Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do to change your drinking isn’t a dry January. It’s not focusing on drinking less. It’s not even understanding why you keep going back for more. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is to simply delay the drink. That’s it.

This is episode 455 and today, I’m explaining how one small shift can be so transformative and why getting through that initial urge even imperfectly can start to shift the habit.

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.

Recently, I was teaching something deceptively simple but incredibly powerful when it comes to drinking less. The power of delay. So I’m not talking about quitting or moderating or figuring out your why. It’s not about promising that today is going to be different. It’s just delaying the start of drinking.

For so many people, trying to break out of the habit of pouring a drink towards the end of your day, it’s not just difficult, it can actually bring up a lot of anxiety. And I see this especially for the Reward, the Hourglass, and the Remedy archetypes. And by the way, if you’re not sure if these archetypes apply to you, take the free quiz at FindYourDrinkType.com.

Part of the anxiety of not being able to break the habit of pouring a drink every day comes from a very strong cultural story operating in the background. And it goes something like this. The proof that you’re not addicted is your ability to go without alcohol. So if you try to skip a day and it feels hard or uncomfortable or even impossible, it’s really easy to assume, well, that must mean that something really bad is happening. That must mean that I have a problem. And that anxiety can actually make it harder in the long run because now you’ve got the urge to drink and all of the pressure of what society tells you it means if you can’t say no.

So first and foremost, if you can relate to being stuck in this cycle, what I want you to know is that you’re focused on the wrong metric when it comes to habit change. The truth is most people are. What I’ve noticed in myself and with so many people that I work with is that, yeah, you can go weeks without drinking sometimes and still feel like you’re thinking about it way too much. Right? I remember so many times going months without having a drink. And then I would still binge when I did drink.

So many people will say, well, I can take breaks from alcohol, Rachel, but I still find myself negotiating or white knuckling or counting down the days until I can drink again. So your ability to say no, it’s really not the right metric to focus on and I know that sounds counterintuitive. I would rather you focus on different questions. Does the drink feel optional in this situation? And if not, how come? Does alcohol and drinking and not drinking, does it feel neutral? And if not, what exactly about these things feels really charged for you? Does it feel like sometimes your drinking is happening to you? And by the way, if you can relate to that, so many more people than you realize feel this way too. I know I did for a very long time.

The ability not to drink isn’t proof that you have a healthy relationship with it. It isn’t proof that you don’t have a problem. The ability to say no is just evidence that you have a skill. The skill of wanting something without immediately acting on that desire. That’s it. And right now, if you’re struggling to break out of the cycle of daily drinking, all it means is that you’re missing a skill set. That’s it.

If you drink every day, your brain and your nervous system has learned, this is how we downshift at 6:00 p.m. And now listen, the story is going to be different for everybody. Maybe it’s not 6:00 p.m., maybe it’s 5:00 p.m. or 8:00 p.m. Maybe the drink is a signal that your workday is over or maybe it’s the reward to help you transition from your paying job to now everything that you have to do at home and getting dinner on table for your kids and helping them with homework. Maybe it’s just what you do when you sit down and you turn on the TV. Maybe it’s a sign that you can stop checking your work email or maybe it’s how you make all your evening chores or continuing to work even after you’ve left work, maybe it’s how you make it more tolerable.

But struggling to get out of that daily cycle, especially at first doesn’t mean you have a problem in the way our culture implies. It means your system hasn’t practiced another way yet. It means you haven’t practiced what to do other than say yes to the urge, yes to the craving. I think it’s important to normalize how hard it can be to break out of these types of daily habits that offer us relief because this pattern can show up for people in so many places, not just around drinking. Maybe it’s eating past the point of fullness or snacking after dinner every night or mindlessly scrolling through Instagram or TikTok or watching one more episode on Netflix and then another and then another, or falling asleep in front of a screen or just not being able to stop working at night.

These all can seem like they aren’t related at all to pouring a drink, but often they are. Whether it’s alcohol or food or scrolling or staying busy, your brain is so often trying to find a way to very quickly feel better. And the more you repeat this pattern, the more you end your day and your brain expects, hey, relief is coming. Even if you can see that the relief that you are seeking out might not be all that helpful in the long run. It might be causing more problems than it solves. But when we frame what’s happening in this moment in terms of addiction, it stops feeling like a skill we need to learn and more of a diagnosis we need to prove that we don’t have.

So what I want you to consider is that even though intellectually you may have all of these reasons why you want to drink less, why you want to get out of the habit of pouring a drink every day, your brain still expects relief. And it doesn’t yet have the reliable evidence that you will be okay denying yourself that relief. That’s what you need to build right now. Not more willpower, just more evidence.

And when drinking becomes something that you do every day, something important stops happening. Your brain and your nervous system stop believing I can get through the evening without a drink. Even though intellectually you may know that’s not true, you don’t need it. But for part of you, the drink can still feel necessary, not because it actually is, but because your system just doesn’t have any counter evidence right now.

That’s why insight alone doesn’t break the cycle. You can know that you want to drink less. You can understand that the pattern isn’t healthy. You can have all the reasons in the world why you want to change. But the more you try not to drink and the more you aren’t successful, the more that it reinforces this unconscious belief that the drink is in fact needed even when it’s not.

Because before your mind can really believe something new, your body has to have evidence, it has to experience that this is true. And this is where the tool of delay comes in. So the first step that I offer for a lot of people isn’t to say, I’m not drinking tonight. The first step is just to say, I can drink later. That shift matters more than people realize because it’s less threatening to your nervous system to tell yourself, listen, I’m not going to do it now, but I can do it later. Instead of trying to eliminate drinking or to negotiate about how many you’re allowed to have, your only job is to delay the start of drinking.

So, if you normally pour a drink at 5:30, you would delay drinking until 6:30. Or let’s say for you, it’s not really about a set time. It’s just as soon as you walk in the door, you go right to the fridge and you grab a beer. But sometimes you walk in the door at seven and sometimes you walk in the door at nine. Well, then just delay from the moment that you walk through the door, right? You start from there. Or maybe it’s not about walking in the door. It’s when you finally get the kids to bed and you relax on the couch. That’s when you start to drink. Well, that’s when your delay would start. You want to figure out this signal that is starting the habit and then build your delay from there.

Remember, you’re not telling yourself, I’m not going to drink tonight. You’re simply saying not right now, not when my brain expects it. So you can set a timer and when it goes off, you can reassess. Do I still want the drink? Do I want it more? Do I want it less? Does it feel more urgent? Does it feel less urgent? Even a 30 to 60 minute delay can be enough to really interrupt the habit cycle and create space for you to get off autopilot and start to bring more choice into this.

One reason delay works so well, especially for daily drinkers, but by the way, you don’t have to drink every day to use this tool. It works so well because it helps people get through the witching hour. That stretch usually between 4 and 8:00 p.m. when your urges and your cravings feel most intense. The assumption about the witching hour is that if you don’t give into the urge, the intensity will just keep building. But very often people discover something different. What you may see is that the urge will peak and then you will watch it pass. And that can be mind-blowing.

Because when your assumption is, I’m just going to keep wanting and wanting all night long and it’s never going to go away, when you get evidence of something different, when you experience that moment of, yeah, I wanted it really intensely and now maybe not wanting it as much as I thought before, when you watch that urge get quieter on its own, even if it just happens one time, even if it happens accidentally, your brain learns something new. You learn, I don’t actually need to act the moment an urge appears, and also my story about it is not actually true.

Now, I will tell you this, sometimes when you use the tool, you won’t have that experience. You won’t have the experience of watching the urge pass, sometimes you will watch it grow. That doesn’t mean you have a problem. That’s actually really useful data. It may in fact start to show you that the drink has turned into a way to regulate your nervous system. And without it, your nervous system doesn’t know what to do. And your feeling of being dysregulated, it just stays there and it just grows. You might in these moments try delaying again. So maybe I went 30 minutes or I went 60 minutes without it. I can probably go another.

Again, the delay is not about tricking yourself into thinking that you have a choice when really you don’t because secretly you’re just going to try to make yourself not drink. The delay is simply creating space to get off autopilot. Because when you create that space, you get to see what else is there. You get to witness the urge. You get to see what happens when you don’t immediately give in, and you start to build a different set of evidence for your brain.

Now, you may decide to drink after that delay, and there’s information for you in that moment as well. For some people, they report back, you know what? So I said yes, and then I realized I didn’t want it as much as I thought. For others, they realize, oh, so I said yes to the drink, and then I felt like I wanted it even more because without it was like I just couldn’t relax, I couldn’t stop thinking, I couldn’t shut off my brain. I just felt too bored. I will promise you, when you use this tool of delay, you will see your archetypes appear in the pause and appear in the decisions that come after the pause.

Delay doesn’t have to look perfect or rigid. It simply means creating space between the urge and the action, long enough for you to get off autopilot and notice what happens. Sometimes the delay will feel surprisingly doable. Sometimes it will feel uncomfortable. Both are useful. Both are information. But more importantly, delay teaches your brain something that nothing else can. I don’t have to act the moment the urge appears.

And once your nervous system learns that even in a little way, you will feel like you gained some of your power back. And the story you had about needing the drink starts to feel less true. The story you have about your urges start to feel not so accurate. So I want you to try this out, experiment with delaying. And again, it’s going to look different for you depending on what the start of your habit looks like. But see what comes up. And if you have questions about what to do next, you can always send them to me at RachelHart.com/podq. That’s P O D Q.

Again, this isn’t one tool that will fix everything, but it is a tool that can be surprisingly powerful and lead to bigger and bigger changes. All it takes is a timer. All right, that’s it for today. I will see you next week.

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.