“You know what? I deserve a drink.” That used to be one of my most reliable justifications. Not, “I want a drink,” not, “I feel like a drink.” “I deserve one.” After a hard day at work, after a frustrating interaction with my family, after a week that had been a lot, this was always my go-to thought. There was something about the word deserve that felt different from just wanting something. It felt earned, like the drink was owed to me.

This is episode 467 and I’m going to give you three ways to challenge the thought, “I deserve a drink,” not by focusing on the harms of alcohol or how much better you’ll feel tomorrow if you say no, but by uncovering the hidden assumptions built into this excuse.

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.

All right, today is another thought swap episode. I’m going to unpack a thought that can feel almost impossible to argue with in the moment and that thought is, I deserve a drink or I deserve the drink or I deserve it. It can show up a lot of different ways.

Now, before I go any further, I really want to be clear about something. There is nothing virtuous about denying yourself pleasure. That is not what my work is about. It is okay to want a treat sometimes and it’s also okay to decide that the treat that you want is a drink. This is not about demonizing alcohol or making it some sort of virtue to live a life that abstains from worldly pleasures. It’s about getting curious about the patterns that keep you stuck in a loop with those pleasures. When you find it hard to say no, when you find it hard not to go back for more and more, that’s what I want you to understand and to focus on.

So what I want you to notice is if the thought, I deserve a drink, if it seems to crop up a lot for you, that’s something to pay attention to. And I will tell you, this thought cropped up all the time for me. It became a really reliable path for me to say yes to the drink and yes to another. Now, maybe it shows up for you frequently after a hard day or a stressful week or when you’re really tired or a moment when you just feel like you have nothing left to give. Maybe it shows up with enough frequency that it almost feels like a familiar part of your day.

“I deserve a drink” is one of those thoughts that sounds really, really reasonable on the surface because it’s wrapped in the language of self-care, of fairness, of doing something nice for yourself, which means that questioning it can bring up a lot of resistance. It can feel like you’re almost being told that you don’t deserve anything. At least, that’s what it felt like to me. And that is exactly why it can be really sticky to push back against and I want to show you ways to do it.

By the way, this thought tends to show up most often with a couple different archetypes. It can show up with the Reward, the Escape, the Hourglass, the Release, and the Remedy. And the interesting thing is that it can function slightly differently depending on the archetype that’s activated. But what it has in common, regardless of the archetype, is that it often shows up as a way to compensate for effort or for sacrifice.

So I’m not going to go deep into the different drink archetypes in this episode. If you want to learn more about specific archetypes, I really encourage you to go take the quiz at FindYourDrinkType.com. That will give you your top two archetypes and help you start to unpack and see how I deserve it might be functioning specifically in your situation.

What I want to focus on here are three swaps for that thought, “I deserve it.” And remember, the goal with all of these thought swap episodes is just to help you start poking holes and counter this excuse in a really believable but also non-judgmental way. You don’t have to use the swap exactly as I say them. You can adjust it and edit it in a way that feels more authentic and useful for you.

So swap number one. Yes, I deserve a drink. And what else do I deserve? Now, notice that you’re not trying to talk yourself out of the thought. You are accepting the premise. Yes, I deserve a drink. No argument there. Let’s just also in that moment articulate what else you deserve when you’re tired, when you’re worn out, when you’ve been giving so much to everyone else, when you’re stressed, when you’re overwhelmed, whatever is contributing to why your brain is telling you that you deserve a drink. Let’s think about what else you need, you deserve in that moment.

Now, this one is so counterintuitive because often we think that the only way to drink less is to talk ourselves out of our desire. But sometimes I find that it’s a lot more useful not to fight it, but just to accept it and see what else is there. Maybe after a hard day, you deserve rest or acknowledgement or to feel like everything you did mattered or to feel seen or to have your needs met.

What would happen if you just said, “Listen, before I’m going to have this drink, I’m going to take a second to articulate, if only to myself, what else I actually deserve in this moment?” Not to talk yourself out of saying that you deserve a drink, but to expand on the premise. And this is a really interesting shift to make because when you start saying, “Okay, and what else do I deserve?” you will start listing off things that alcohol can’t give you. It can’t meet your needs. It can’t put you first. It can’t acknowledge all that you’ve done. It can’t tell you that you matter, but it can temporarily quiet the feeling of not having those things met in your life. It can take the edge off of the gap between what you deserve and what you’re actually getting.

So when the thought I deserve a drink shows up, try expanding it. Try asking yourself, “Yes, I deserve a drink and what else do I deserve right now?” And just see what comes up because often the drink is a stand-in for something much more specific and much more important that you actually need in the moment. And once you can see that, your desire for the drink starts to look different. You’ll start to relate to that desire differently. It’s not that having the drink is bad or wrong. It’s more like you start to see that it’s an imperfect substitute for what you’re actually craving.

Swap number two. If most days end with me feeling like I deserve a drink, then it’s not really a treat anymore. It’s more of a requirement. And so it’s worth asking, when did the drink start to feel required? That question is going to show you a lot about what you may be tolerating right now in your life.

Now, treats and rewards, they’re meant to be special. That’s what makes them a treat. But when a reward becomes routine, something that you’re giving yourself most days, it’s not really a treat anymore. It’s kind of an expectation and that’s a different thing entirely. I see this come up so much with the people that I work with. The drink becomes the thing that makes an unsustainable pace feel sustainable or it becomes an attempt to close a loop on a day that otherwise feels like too much. So we use the language of a treat for something that isn’t actually special, it’s more routine or more expected in our life.

So if you notice that “I deserve a drink” keeps showing up as one of your justifications, try getting curious about what you might be tolerating during your day that makes a reward or a treat feel so necessary. I talk about this with the Reward archetype in particular. Alcohol really is an insufficient solution for being burned out, stretched thin, or constantly exhausted.

Swap number three. If the day keeps leading me to “I deserve a drink,” how much of my day felt like a choice? This is one that I really want you to sit with because what I have found is that “I deserve a drink” and “I don’t feel like I had that much choice in my day” have a way of showing up together, and not in the way that you expect. So often when we talk about choice, it’s more like, “Oh, I didn’t feel like I had a choice to say no” or “I didn’t feel like I had a choice not to have another drink.” But what I’m talking about is not feeling like you had a choice in everything else that led up to this moment. How those things didn’t really feel like a choice.

When the things that you’re doing during your day truly feel chosen, even when they’re hard, even when they’re exhausting, when they truly feel chosen, the need to compensate yourself afterwards usually isn’t as loud. But when your day feels like a series of obligations, like things that you have to do, like you’ve been doing what’s expected of you or required of you or what everyone else needs from you, that’s when I deserve a drink shows up with real force. And it makes complete sense that it does because so much of your day doesn’t feel like a choice. So this moment of pouring yourself a drink, it feels like, “Oh, it’s one of those few moments that actually belongs to you.”

And I will tell you this, doing the work here and exploring the parts of your days that may not feel like a choice, it doesn’t mean you have to upend everything in your life. It can often be about switching the frame that you use as you go about your day, changing the language around work and obligations and your to-do list and taking care of kids and taking care of parents and just all of the things that fill up our days. So the problem is that the drink might feel like it’s that moment of choice. It’s something just for you, but it doesn’t change the ratio of obligation to freedom in your life. It just makes that ratio easier to live with for a few hours.

And again, I’m not saying any of this to try to make you feel bad. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t ever use alcohol as a treat or reward. What I want you to do is just really get curious and question how much of your day-to-day actually feels chosen and how that might be showing up later on in your desire and in your habits around drinking. That is a really important question and it’s one that I think is worth exploring.

So these are your three swaps for “I deserve a drink.” Yes, I deserve a drink, but what else do I deserve? If most days end with me feeling like I deserve a drink, then it’s not really a treat anymore, it’s becoming a requirement. And if the day keeps leading me to I deserve a drink, how much of my day actually feels like a choice?

The goal here, as always, isn’t to shame yourself out of your desire, isn’t to try to scare yourself into saying no. It’s not also about telling yourself that you don’t deserve good things. You do. It’s just about getting curious about what this justification is really pointing you towards. Because when you can see that clearly, you start to understand that desire for the drink really differently and that creates such a big shift.

If you want to learn more about the drink archetypes, you can explore them by taking the quiz at FindYourDrinkType.com or you can check out The Ultimate Guide to Drinking Less. 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.