Have you ever noticed that the hardest day to not drink isn’t Thursday or Friday when the weekend starts? Sometimes it’s Monday. And that can feel really confusing because the weekend is over, it’s time to get back to work. And even if you do break out of the loop, maybe it can feel like you’re on a bit of a hamster wheel with your drinking. This is episode 463 and I’m going to explain two parts of this pattern that can be really hard to see and what you need to do in order to break out of this cycle.

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.

Okay, so recently, one of our listeners, Sherry, wrote in with a question. And she wrote, “I find myself starting to drink on Thursday or Friday because it’s the weekend. Then Monday rolls around and it becomes twice as difficult to break the loop. I feel like a hamster on a wheel. Once it gets going, it feels hard to jump back off.” So, I know some of you listening can relate to what Sherry is describing, right? That pattern of maybe not drinking Monday through Wednesday and then Thursday or Friday rolls around, it’s the weekend, and it’s time to drink.

Some of you listening, you might drink every day. Some of you might go long periods without drinking. But you guys all have something in common. Because we all experience the weekend. We all have ideas about how the weekend should unfold and what it should look like, and those ideas can then lead to our behaviors around drinking. So I want to unpack what’s really going on here because it really applies to everyone regardless of what your drinking looks like right now. And what’s happening beneath the surface is probably not what you think.

So most people never stop to ask, I know I certainly didn’t, why does the weekend need alcohol in the first place? I always just said to myself, it’s the weekend, like drinking is what you do. It was a pattern that I learned very quickly in college. But here’s what’s underneath that belief. And it’s the Upgrade archetype very often. The Upgrade archetype is all about using a drink to elevate your experience. So the idea with the Upgrade is that a drink just makes everything better.

And for those of you who maybe work Monday through Friday and the weekend is your time off, it’s time that’s not dictated by work. It’s like, yeah, that’s the good time, the good part of the week. Why not make a good thing better? But here’s where the Upgrade archetype gets really interesting. Instead of phrasing it as the drink just makes everything better, or the drink elevates the experience, we can also turn it around and see that the Upgrade is also saying this experience, this moment, whatever is happening right now is not enough.

And the flip side, it can be harder to see at first, but I think once you see it, you can’t unsee it. The idea is that you aren’t actually meeting the things that you enjoy in life with or from a position of abundance, right? So I’m talking about time off, dinners out, watching the sunset, right? The good life. You’re actually meeting it from a place of lack, a place of scarcity. Because when you take alcohol out of the equation, it feels like something is missing. All of a sudden it starts to feel like the moment itself is not enough.

And I think that’s just a really fascinating way to turn this thought around. From, of course I drink, it’s the weekend because that’s just what you do. A drink makes everything better. To instead, realize, oh, my brain is telling me right now that the weekend on its own is not enough. Without alcohol, it’s lacking. And I think that’s just a fascinating turnaround to sit with.

Now I will tell you, other than the Upgrade archetype, the Reward archetype can also show up here. Again, if you’re not familiar with the drink archetypes, take the quiz at FindYourDrinkType.com because the more you understand about the eight archetypes, the easier it is to really see that your desire to drink and the difficulty that you have of saying no to more, you start to see it outside of the lens of, oh, I just don’t have enough willpower or I need more motivation. You start to really connect the dots. That’s the beauty of the archetypes.

But when you think about the Reward archetype, where we really start to use a drink as a treat, right? A way to reward ourselves for all that we have done, all of our hard work. I earned this. I deserve this. The Reward archetype can also point to an expectation gap that a lot of people experience with how the weekend is supposed to feel. So just ask yourself that question. How should your weekend feel? Most of you will say it should feel relaxing and easy and enjoyable and restful. But for a lot of people, it does not feel like that.

Now, for those of you out there with kids, I have two young boys at home. The weekend can actually feel more chaotic. It can feel less structured. It can feel more demanding in a different way. Maybe you don’t have kids. Maybe you spend a lot of time on your own on the weekends. Maybe then it feels kind of empty or lonely or expansive, but not in a good way. You might have the Hourglass archetype showing up here. No matter your specific situation, there is very likely a gap between, this is how I think my weekends are supposed to feel versus this is what my weekend actually feels like in reality.

And that gap between your expectation and reality creates tension. And guess what happens when you feel the tension, right? We don’t want that tension to be there. And you can get into the habit of pouring a drink. Alcohol becomes the way to try to close the gap, the way to really deal with that tension. I think that we can actually take an idea that I’ve talked about before with vacations and apply it here.

So, when I first started taking vacations with my kids, I really did not enjoy it. It felt like so much more work than my regular life because now I was on 24/7 and really my work week felt way more restful than time on vacation. And a good friend of mine said to me once when I was in the middle of a vacation and just losing my mind, she said, “You have to stop calling it vacation, Rachel. Just tell yourself, I’m traveling with kids.” Because I had all these unconscious expectations and beliefs about how vacation was supposed to feel, but it was very different when I told myself I was traveling with kids. When I told myself I’m traveling with kids, part of me expected, yeah, that’s going to be challenging, that’s going to be hard.

And I really think that we can take this idea and apply it here too. Instead of telling yourself, it’s the weekend, you know, we have all of these unconscious beliefs attached to that. I’m supposed to feel less stressed. I’m supposed to feel good. It’s supposed to be relaxing. We can reframe it. And one way you can do this is maybe say, you know, this is just me experiencing my life without my weekday structure. That’s such a different way to frame it than nope, this is the weekend. Instead of all of those beliefs that come along when we tell ourselves this is the weekend, we can start to see, oh right, this is just me stepping outside of my regular life, my life without that regular weekday structure.

Now, you’ll have to play around with how you might reframe this for yourself, but just acknowledging that you’re going from one structure of time to a different structure of time, I think can be really helpful. Part of this really is just bringing down your resistance to whatever you are experiencing during the weekend. Because resistance is so often the very thing that we are unconsciously trying to drink over. And you will see resistance show up with every single one of the archetypes.

There’s also the idea of giving ourselves a permission slip. When you have that first drink, maybe it’s Thursday, maybe it’s Friday. It’s not just that you’re making a decision to drink on that day. So often people realize that they’re making this bigger decision that the weekend has started, so we’re drinking now. So it feels like a decision in the moment, but it’s actually a decision or a permission slip that extends for multiple days. Right? And once that initial decision is made, it can feel like everything just follows. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, all the drinking that happens, it just happens. It doesn’t really feel sometimes like you’re making a new decision every day. It’s just a continuation of that first one.

This is a big thing that I work with people on, that you really have to pay attention to the ways in which you create a habit around using yesterday’s decision about drinking to essentially not make decisions today, right? It’s like, well, that happened, so I don’t know, I guess that’s what we’re doing today. And I think that people can recognize this often more when it comes to eating and dieting. And so a lot of times people will be like, oh god, like I just, I ate terribly Friday night. And then the question is, do you clean up your act on Saturday morning? No, most people fall into the trap of like, well, I mean, Friday night was a loss, so now I guess the weekend’s shot, so I’ll be good starting Monday.

So you have to notice the ways in which you use these singular moments to kind of give yourself a permission slip that extends multiple days. What seems like a decision that you’re making in the moment that only relates to that moment, it really can become a permission slip that extends all weekend. And I always say this to people, one of the things that we have to practice and learn is that you can make a new decision at any moment, even after you’ve poured yourself the drink, even after you’ve ordered another round, even after you drank on Thursday and now it’s Friday. Just teaching ourselves that we can interrupt the process at any point is so powerful.

And I think this brings us back to what Sherry originally asked, which was, why does Monday feel so hard? Monday doesn’t feel harder simply because you’re going back to work. I mean, that can be part of it, especially if you’re not in a great place with your job. I often have the opposite problem where I find my weekends really exhausting and so come Sunday night, I’m ready to get back into my routine on Monday. But what I want to offer is that one reason why it can feel harder to stop drinking on Monday is because of the cumulative toll that drinking Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday has taken on you.

Now, we don’t need to demonize alcohol to recognize that it’s hard on the body. It’s hard on the brain. Your sleep is not going to be as good. Your mood is going to be disrupted. You might be noticing that your anxiety is higher. Your brain and your body are more fatigued. So now you are asking yourself to do something difficult. Monday comes around and it’s like, “Hey brain, remember how day after day after day I was giving you all these dopamine rewards? Well, now we need to stop.” And so you’re asking yourself to do that in the exact moment when you have fewer internal resources.

And the reason why I think this piece is important to acknowledge is because when Monday feels hard, it’s very easy to make it mean, what’s wrong with me? The weekend is over. Not drinking today shouldn’t be so hard, right? We can use that moment when it feels like a struggle, when, like Sherry says, it feels difficult to get off the hamster wheel. We can use that as a way to believe that we’re doing something wrong or that something is wrong with us. Or we can normalize it and say, yeah, after a couple days of drinking, of course it’s going to feel challenging on Monday because I’m dealing with the cumulative impact of drinking for multiple days. I’m dealing with the impact of what came before. That’s why it feels like I’m on a hamster wheel, but the wheel isn’t spinning because of some sort of unstoppable momentum. The wheel is spinning in part because I have fewer internal resources right now.

It’s also spinning because of a bigger sequence, right? That sequence of it’s the weekend, so drinking is allowed. This is just what we do. It makes everything better. I earned it. That tension that might come up between the experience of what we think the weekend should feel like and how it actually feels. And then drinking to try to deal with that tension. And then also, once you’ve started, the fact that it can turn into this unconscious permission slip to keep going. All the while telling yourself, okay, I’ll be good. I’ll get my act together on Monday. And then Monday comes and you’re trying to interrupt that entire sequence while in a state of depletion. Of course it feels challenging.

So the thing that I want you to do instead of trying to fight harder on Monday, I want you to move your attention earlier, back to the moment where the pattern actually begins. When the thought shows up, “It’s Thursday. I mean, it’s practically the weekend, right?” In that moment, that is the time for you to pause and ask, what am I wanting or what am I expecting this drink to give me or do for me right now? Just pause and let that answer bubble up. We’re not judging the desire. We’re not trying to stop ourselves from drinking. We’re just trying to see the pattern more clearly. Because the more you understand that moment, the less automatic everything that follows becomes.

And notice your beliefs about how you tell yourself the weekend should feel and whether or not your weekends actually feel this way in reality. Notice if that tension is there. It’s not that you’re stuck on a wheel that’s spinning too fast to get off. It’s that your brain has learned a pattern and it’s repeating it. And the way out isn’t to try harder at the end, it’s to understand the beginning and the middle better.

All right, again, if you’re not familiar with your archetypes, go on over to FindYourDrinkType.com and you can take the quiz there. That’s it for today. I will see you next week.

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