Do you feel like the hardest part of drinking less is how uncomfortable it feels to stop yourself from having another? Maybe you think to yourself, “I just don’t want to stop.” Or maybe you even told yourself that stopping is the hardest part of drinking less. But have you ever really considered why?This is episode 480 and we’re going to take a closer look at what actually feels uncomfortable in the moment and how a common misconception might be the real reason you’re 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.

Recently, inside the membership, someone asked a question about how they could get better at tolerating the discomfort of not having another drink. So they wrote, “I noticed that when I was enjoying the moment drinking, I ordered more wine because I didn’t want to tolerate the discomfort of stopping.” And I think almost everyone who has struggled to drink less would recognize themselves in that sentence and the idea that not having more of something that you want is uncomfortable. It just feels so obvious that not having more is by its very nature going to be uncomfortable. And so, therefore, stopping ourselves is also going to be uncomfortable.

But I really want to challenge this idea today because I’m not actually convinced that stopping is what truly feels uncomfortable. I think that something else is happening.

Now, in order to explain this, I just want to take alcohol out of the equation for a minute. And I will tell you, one of my very favorite things in the world is when my husband rubs my head. I absolutely love lying on his lap when we’re on the couch, getting my head rubbed. I could lie on his lap all night and have him rub it. And I know some of you out there do not like this sensation. I don’t get it, but I know that you’re out there. So, if that is not your thing, fill in the blank with some other pleasurable sensation that you enjoy receiving.

So, if we go back to my example of him rubbing my head, I’m there. It feels amazing. And then after a couple of minutes, he invariably stops. Now, what is actually happening in that moment? Does it feel uncomfortable the moment that he stops rubbing my head? The answer, of course, is no. Yes, that pleasant sensation starts to fade. It actually doesn’t immediately fade. It’s not like a light switch. When I pay really close attention, I see that it’s actually more of a gradual fade away.

But is it uncomfortable for pleasure to gradually fade away? I would argue no. It’s not. What’s uncomfortable is not pleasure fading away, because that’s always going to happen. That’s the nature of pleasure. What’s uncomfortable in that moment when he stops is everything that happens in my mind. When I think, “Hey, why did you stop rubbing my head? Keep going. I like when you do that. Don’t stop.” Those thoughts, not him stopping, that’s what actually creates a little bit of discomfort inside of me. It’s not the gradual fading of a pleasurable sensation.

So notice the sequence here. The pleasurable sensation starts to fade. Then your brain has an opinion about it ending, but those things are not one and the same. Here’s another example that’s separate from alcohol. For months and months, actually, longer than that, I have wanted a new car. I have been driving a 2012 Outback, which is not great in San Francisco. It doesn’t have hill assist. I am parallel parking on a street with a 40-degree incline in San Francisco every morning for school drop-off. And I will tell you, you really wish in those moments that you had both hill assist and better parking cameras. And so I’ve been wanting a new car.

But the wanting itself is not uncomfortable. I wasn’t walking around every time I thought about a new car feeling uncomfortable because I didn’t have it yet. The wanting was just there. Now, what was uncomfortable was some of my thinking. When I would think, “Ugh, I hate this current car, and why is finding a new car so hard? Why is everything so expensive?” All of that thinking, that caused suffering. It was not the wanting of something that I didn’t yet have. The wanting and the commentary in your brain are actually two different experiences, although we tend to think that they just happen together.

Now, we can bring it back to alcohol. So, let’s say you’ve been drinking, you had your second drink, you feel good, your brain wants more, which by the way, is expected. I always tell people this, that one of the biggest frustrations is when you go into trying to drink less with the assumption that you shouldn’t want more because you have all of these good reasons why you should drink less. That resistance to the wanting, first of all, that’s going to create a whole layer of struggle. But you want more after you’ve had a couple drinks. This is expected. But you can also remember that the wanting system and the liking system in the brain are not the same.

Again, most people tend to use the words wanting and liking almost interchangeably. So we assume that we want things because we enjoy them, and we enjoy the things that we want. It seems really obvious. But they’re not the same. Wanting is your brain’s motivation to pursue something, whereas liking is the pleasure you get from the experience itself. Inside your brain, these systems are closely related, but they’re separate. So the systems may work together. If you enjoy something, yeah, you’re motivated to seek it out again, but wanting and liking can drift apart.

So again, take this out of the realm of alcohol for a second. Sometimes you really want that fourth slice of pizza only to realize after eating it, you really didn’t like it as much as your brain said that you would. Or perhaps you really don’t want to lace up your shoes and go for a run, but that doesn’t mean you won’t end up liking the experience once you’re out there.

The feeling of wanting is just not a reliable measure for how much pleasure is actually waiting for you. And the brain’s wanting system is also much larger and more robust than our liking system because evolution prioritized ensuring that we kept pursuing valuable resources over maximizing the pleasure we felt once we found those resources. So your brain wants another drink.

But does that mean not having it is going to be uncomfortable? And does that actually even mean that you’re going to like it? Now, I’ll say if we use this example, the effects from your previous two drinks, they’re still in your system. They don’t immediately disappear the moment that you decide to stop. The pleasure they create doesn’t suddenly turn uncomfortable. And if you decide to stop, yes, after a while, the pleasurable effects will fade, but that’s just simply the nature of alcohol. It doesn’t create a feeling that you can hold on to indefinitely.

So what’s uncomfortable in the moment about not having more? I would argue it’s not the wanting. It’s not the loss of pleasure because it’s still affecting your central nervous system. Pleasure hasn’t just all immediately up and disappeared. The pleasure from the first two drinks may not have even fully come online yet. What’s uncomfortable is our thinking about wanting more but not having more. And these thoughts might sound like, “Ugh, it’s not fair. I don’t want to stop now. I don’t want to lose my buzz. I don’t want the night to end. How come this person can drink as much as they want and I can’t?”

These thoughts come so quickly that we assume the wanting more and the not having more is the uncomfortable part and that stopping is the uncomfortable part. But what if that’s where we’re getting it wrong? What if stopping is not uncomfortable at all? What’s uncomfortable is all of our brain’s commentary, all of those thoughts that are actually creating the discomfort. And I think this distinction really matters because so many people tell themselves that they need to get better at tolerating the discomfort of wanting another drink and then allowing themselves to feel deprived if they want to succeed at drinking less.

But maybe that’s not the case. Think about other things that you want in life. You want to go on vacation. Maybe you want a promotion. You want your Amazon package to arrive. Maybe you want to get home to see your kids. You want dessert after dinner. Wanting is a completely normal human experience, and it’s not uncomfortable in and of itself. In fact, it can feel really good to want things. To anticipate how something will feel good in the future can feel pleasurable right now. Imagine lying on the beach or getting a new outfit or, you know, getting a big hug from one of your kids.

What becomes uncomfortable is when the mind adds in something on top of the wanting, something like, “I need to have this right now. It’s unfair that I don’t have it. I can’t enjoy myself unless this happens.” Alcohol trains us to satisfy wanting very quickly. So we want a drink and then we drink, and then we want more and we drink more, and so on and so forth. And wanting more but not having more seems like it automatically feels uncomfortable. And the brain protests. But the pleasure from the previous drinks, again, it doesn’t immediately disappear.

The wanting itself is not uncomfortable. The chatter about wanting and not having it, that’s what can become uncomfortable. And I think this is a really important distinction because if you believe that stopping itself is always the problem, then the solution is always going to be, “Well, I can fix that by having another drink.” But if you begin to see that so much of the discomfort is actually coming from the story your brain is telling you about stopping, telling you like, “I don’t want to stop. I don’t want to miss out. It’s going to feel uncomfortable. This is unfair. I don’t want this feeling to go away.” If you see how that’s creating your discomfort, then suddenly you have a whole other path to investigate.

So the next time you find yourself either wanting to drink or wanting to have more, instead of asking, “Can I tolerate the discomfort of not having it?” try asking a different question. Is wanting actually uncomfortable, or maybe what’s really uncomfortable is what follows the sensation of wanting? All of the thoughts, all of the brain’s chatter, all of the story. And I would say this is where the drink archetypes really get activated. All of that story about what your brain is saying is or is not possible without the drink.

The more clearly you can see this distinction, the less it starts to feel like saying no is the real problem. Maybe the skill that you need isn’t learning how to tolerate discomfort. Maybe it’s learning that wanting isn’t uncomfortable until we make it mean something. The problem is how quickly your brain turns wanting into an emergency that must immediately be solved, which, by the way, actually detracts from your pleasure. And once you see that, you no longer have to believe every protest your brain offers in the moment just because the bottle of wine is still on the table.

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?

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