Have you ever felt like one night of drinking too much erased weeks or even months of progress? Maybe you decided you needed to set stricter rules for yourself, or maybe you stopped caring and felt like, what’s the point of even trying to cut back if nothing works for long? This is episode 479 and I’m explaining why telling yourself that you need to get back on track after drinking too much may actually be the very thing keeping you stuck, and what you need to do instead.

Whether you want to drink less or stop drinking, this podcast will help you change the habit from the inside out. We’re challenging conventional wisdom about why people drink and why it can be hard to resist temptation. No labels, no judgment, just practical tools to take control of your desire and stop worrying about your drinking. Now, here’s your host, Rachel Hart.

How do I get back on track after drinking too much? This is a question I get all the time. It’s also a question that I used to ask myself all the time, and it was a cycle that I very much felt stuck in. I would be doing really well with drinking less. I would be sticking to my plan. I would be really responsible, and then one night everything would just go out the window. I would blow right past the limit I had set for myself, or I would have failed to even set a limit in the first place, and my night would go totally off the rails. And the next morning, I wasn’t just dealing with the hangover and the regret, I was dealing with all of the thoughts spinning in my head. Ugh, Rachel, how could you be so stupid? What’s wrong with me? Why do I keep doing this? And then what often followed was a thought that was even more insidious than all of the shaming and blaming. It was the belief, if nothing works, what’s the point of even trying?

Ironically, I don’t think it’s the moment that things go off the rails that are actually keeping you stuck. It’s not what actually was keeping me stuck. It was that same predictable cycle that was unfolding for me the next morning. When you immediately rush to judgment and you decide that yesterday you were bad or you were stupid or you were irresponsible, you start shaming and blaming yourself, and you slip either into stricter rules or nothing works, so what’s the point? Or you might find yourself going back and forth between those two extremes.

I remember often telling myself, well, if I’m never going to figure this out, I might as well just drink and enjoy myself. And then that would keep me in a cycle of just kind of throwing my hands up and saying, who cares? That thought kept me stuck more than any single night of drinking too much ever did. And yeah, sure, sometimes I would wake up and I would make promises that I was never going to do that again. I was never going to drink again. I can’t even tell you how many times I swore that to myself. But in a weird way, that is a similar trap because how many times have you told yourself around drinking or really anything in life that you’re never going to do that again, only to find yourself at some point repeating the behavior.

What I finally realized is that no matter what happened the next day, the problem wasn’t that I needed to get back on track. The problem was telling myself that how much I drank the day before was a sign that I was off track. The entire idea of getting back on track assumes that what happened yesterday means you were headed in the wrong direction. It assumes that what happened yesterday means that you failed. But what I want you to consider is what if that mindset, the mindset of being off track and needing to get on track, what if that is actually the problem?

Because no matter what happens the next day, if you think you need to get back on track, you are probably also telling yourself that you were bad and you need a return to quote unquote, good behavior. And now, that may sound harmless, but it hides some pretty intense judgment about what happened. And I know for myself and from working with so many thousands of people, the harder you judge yourself, the harder it is to actually learn what you need in order to create change. Because here’s what the “I was bad, I got off track” mindset does: it sends you right to shame. And when something feels like evidence that you’ve failed, most people don’t want to examine it. Most people want to turn away from those things. And maybe we turn away and we just make more rules for ourselves, or we tell ourselves, I just need to be more disciplined next time, but we don’t actually end up understanding or pinpointing why things fell apart and turned out the way that they did.

But when you head down that path, the path of shame, I promise you, you’re never going to actually investigate what happened in a way that is going to be useful or helpful. And this is true if you slip into the mindset of, ugh, nothing works, so why even bother trying? Or you slip into the mindset of, I was bad, now I need to be good, so let’s make more rules for myself. They sound very different, but they both assume that you got off track, you were bad, and you failed. And so both set you up to never actually examine and collect data on, hey, what actually happened yesterday? What specifically led to drinking more than you wanted to?

And I will tell you, that’s the real problem because when we don’t actually step back to examine what happened, you are just going to miss out on the most valuable information you need to create change.

I want to also add here that this nothing matters mindset, I see it really as an extension of kind of diet mentality, the idea that today’s effort is all ruined by yesterday’s mistakes, right? It’s the same idea behind, well, I’ve already blown my diet, so I might as well eat the rest of the cake. The brain will use one moment in time as evidence that none of our actions matter and we’re never going to change. And that’s a really important belief that you have to challenge and let go of because that belief is so insidious.

I’m going to tell you this: the idea that nothing matters is not how things work in reality. That’s just a story your brain creates once it’s decided that change is simply a pass fail test. But creating any transformation in life, it’s never about a pass fail test. It is about ongoing practice. That is a completely different way to think about change. So yes, maybe yesterday I didn’t practice, but today I can practice. Yesterday doesn’t have to bleed into today.

Most of us I think were taught a model of change that looks something like, I did something bad, that means that I’m bad, and now I must repent and make up for my bad behavior by trying to be a better person. You’re probably very familiar with that model. But all that guilt does, it teaches you to avoid looking at why you did what you did because it tells you don’t need to look at why you did what you did because I already have the answer. You were bad, you were stupid, you were dumb, you were irresponsible. When we think we already have the answer, there’s no need to really look. But those things don’t explain what’s actually happening. You didn’t drink too much because you were bad, because you were stupid, because you were irresponsible. You said yes to a craving or an urge because you had a thought and a feeling. And that thought and feeling you may not have been totally aware of in the moment, but I promise if you will go looking for it, you will find it.

That is the model that I use and the one that I teach and it looks very different from, I did something bad, therefore I am bad and now let me repent. What I have people focus on instead is, okay, yes, I did something. I can be accountable for that, but I also don’t need to label that as good or bad or right or wrong. And I certainly don’t need to extend that label to myself. I can just get curious about it. And I can ask myself, is this a behavior that I want to do more of or less of? I don’t have to judge the behavior, I don’t have to make it a reflection of myself. I just have to get curious. Do I want to repeat it? And if I don’t, okay, then let’s understand what was the draw in the moment.

Because then you can get curious about why your drinking happened. You can explore how your drinking was trying to help you in the moment and you can experiment with, hey, what do I need to do differently next time in order to create a different outcome? You will miss out on the why and the how and the what if you slip into this, I did something bad, therefore I’m bad and now I need to make up for my bad behavior by being a better person.

To me, reflection is just so much more useful in the long run than repentance. One of the tools that we use inside my membership to do this is something called the Daily Pages. And I’ll tell you, they actually started as a way to help people reflect during the 30-day challenge, rather than just to put their head down and grit their teeth and try to make it a month without drinking. I really wanted the Daily Pages to be a way for people to learn about their cravings and their urges and their beliefs and the justifications and the archetypes. And I found that couldn’t happen without some sort of daily reflection. But over time, I realized that they were really valuable whether or not you were taking a break from drinking. And so we started using the Daily Pages wherever you were in your journey. Just having a way to reflect on what you anticipate will happen in your day. Will you have cravings? Will you have urges? Why do you think they may show up?

Reflecting on what actually happens when they do show up. Did you drink more than you wanted to? Okay, if you did, can we use that as information? So the goal isn’t to judge yourself, the goal is just to gather data. Instead of asking why was I so stupid? What’s wrong with me? You just ask, what do I think actually happened that led to this outcome? And that means just starting with the facts, separating out how much you drank from what you’re making it mean about you and your ability to change. Because I will tell you, these two things, how much you drank and what you’re making it mean have a way of becoming so tangled together. However much you drank, it just has a way of turning into I’m never going to figure this out or something is wrong with me. And so separating out the facts from what happened from your brain’s judgment and prediction is incredibly, incredibly powerful.

But we don’t just stop there. We want you to really get curious, and that starts with the drink archetypes, getting curious about what archetype you think was activated in the moment. And that’s one of the really cool things about the archetypes, is that it’s not about labeling what kind of drinker you are, it’s labeling what beliefs about alcohol were activated in that moment. And that can change over time. It can change in different situations, it can change based on what you’re doing and how you’re feeling. But understanding and identifying the archetype that was activated is so incredibly powerful. Again, it gets you out of this place of let me just focus on how much I drank to understanding what was my brain thinking the job of alcohol was in the moment. What was it hoping that drinking would do for me? What problem was the brain trying to solve?

And I know that can be kind of an unusual way to think about it, the idea that your brain is trying to solve a problem because so often it feels like, no, no, my drinking is the problem. But I think that piece alone can be really transformative to think about maybe how your brain is trying to help you rather than feeling like it’s out to get you. I felt like that for a long time in my life. I remember thinking that somehow I had just lost the brain lottery and I just had one of those brains that always wanted more and was very compulsive and didn’t have a lot of control or discipline. And seeing instead, hey, how was my desire trying to help me in the moment? Even if that led to me regretting later on how much I drank, if you can just go to that moment and see, no, my brain wasn’t trying to sabotage me. It was trying to help me, it was trying to solve a problem. It was trying to actually be helpful in some way. That mindset shift can be really, really profound.

I think a lot about how the human brain is always trying to avoid discomfort. It’s always trying to do the easy thing in the moment. You know, we’d rather take the escalator than walk the stairs. And you can apply that same understanding here. What discomfort was that first drink trying to avoid? And what about the next drink and the drink after that? We often don’t think about our drinking in that way. We think, no, no, it was about feeling good, right? And it’s, if this feels good, more will feel better. But can you reverse that mindset to consider, well, what would actually have felt difficult for me in the moment if I had said no to that first drink or no to the next drink or no to the drink after that? What was it that my brain may have been trying to avoid so that you see it’s not just, oh, it feels good and I want more to feel better, but seeing like, well, if I say no to this desire, what will I be left with? That can be a really helpful place to start to peel back some of the layers.

And again, the archetypes here help reveal so much because like I said, we use alcohol for so many different reasons. Maybe you were trying to relax, maybe you’re trying to loosen up, maybe you’re trying to feel a sense of connection, maybe you’re trying to reward yourself for working really hard. Maybe you just wanted the evening not to end. I mean, the list of reasons can go on and on. But understanding and approaching this from how your brain was trying to help you really can completely change the conversation. And that’s one of the things that, you know, we have people in the daily pages start to unpack and get curious about. And that is such a different position than where I always was, which was going straight to shame and blame and why were you so stupid? So instead of getting stuck there and getting stuck in the, when am I going to learn my lesson, you start asking different questions and better questions, like, what was I hoping the drink would do for me in that moment? What job did I unconsciously give it?

And knowing that and understanding the drink archetypes really tells you about your next steps because we use all of that data to figure out, okay, so what do I need to do next time? What do I need to practice? This isn’t just about I need to be better disciplined, I need to avoid being around temptation. You have to really understand, how can I practice something different in the moment? But you won’t understand what you need to practice if you don’t identify what archetype was activated. Once you understand the role your brain assigned to the drink, it gives you very clear ideas about what you’ll actually need to practice and how you can simply take on that role for yourself. Just notice how different these observations and questions are. Instead of waking up with, “I blew it, I’m never going to change”, or telling yourself, “Ugh, I have to be good, I need to make more rules for myself.” You’re giving yourself information, curiosity, data, and ideas of something else to practice.

This is why I created the drink archetypes, because knowing your archetype tells you very specifically what skills you need to work on. That is the real question. What skill was I missing in the moment that would have made saying no and managing this craving or managing this urge easier? What tool would have helped? What thought could I have challenged? What underlying beliefs need to be questioned that maybe I’ve left unquestioned for too long? Again, your answer is going to look different depending on your archetype, depending on what specifically happened. But we’ll never see that when we slip into the shame and the blame.

And so that’s what I really want you to understand from today’s episode, that getting back on track is simply by becoming someone who’s better equipped to handle the craving, handle the justification, handle the excuse, in the moment that they show up. But you cannot become better equipped without that information, without that data. But it’s also letting go of the idea that you need to get back on track in the first place and instead seeing this moment as the clearest and freshest data you have for why you’re actually stuck in this habit. Because it truly is the best window that you need in that moment. As long as you can replace shame with curiosity, you can replace judgment with observation, and you can replace repentance with reflection.

Then, and only then, can you start compiling what you need to move forward. And when you do, you will find exactly what the people I work with discover all the time. You learn more and grow more and make more progress from your so-called mistakes than you ever will from trying to be perfect.

All right, that’s it for today. I will see you next week.

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Hey guys, you already know that drinking less has plenty of health benefits. But did you know that the work you do to change your relationship with alcohol will help you become more of the person you want to be in every part of your life?

Learning how to manage your brain and your cravings is an investment in your physical, emotional and personal wellbeing. And that’s exactly what’s waiting for you when you join my membership Take a Break.

Whether you want to drink less, drink rarely, or not at all, we’ll help you figure out a relationship with alcohol that works for you. We’ll show you why rules, drink plans, and Dry January so often fail, and give you the tools you need to feel in control and trust yourself.

So, head on over to RachelHart.com and sign up today, because changing the habit is so much easier when you stop trying to go it alone.