people who seem to be able to control their drinking.
Struggling to moderate isn’t a personal failing. Just like others might not notice grey area drinking, we don’t always know how much control other people really have over their drinking. They may be restricted by their finances, they might not enjoy feeling drunk, they could be grey area drinkers too. It’s not a willpower issue, it’s just that the strategy itself doesn’t actually work.
What most moderation advice fails to mention is that trying to cut back is basically a full-time job. It means setting rules for how much you can drink, when and how often. It’s constant organising, scheduling and making plans for when things go wrong. It’s mentally exhausting.
Cutting back keeps alcohol at the centre of your life. You think about it just as much as when you are drinking, it’s just that now there are more rules to follow and deeper feelings of shame associated with breaking them. It’s not your fault and it doesn’t have to be this way.
I know the cravings and habit-forming cycles can be stopped, even if it feels impossible at first. It all starts with taking a break from alcohol to quieten your mind and work out your next steps.
What to do next
If you’ve been trying to cut back on drinking for ages and it’s just not working, the next step is to test-drive sobriety. You don’t need to make any long-term decisions, just give yourself some time to really experience alcohol-free living and to quieten the alcohol noise in your mind.
The early days of sobriety are the hardest. You’re tackling cravings, sober firsts, and challenges left, right, and centre. So don’t, whatever you do, judge alcohol-free living on those early days. Otherwise it’s a bit like trying to decide whether you want to marry that person you’ve been on two dates with. For most of us, it’s just way too early to tell!
Behaviour change is hardest at the beginning. If you only ever stop from Monday to Thursday (or white-knuckle through a miserable Sober October, counting down until November 1st) you’re not going to have a breakthrough. Allow sobriety to become your new normal and then – and only then – you can make a decision about the future.
If you’d like some help and support to quit drinking or take a break from booze,click herefor details of my online course.
FAQs
What is grey area drinking?
Grey area drinking is the space between ‘alcoholic’ and ‘normal’ drinking. If you drink more than you’d like to and often think about alcohol – but wouldn’t consider yourself a stereotypical alcoholic – describing yourself as being in the ‘grey area’ can offer a starting point to work from.
Am I a grey area drinker?
If your drinking looks ‘normal’ to others but feels like a problem to you, you’re in the grey area. It’s not the same for everyone, but it usually involves regularly drinking more than you’d like to but not allowing yourself to see it as a problem because it doesn’t affect your job or family life.
Do I have to be an alcoholic for my drinking to be a problem?
No, you don’t have to relate to any label to make a change. Just wanting to feel better is as good a reason as any to change your relationship with alcohol. Things don’t have to get ‘bad enough’ and you don’t need to be labelled. If it’s a problem to you, it’s worth being addressed.
Can’t I just cut down instead of stopping?
Most people start with this and that makes sense. But how long have you been trying that for already? The problem with cutting down is that it keeps alcohol at the centre of your life. Moderation means constantly controlling your drinking, keeping the alcohol noise loud in your head. Taking a proper break is the only way to quieten the noise and calm your anxieties.
How do I stop drinking every night?
Taking that first step is much easier with the right support behind you. If you’d like some help from someone who’s been there, you can find details about my online course and sober coaching programme by clicking here.
You spend a lot of time thinking about your drinking, worrying and wondering whether you should quit.
You buy books about alcohol-free living and follow sober bloggers on Instagram. You wake up hungover and vow you’ll definitely quit… only to question the decision a few hours later.
It’s exhausting, not being able to decide what to do.
Let’s talk about all the (totally understandable) reasons why we get stuck not taking action – and what you can do about it!
Here’s how to get round this: Take a break from drinking instead. You don’t need to be 100% certain about the future to get started – plus it’s impossible to know how you’ll feel in a month’s time, never mind a year or several decades away!
Taking a break for at least 6 weeks allows you to test drive sobriety properly and get into a new routine without the pressure of signing up for life. Once your break is over, you can always go back to drinking if you want or set another short-term goal.
Reason 2: You’re weighing up another option (moderation)
Here’s how to get round this: If you want to focus on cutting back, you can of course choose to do that. Just put a time frame on it. Check in with yourself – how long have you been trying to cut back already? How many different rules and tricks have you attempted?
Write this down so you have a record of what you’ve done so far. I cannot stress enough – you must write this down. Do not trust your memory to be a reliable witness for this! You need reliable data about how this drug is affecting your one and only life.
Reason 3: You’re not sure if it’s worth it
Here’s how to get round this: Keep a diary. Set a reminder on your phone so you remember to write a sentence or two about how you’re feeling, morning and night. Do this every day, regardless of whether you’ve been drinking or not.
By writing this down, you’re gathering important data about how alcohol genuinely affects you. This information is gold – it will show you, over time, how drinking truly impacts your quality of life.
Reason 4: You’ve tried and failed before
Here’s how to get round this: come and get some support. It’s hard to quit drinking when you’re doing it on your own and trying to figure everything out by yourself. If the pain of ”failing” last time was so bad that you can’t bring yourself to try again, that’s a sign that you need some coaching and help to manage your mindset.
I can help you with this right now. Come and join Freedom Week for 7 days of free coaching and support. If you’ve been trying to fix your drinking with willpower and getting nowhere, it’s time for a completely different approach.
It was the writer Robert Brault who said, “Enjoy the little things in life because one day you’ll look back and realise they were the big things.” Whether it’s getting up early enough to have a few moments on your own with a coffee – or remembering the storyline to a TV show – these very small things don’t sound much on their own. However, the cumulative effect of these positive, small moments is huge.
From quiet bins to keeping appointments
I asked some of my Getting Unstuck students to tell me about the little things they love about alcohol-free living. Their answers covered everything from appreciating a heightened sense of smell, to being able to look people in the eye and get up earlier with ease.
One of my Getting Unstuck students, Delwyn, told me that nowadays she can take her recycling bin out to the curb without looking at all the empties and feeling ashamed. Madeline has gone from keeping 50% of her dentist / doctor appointments to attending 99% of them. And Liz loves being able to answer the door or the phone knowing she’s sober and will remember the conversation.
What will your super specific wins look like?
If you took a break from drinking, what would life look like for you? Maybe you’d love not having to sneak in a quick drink before your partner gets home. Or you’d be relieved to no longer juggle a rotation of different shops (in case anyone notices how much you’re buying). Or perhaps you’d find it easier to remember your medication or a conversation from the day before.
These little things are tiny. They probably won’t convince someone to quit drinking, but this really is the stuff that makes an ordinary day so much better – and that’s exactly why I wanted to share it.
Learn how to break free from wine o’clock and escape the drink-regret-repeat cycle for good!Register below.
The seasons are changing and that back-to-school vibe is well and truly here…
If you’ve been drinking more than you planned to over the past few months, now is as good a time as any to turn over a new leaf and get back on track.
But successful sobriety isn’t just about crossing your fingers and hoping for the best – so today I’m sharing three key tips to help you have a successful sober September
I know how tempting it is to try and do it all. Maybe you also want to lose weight and get fitter and cook more meals from scratch and meditate every day and do yoga and a juice cleanse. But if you put pressure on yourself to do everything at once, you’ll end up giving up on it all before we’re halfway through the month.
I have lots of successful clients who’ve lost weight and run marathons since quitting drinking, but they didn’t do it all at once. They gave themselves permission to focus on one thing at a time, and wait until sobriety felt a bit easier before adding anything else into the mix.
Tip 2: Be patient
Trust that how you feel in the early days of sobriety is not how it’s going to be for the rest of time. Early sobriety does require some effort and commitment to get going – but it gets so much easier with time, I promise.
After a couple of tough days it will be tempting to say, “I’m not cut out for this – I can’t continue with this forever.” But it won’t be hard forever. If your kids or grandkids are starting at a new school this month, I’m sure you’d reassure them that it won’t be strange and awkward forever – they’ll settle in!
Tip 3: Think about what your drinking tells you
Behind every craving for alcohol is an unmet need – so your drinking tells you quite a lot about what you need. You might be using alcohol as a shortcut for relief, comfort or escape from overwhelm. Whatever it is, you want to know about it.
This matters because in sobriety you want to be sure you’re thinking about that unmet need and addressing it. For example, if pouring a glass of wine is the only thing you do for yourself all day and it feels like a treat, then you’ve got to replace that ritual with something. Or if drinking feels like rebelling and sticking two fingers up to the world – find some other way of doing that!
Ready to create an alcohol-free life you love? Click here to learn more about my Getting Unstuck course.
One of my favourite quotes is: “Winners lose more than losers ever will.” And it’s true. Behind every successful person are so many failed attempts. For example, JK Rowling had the Harry Potter manuscript rejected 12 times. Oprah was fired from her first TV job. Lady Gaga got dropped by her first record label. And I tried and failed to quit drinking more times than I can count – but I’m now 13 years sober! Failure is simply part of success.
Look at your practical strategy
Ok, as well as giving you a pep talk, I want to make a practical recommendation. Do you actually have a plan for when a craving hits, or are you just hoping for the best? Think about what you might do in that moment. Do you know how to handle stress without reaching for a drink? That’s a common trigger too. Plan for this stuff now – and get help if you’re not sure how to handle these moments (this is one of the things I can support you with on my Getting Unstuck course).
Check your mindset
Long term, you don’t want sobriety to feel like a restrictive diet, or like the love of your life has been ripped away from you. The goal isn’t to spend your life heroically resisting something you secretly wish you could have. It’s to change how you see alcohol, so not drinking starts to feel like the better deal. You’ll know this is an area you need to work on if you feel like you’re missing out when everyone else has a glass of wine, or if you’re romanticising it a lot. This is the kind of work we tackle inside Getting Unstuck.
Give yourself another chance
What else in life have you been bad at, to begin with – but you kept going anyway and eventually nailed it? For me, it was learning to drive. I had lessons for about a year because I just couldn’t get it! Maybe for you it was something at work, or parenting, or a qualification. You didn’t quit those things just because you weren’t instantly good at them. Bring that same mindset here. The figuring-out stage is messy because change is messy. But it’s worth it, so please don’t give up.
Ready to create an alcohol-free life you love? Click here to learn more about my Getting Unstuck course.
Do you ever promise yourself you’re not going to drink – but then something happens to throw a spanner in the works?
Maybe you have a terrible day at work and crave a G&T just to decompress afterwards.
Or you’re out with friends and everyone else is ordering wine, so you say yes too.
Or you get home to find your partner has already poured a glass for you and resisting seems futile…
I’ve got a great tip to help you get round all these situations, but I nearly didn’t share it with you in case you think it’s boring! But the thing is, it also really works…
By “planning ahead,” I mean thinking about your day in advance and deciding how you’re going to handle it without drinking. Do this first thing, when you’re feeling the most calm, motivated and committed to figuring things out. Look over the day and anticipate what’s coming up.
We do our best thinking in advance. We don’t do so well in the moment, when we’re caught off guard or we drift into a situation we don’t know how to handle. When we haven’t thought something through, we’re far more likely to freeze or make choices on autopilot.
“My life is too unpredictable for planning…”
I agree that sometimes things happen that you can’t anticipate. However, that doesn’t happen as often as you might think. We humans are fairly predictable creatures and we tend to do the same things over and over again. You’ve probably noticed that there’s a real consistency to the things you tend to drink over.
Just think about your biggest challenges right now. What are the things that have tripped you up in the past? Maybe it’s date nights, Friday evenings or certain situations at work. Any kind of repeated pattern is worth noticing and addressing – and planning another way to cope with these things will prevent a lot of your drinking.
“Planning ahead is boring!”
I know this is a boring tip with a boy scout vibe. Maybe you prefer to be carefree and spontaneous, so you’re wondering: who wants to be a boring planner?! If this all sounds a bit dull, I get it. But you know what? Repeatedly drinking more than you want to and waking up with regrets is also dull.
And the good news is, this intensive planning ahead bit is only really necessary in early sobriety – you won’t need to do this forever. It’s just that right now, you are changing some of the things you do on autopilot, without thinking, and that takes a little work (and planning!) to begin with.
Ready to create an alcohol-free life you love? Click here to learn more about my Getting Unstuck course.
