The brain associates alcohol with freedom.

Drinking allows you to speak, feel, and act in ways you would normally censor.

This archetype commonly appears when feeling constrained by certain aspects of your life.

The Release tends to show up when:

• • Feeling pressure to provide or fulfill a certain role.
  • Feeling hemmed in by expectations placed on you by family, community, or society.
  • Feeling trapped by your circumstances.
  • Struggling with imposter syndrome.
  • Having impossibly high standards or struggling if you make a mistake.

When The Release is activated, saying no interferes with your desire to feel empowered, making it hard to abstain or moderate.

“F**k it.”

Eventually, the pressure builds to a point where you’re desperate to find release. But instead of finding freedom, the intensity of your drinking can make you feel like you have a split personality.

“The Release teaches the brain that alcohol is needed to cope with the pressure you’re under.”

Humans have long used alcohol to push back or rebel against expectations.

But the more you reach for a drink to find freedom, the more constrained you feel by the weight of who you’re supposed to be.

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

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

Circumstance: You feel constrained by your life.

Thought: F**k it!

Feeling: Desire

Action: You reach for a drink, hoping to feel a release. Notice what you’re not doing:

• You’re not dismantling society’s expectations. Family, community, and society imprint the brain with ideas about what is and is not “acceptable” according to different criteria (age, gender, class, religion, etc.). But there’d be no need to rebel against these expectations if you weren’t also letting them dictate how you live your life.   
• You’re not questioning self-imposed expectations. High standards sound admirable, but they are often a cover for perfectionist thinking and an intolerance for making mistakes. 
• You’re not prioritizing your own opinion. Instead, you’re trying to live up to who someone else wants you to be. You look to others for validation rather than believing in your inherent worthiness. 

Result: Short-term: you find temporary freedom from expectations. Long-term: you feel increasingly constrained by the weight of who you’re “supposed” to be.

Here’s why:

• Alcohol lowers your inhibitions by slowing down activity in your cerebral cortex. The more you drink, the less access you have to thoughts that would normally censor your behavior. As your blood alcohol levels increase, this effect becomes more pronounced. 
• Alcohol acts like a pressure valve. The more pressure you’re under, the greater the release needed. Generally speaking, the effect of one or two drinks isn’t enough to radically alter your inhibitions or create the freedom you’re after. The stronger the facade, the more you’ll need to drink to feel free of it.
• Because of this, The Release archetype tends to overdrink right out of the gate. You might have several drinks quickly or go straight to the “hard stuff.” Intuitively, you may know that the faster you drink, the drunker you get.
• The human body can only process a certain amount of alcohol in a given time frame. Anything above that amount will accumulate in your blood and have a greater effect on the brain: impairing your judgment, increasing the chance for conflict or violence, and contributing to memory loss and poor decision making. 
• Although you may regret your actions when drinking, over time, you may start to believe—whether consciously or unconsciously—that alcohol is your only outlet to escape intense pressure. Which means you are bound to repeat the same behavior, despite the consequences. 
• You may fall into a cycle of drinking to rebel and then restricting alcohol to punish your “bad” behavior, only to rebel against these rules when you feel too constrained. You may view this behavior as illogical, not realizing the role alcohol serves as a release valve in your life.
• Despite the fact that drinking was a way to unleash the parts of you that feel constrained, over time, a chasm grows between your two selves (i.e., the “you” when you’re drinking and the “you” when you’re not).  
• Finally, your tendency to be self-critical of yourself will migrate to your choices around alcohol. You’ll worry what others will think if you decide to abstain or limit yourself. Or, after sobering up, you’ll immediately assume your behavior was embarrassing. 
• Meanwhile, the pressure to fit a certain mold or be who you’re “supposed” to be continues to grow, as does your need to shed all expectations and rebel. 
• As a result, you keep believing the thought, “F**k it,” which reinforces The Release archetype because you have no other way to cope with the pressure you feel. In reality, alcohol isn’t actual freedom. It’s just a temporary forgetting.

The Release often uses shame to sabotage rules, drink plans, and Dry Januarys.

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

• • You work so hard to project a certain image, but sometimes, it gets to be too much.
  • You’ve never been one to follow the rules, even when they’re your own.
  • Sometimes drinking is your way to say “F**k you” to someone else.
  • You believe drinking less defeats the whole purpose of drinking.
  • You miss spontaneity and don’t want to limit it further by not drinking.
  • Sometimes, you sneak alcohol when certain people aren’t around.
  • Part of you feels like you have a split personality when you’re drinking.

The Release’s deeper desire is authenticity.

The deeper desire is what the drink represents.

Authenticity is about being true to yourself rather than projecting who you think you should be.

Here’s what it sounds like: 

• I’m comfortable being my own person and following my inner compass.
• I am true to my desires, not what others think I should do.
• It’s safe to do things differently or travel the road less taken. 

Without authenticity, you’ll suffocate under the weight of expectations, and the desire to escape it all will be immense. 

As the pressure on you grows, so does the desire to find a way out. 

This is why, with The Release, it’s essential to foster authenticity alongside managing cravings.

 “When I rush to label my behavior as ‘stupid’ or ‘irresponsible,’ I miss the opportunity to understand how it’s helping me.”

 Letting go of The Release will make you feel lighter

Here are some of the superpowers waiting to be unlocked:

• • Feeling comfortable being your authentic self, even if that means going against the grain.
  • No longer trying to project the version of yourself that you think people will like.
  • Letting go of the expectations or the story given to you by family, community, or society.
  • Living the life you want rather than the one you feel obligated to perform.
  • Knowing how to blow off steam without blowing up your life.
  • Feeling whole instead of governed by competing desires.