“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.
Key points:
What grey area drinking actually looks like
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 “Am I 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 advice gets wrong about moderation
There are many reasons why I quit completely instead of trying to moderate my drinking, but one of the biggest is that it gave me the freedom to stop thinking about alcohol altogether.
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 here for 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.
The post Grey Area Drinking: What It Really Means And What Actually Helps appeared first on The Sober School.
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