I know what it’s like to desperately want to drink less and have so many reasons why you should cut back, but to still find yourself thinking, “The problem is, I just love to drink.” Now, most advice will tell you to focus on all the reasons why alcohol is bad for you, but I’m going to make the case for doing the exact opposite. This is episode 475 and we’re exploring why getting curious about what you love about drinking, not trying to talk yourself out of your enjoyment, is the key to changing your relationship with alcohol.

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.

Today we’re answering a question from a listener. Lynn wrote in with this. “What if you just love drinking? Not necessarily the taste, just the love of the habit of drinking. Sharing a drink with friends or my husband is one of my favorite things to do. I’m actively reducing and listening to your podcast. I know all the health risks and reasons to stop and reduce, but I keep struggling with my question above.”

This is such a good question. And I will tell you, it is one that I struggled with myself for the longest time, and I know a lot of you out there listening can also relate. Here’s the thing. Conventional wisdom says that you need to focus more on the downsides of drinking too much. You need to remind yourself again and again of the health risks. You need to remind yourself of all the consequences and the things that you’ve regret. You need to remind yourself how bad alcohol is for you and remind yourself why you want to cut back. Basically, you need to convince yourself that drinking just isn’t worth it.

But I want to take Lynn’s question in a completely different direction. So what if, instead of focusing on the downsides and trying to make the case for why you shouldn’t love to drink, what if you leaned into the part of you that loves to drink? What if we didn’t make that part of you wrong, but instead got really curious about why exactly you love it? Because I don’t think that Lynn’s problem is that she loves to drink. I think the problem is when our brain has stopped being curious and stopped asking questions about why specifically we love it.

So let’s go back to what she wrote. Lynn said, I just love the habit of drinking, sharing a drink with friends or my husband is one of my favorite things to do. Now, you might phrase that in a slightly different way, but I bet a lot of you out there feel similar, right? Have a similar way that you would talk about it. What I would have Lynn and all of you do is just get more specific about what exactly you love. Because the statement, “I just love to drink,” it sounds like a complete explanation. But what I want you to consider is that it’s really just a label for a much bigger experience. And I think it might be easier to understand this concept if you take it out of the context of drinking.

So, you might think, well, I just love the beach. I just love the holidays. I just love skiing. Those statements actually tell us very little about a truly complex experience and what specifically you find appealing about it. And the same is true with a statement like, I just love to drink. I want you to consider what specifically do you love about it? Now, when I ask you that question, notice if your brain wants to immediately kind of wave it away by just saying, I don’t know, everything. I just love everything about it. But what if you had to tell me in very specific detail? What if you had to really paint a picture for me about what you specifically enjoyed? Where would you start?

What would you tell me? If you couldn’t be vague, if you couldn’t generalize, how would you explain it to me? Now, I will tell you, most people, myself included, just never get all that specific. They never really investigate the question, what exactly do you love about it? We have this tendency to stay in this place of being very vague.

So think about it. What do you love about it? Do you love the anticipation of your day being done and finally being able to relax? Do you love the ritual? Do you love feeling cared for? Do you love feeling grown up, feeling included, or connected, or spontaneous? Do you love feeling like you’re fully inhabiting your life or you’re fully present instead of distracted with everything that you have to do or everything that you have been worried about or everything that is taking up space in your mind?

What I want you to see is that when you really dig into it, those are radically different experiences. And I would even say for Lynn, she talked about both loving to drink with her husband and loving to drink with her friends. I would have her get really specific about how those experiences are different for her. And we can get even more specific with this when we look at the different drink archetypes. So what the Reward archetype means when someone says, I just love to drink, versus what the Connector archetype is saying with that same statement, versus what the Upgrade archetype says with that same statement, they’re actually all very different. But the patterns and habits around drinking can all be explained away with this very vague statement of I just love to drink.

That’s why getting very specific is so helpful. When people tell me that they love drinking, I just don’t assume that they’re only talking about alcohol. I assume that they are talking about a much more complex experience that the brain has attached to alcohol, but that there’s so much more information there. But that requires going deeper. Here’s the thing, it’s very difficult to go deeper on this question if part of you believes that you shouldn’t love to drink.

That’s part of the problem. We shame ourselves and make ourselves wrong for the desire that we have and the enjoyment that we have, instead of using it as a springboard to understand the patterns and the habit more deeply. And I think that this raises a really interesting question, because what if the thing that you love and crave is actually a good thing?

So let’s imagine that we start really pulling apart the experience and getting very specific and adding all the little details to it and seeing that, you know, what we love about it, it’s more than just what’s in our glass. So maybe it’s, I love spending time with my husband when it doesn’t feel like we’re running through our shared to-do list or assigning tasks or operationalizing our life. Or I love being with my friends and talking about the ridiculous show that we’re both watching and not having to be so serious and professional and performative. Or I love being in a setting outside of my home with low lights and warm lighting and music and the buzz and energy of people around us. I mean, you can get more and more specific and granular about what exactly you love in these moments.

Maybe it’s laughing too loud or in a way that you would normally censor yourself. Maybe it’s forgetting to look at the clock. Maybe it’s being absorbed in the conversation. But when you flesh it out this way, you start to see like, oh, yeah, the thing that I love here, which by the way, is more complex and bigger than just drinking. The thing that I love here is not only very normal, it’s actually really healthy because it’s normal and healthy to crave connection with other humans and intimacy and playful and creative experiences and rest and relaxation and being fully absorbed in what we’re doing. None of these desires are problems. In fact, they are deeply, deeply human.

But because in our brain they’re associated with drinking, when we want to cut back or we want to stop drinking, some part of ourselves then starts to treat this desire as if it’s suspicious or a problem. So we end up treating it like a thing that we shouldn’t have, right? We shouldn’t have this love for drinking if only we knew better. We end up throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Getting curious about the fact that you love to drink and getting really specific about why and what that looks like and then normalizing the things that you actually are craving and that you love about it, that can help you start to consider, hey, maybe I’m actually giving alcohol too much credit. Yes, when you think about the situation where you love to drink, yes, alcohol is present. You are drinking. Other people may be drinking too. But just because alcohol is present doesn’t mean that it should be getting full credit for everything that you love about the experience.

And this was really mind-blowing for me. So I want you to kind of imagine that you could wave a magic wand and remove alcohol from these experiences. Would dinner out with your husband suddenly become meaningless and suddenly become something that you did not enjoy at all? Would your best friend suddenly become boring and suddenly become someone that you didn’t want to spend time with? Would going on vacation no longer matter or be worthwhile?

Of course not. Now, here’s the thing. Your brain may say, yes, but it wouldn’t be as enjoyable as it is when I’m drinking. But perhaps that’s because we are living inside of the statement, I just love to drink, and forgetting that what we love is much bigger and much more than just alcohol in these experiences. I think it raises this really interesting question. Is alcohol responsible and creating everything that you actually love in these moments or does it just happen to also be there and your brain is giving it way too much credit? Essentially giving it credit for everything you love about this complex experience. And you start to wonder, okay, if we take it away, would it still be meaningful without it? And I would venture a guess that you would say yes, it would be.

I really do believe that one of the most invisible parts of the habit of drinking is the way in which we give it sole credit for so many things. So I think about this in my own life. I used to tell myself all the time that I was not fun unless I was drinking, that this experience of going out wasn’t fun unless I would be drinking, that special occasions weren’t fun unless there was alcohol. I had unknowingly slipped into this thought pattern of reducing so many things, so many experiences, including myself to alcohol, right? So much of what I thought made me fun to be around or made an experience fun just was reduced to what was in the contents of my glass.

So when you start to consider all of this, when you start to zoom out and understand how there’s a lot that you love about the situation and how maybe you’re just giving alcohol too much credit. Maybe in a way it’s almost put blinders on you where you can’t see that the experience that you enjoy is actually very complex and it’s not solely about drinking.

What I want you to consider is, all right, how do I put this new realization into action? And what I would have you do is when you tell yourself, well, I just really love to drink, I just want you to expand that out with something more specific beyond just alcohol. For example, I just really love to drink and I love having uninterrupted conversations, or I just really love to drink and I love feeling connected to people. Or I love the end of my work day, or I love being silly with my best friend, or I love having time and space to be with people without feeling like I have to perform or be productive. Whatever it sounds like for you, can you just expand it out instead of trying to convince yourself that you shouldn’t love this thing?

Because once you expand it out, once you identify the bigger picture of what you love beyond just drinking, all of a sudden you have a much more productive and useful path to follow. You can start exploring more ways to bring and access the pieces that you love into your life. You can get curious about maybe why accessing some of these things feels challenging without a drink. You can start understanding and learning about your different drink archetypes. You can even use this to help you when the craving for more appears, because instead of just staying in this vague statement of like, yeah, this is just my favorite bottle of wine, so of course I love it. Of course I want to have more. You can bring your attention back to everything else in that moment that you also love and you also appreciate and you also enjoy beyond just the contents of your glass.

You don’t need to hate drinking or think that it’s bad for you in order to change your relationship with alcohol. And that for me was such a unbelievable mindset shift because I spent so long trying to convince myself that I hated this thing that actually part of me was saying, no, no, we love it. But when I expanded out to understand why I loved it in specific situations, I started to see, oh, this really isn’t just about alcohol, it’s about everything that my brain has learned to associate with it and everything that feels sometimes less possible to access without it. You don’t need to convince yourself that you shouldn’t love drinking or that everything you enjoy about it is actually bad or fake. You just need to understand how you’re not capturing the full picture of a very complex experience.

And when the drink feels like it has such a powerful pull, you can understand that part of that pull has nothing to do with alcohol, but everything condensed into what your brain associates with drinking. So, the next time you think to yourself, well, I just love drinking, use that as an opportunity to get curious. What specifically do you love about it? Paint a very specific picture. Because that answer is going to tell you far more about what you’re seeking and your relationship with alcohol than a drink ever could. Lynn, thank you so much for sending in this question. And if you would like to send in a question for the podcast, you can go to RachelHart.com/podq, that’s P O D Q.

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.