Have you ever found yourself wishing that the urge to drink, the impulse to have more, or the excuses and justifications that are so hard to argue with, would just go away? This is episode 474, and I’m going to explain why waiting for these things to disappear may actually be the very thing keeping you stuck.

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.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what makes people successful. And not just successful at changing their drinking, but successful with changing any behavior in their life. And one of the things that I have come to realize is that we all have this tendency to believe that success lies on the other side of eliminating whatever is driving the behavior that we want to change.

And so, it often sounds like, well, if I could just stop wanting the drink or wanting to have more, then saying no would be easy. Or if I could just stop having the urges, the cravings, the excuses, then I’d finally be able to figure this out. So we’re constantly looking for a path around the obstacle to our transformation. And this is one of the biggest places where I see people get stuck when they’re trying to change. When they have this goal of I want to drink less, I want to change my relationship with alcohol, but I can’t figure it out. People will tell me all the time, all the time they’ll say, Rachel, if I just didn’t have all these cravings, if I just didn’t want the drink so much, if I just didn’t have all the reasons in the moment why I should make an exception, right? Why, this moment, it shouldn’t count.

Then I could follow through on my goal. Then I would be able to drink less. But what I’m always trying to explain to people, and what I really want you to understand, is that no one who has ever successfully changed their drinking did so in the absence of desire or the absence of justifications. No one who has ever successfully learned to drink less figured this out because they stopped wanting more. They figured it out by wanting more and learning how to not answer that desire.

No one figures out how to change their relationship with alcohol because they erased all the excuses, all the justifications from their brain. They figured it out in the presence of their excuses and justifications. They learned how to respond differently when their brain was making what felt like a really airtight argument in the moment. Because actual change, lasting change, I’m not talking about temporary. I’m talking about change that you feel really 100% solid in. That doesn’t happen by finding a way around what’s difficult. It happens by learning how to navigate what’s difficult as it appears.

And I know that this might sound kind of obvious when I’m saying this, but I will tell you this was not obvious for me. For a very, very, very long time, I totally believed that the presence of my desire was the problem. And I told myself that I just had too much desire, and I had more desire than other people, and that was the problem. And believing this is what kept me stuck for so long because I kept searching for an environment and a version of myself that didn’t exist. 

I was searching for that version of myself that would never think, oh, I really deserve a drink after a day like today, or a version of myself that wouldn’t look at the wine bottle and think, ooh, I should have another. Or a version of myself that just would have a drink and not want any more. A version of myself, I remember searching for this one in particular for so long, a version that just would never feel awkward saying no. I kept waiting to become that person, believing that, okay, then if I could just become this new version of myself and I didn’t have all of this desire and I didn’t have any of the discomfort or the awkwardness, then I would be able to change.

But she never arrived. Because I was dreaming of the wrong path to success. I was envisioning a path where my obstacles just disappeared. They just evaporated. And I think a lot of people are in the same boat because I just hear people saying similar versions to what I wanted for the longest time. They’re trying to make the craving go away. They’re trying to make the urge disappear. They’re trying to stop their brain from offering up the excuse or the justification or the airtight reason why they should drink, why they should have another.

And then every time these things continue to appear, it’s really easy to fall into the trap of believing, well, this is why I can’t change. I’m not there yet. I haven’t figured it out. Maybe I am the problem. But what I want you to consider is what if the appearance of those things that you’re secretly trying to get rid of or telling yourself that you want to disappear, what if the appearance of those things is actually necessary to getting to where you want to go? What if your urges and cravings and excuses and justifications, what if they don’t mean that you’re doing something wrong or that you’re going backwards or that you’re never going to be able to succeed or that you can’t make progress? What if the appearance of all of these things are the actual moment where success has the ability to take root?

Because this is the moment really where transformation begins. Because if you only know how to say no when you don’t want a drink, or if you only know how to stop at two when your brain doesn’t want more, that’s not actually a skill. Because in that case, there’s no struggle. So there’s no need to develop a skill to handle the moments. The skill is learning what to do in the presence of the very thing that you wish wasn’t there. The skill is learning what to do when the urge appears, when your brain starts making a compelling case, when it says, you know what, you deserve it. You had a long day. It’s a special occasion. One more won’t hurt. You’ll be good tomorrow.

That is the moment that really matters. That’s when you learn how to respond differently. That’s when you learn what is actually necessary to create change, not figuring out how to make those moments somehow disappear so that you can be successful. But again, I did the opposite. For the longest time, I treated my urges and cravings and justifications as evidence that I couldn’t change, that I couldn’t be successful. Every time they appeared, I felt defeated because I believed that they shouldn’t be there.

What shifted was when I shifted, right? When I looked at the things that were appearing, the things that I had labeled as problems for so long, and I stopped making them mean anything. I stopped turning them into a problem. I stopped wishing that they would go away. Right? So instead, I would make it mean, okay, Rachel, you had an urge for something that lights up your brain’s reward center. How human of you. Right? Or when I started craving the drink before I even got to the restaurant. How normal. How normal of me to do this because you know what? My brain was designed to remember when and where I rewarded it in the past. So of course it’s going to remind me right now.

Or when I finished one drink and I immediately wanted more, to approach that moment is like, yeah, this makes total sense because the part of my brain that seeks out rewards, it evolved to operate on the premise that more of any reward is better. My desire was just evidence that I had a human brain. And all my arguments and my justifications were just a normal part of my brain learning that alcohol did certain things for me, that it played a particular role in certain environments or around specific people or when I had certain emotions or when I was engaged in different activities.

To normalize all of the excuses as yeah, this is just the drink archetypes at work. My brain has just learned to associate alcohol with things like reward and escape and relaxation and socialization and entertainment and relief and so on and so forth. And so of course my brain right now is insisting that the drink is necessary or having more is necessary. Nothing has gone wrong. Normalizing the very thing that I spent so long trying to make go away was what shifted everything.

The goal isn’t to make sure that you never have an urge again, because nobody can possibly make that promise with any certainty. The system in the brain that is in control of your urges and your cravings, it is so fast and so automatic and frankly, outside of your control. Right? It’s kind of like promising to yourself that you’re never going to have a certain emotion again, or you’re never going to feel fear again, or you’re never going to have stress again. You can’t do that.

The goal instead, instead of trying to make it disappear, is to stop treating the moment either like a problem or a command. To stop believing that because your brain is making the case for why you should say yes to the urge that the case must be true. Because if you can only be successful if you can guarantee that you will forever and ever eliminate urges and cravings and justifications, then guess what? You’re always going to be fearful of them showing up.

And of course, I will tell you this, I have way less in the way of urges and cravings and justifications than I did before. You can of course learn how to reduce them, but only by changing how you respond to them, which means you need them to show up so you can start to practice something different.

So instead of asking, well, how do I make my desire go away? Or how do I stop wanting more? Or how do I stop having all of these thoughts that tell me in the moment, it’s okay to make an exception. You can instead accept that these things are here for a reason and the reason is for you to learn how to respond differently. And then when they do show up, you can just simply notice. Oh, my brain had an urge for a reward. How normal. Oh, there’s my brain making the case for why a drink is necessary. How totally expected. I will tell you that alone, normalizing what is happening instead of making it a problem, that alone changes your relationship to what is happening. So it goes from something you either have to obey or fear or hate into something that you can just observe.

And I will tell you when you make that switch, it immediately takes down the intensity of the moment. It immediately gives you space. It immediately has you stepping outside and stepping into the position of the observer, which by the way gives you room to start learning how to respond differently. But you cannot build this skill by avoiding the very thing that you are telling yourself is keeping you stuck. The path forward isn’t waiting for the day that the urge to drink or the impulse for more or the excuses and justifications just go away. The path forward is learning how to meet them differently when they appear.

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.