The brain associates alcohol with a way to forget what’s bothering you.

Drinking can help you quiet a chattering mind, stop worrying, or numb negative emotions.

This archetype commonly appears when you feel besieged by emotions or unexpected life events.

The Escape tends to show up when you:

• • Feel overwhelmed by responsibilities.
  • Are unable to shake worries about the future.
  • Are dealing with family or relationship struggles and conflict.
  • Feel consumed by news, politics, or world events.
  • Are trying to cope with grief, loss, or trauma.

When The Escape is activated, saying no interferes with your desire to avoid certain emotions, making it hard to abstain or moderate.

“I just need to get through this, and then I’ll cut back.”

The more you rely on a drink to cope, the less resilient you’ll start to feel and the more insurmountable your situation will seem.

“The Escape teaches the brain that big emotions need a drink.”

Humans have long used alcohol to “drown” their sorrows and temporarily forget about upsetting events.

But when you repeatedly turn to alcohol to deal with overwhelming emotions, you’ll feel less resilient and capable of seeing yourself through life’s challenges.

Here’s an example of the thoughts, feelings, and actions associated with The Escape.

Together, they create a learned behavior and influence your relationship with alcohol.

Circumstance: You keep returning to painful thoughts or emotions.

Thought: I need a drink.

Feeling: Desire

Action: You reach for a drink for relief. Notice what you’re not doing:

• You’re not normalizing negative emotions. Grief, fear, anger, despair, and hopelessness are unavoidable when navigating the human experience. The more you fail to normalize what’s happening, the more fearful you become when they appear.
• You’re not creating safety with the emotion. Your body was designed to feel, process, and resolve every human emotion, even the unpleasant ones. 
• You’re not challenging catastrophizing, all-or-nothing, and black-and-white thinking. So much additional suffering is caused by unconscious thought patterns that tend toward extremes: I can’t handle this… What if x happens… I’m never going to feel better… everything is ruined… etc.

Result: Short-term: alcohol temporarily numbs your mind and body. Long-term: you’ll feel less resilient and doubt your ability to see yourself through tough times.

Here’s why:

• Alcohol slows down activity in the central nervous system, making you think, speak, and move slower. This sedative effect can feel like a dulling of your thoughts and emotions or a sense that you are disconnected from your mind, body, or environment.  
• However, when you’re drinking to escape painful thoughts and feelings, a single serving is unlikely to create the sense of numbness you seek. This makes you more likely to overdrink. 
• When you routinely avoid, distract, or numb how you feel, you will feel emotionally “stuck,” unable to move forward or find closure.
• The more you try to numb with alcohol, the more your brain associates negative thought patterns with getting a reward. The brain is now incentivized to think these thoughts in the future.  
• The more you drink to numb with painful thoughts and feelings, the more you start to believe—whether consciously or unconsciously—that you’re unable to handle them on your own.
• You may become fearful of certain emotions, triggering a nervous system response because you believe they are dangerous. This adds a layer of anxiety to the mix, making the underlying situation less tolerable.  
• The more you drink, the more you increase the likelihood of developing a tolerance, which leads to drinking more. 
• Increased drinking puts a further physical and emotional toll on the body. You’re likely to wake up feeling more anxious or down (as the brain tries to return to homeostasis) and physically depleted.  
• You can get stuck in a self-perpetuating cycle. The more you try to escape with a drink, the worse you feel physically and emotionally. 
• Meanwhile, you aren’t learning healthy ways to cope with painful thoughts or process challenging emotions. Nor are you considering that you are much more capable than your thoughts would have you believe.
• As a result, you keep believing the thought, “I need a drink,” which reinforces The Escape archetype. In reality, alcohol saps your resilience by adding an additional physical and emotional toll to an already stressful situation. 

The Escape often uses overwhelm to sabotage rules, drinks plans, and Dry Januarys.

Keep in mind, not all obstacles will apply to everyone with this archetype:

• • You have no other way to shut off your brain or stop thinking.
  • You planned to cut back, but then life got crazy.
  • You just don’t want to feel this way anymore.
  • You’re just so worried and don’t know how else to feel better.
  • You need to avoid certain emotions that might open the floodgates.
  • You’re responsible for so much, but once you have a drink, you’re “off-duty.”
  • You should’ve moved on by now, but you can’t let go.
  • You have no reason to feel the way you do.
  • The world is falling apart, and it’s just too much to take.
  • You can’t come to terms with what happened.

The Escape’s deeper desire is resilience.

The deeper desire is what the drink represents. 

Resilience is the belief that you can find a way forward no matter what life throws at you. 

Here’s what it sounds like:   

• I don’t know the solution, but I know there is one.
• I don’t need a plan because I know I can figure things out as I go along.
• I’m so much more capable than my thoughts would have me believe. 

Without resilience, you’ll find yourself constantly looking for an escape hatch. 

But the problems you regard as too big, messy, or painful only get thornier the more you avoid them. 

This is why, with The Escape, it’s essential to foster your resilience alongside managing cravings.

“You don’t need to stop your mind from chattering to find peace. You just need to reframe the noise.”

Letting go of The Escape will make you more resilient.

Here are some of the superpowers waiting to be unlocked:

• • Discovering you are so much more capable than you realize.
  • Trusting your ability to problem solve on the fly rather than always needing a plan.
  • Feeling confident you can handle any emotion on your own.
  • Quickly interrupting overwhelm by just focusing on the next small step.
  • Asking for help or support instead of telling yourself you need to tough it out.
  • Knowing you can captain the ship even when seas are stormy.