Taking the Edge Off

You Can't Have Fun Without Booze

No Problem = no problem

Fear Of Failing At Moderation

How to Review What Went Wrong Last Time

SPEAKER_00 0:01

I've got a question for you that I need you to answer really honestly. And that question is: what beliefs are you currently holding on to, perhaps even fiercely defending, with or without realizing it, that are holding you back from a life less intoxicated? We give so much credit to the external circumstances around whether or not we're drinking, where we're going, who we're going with, what the occasion is about. But what if some of the biggest barriers lie inside of us and not out there? For years, I believed that alcohol was a way to signal just how cool I was, that my drink choices were part of my identity, and that identity was my social passport to cool nights and crazy friends and kisses with boys and all the exciting stuff that goes with it. It wasn't a spoken belief. It was something that was deep inside me. And it wasn't until I started to address that type of belief and the others that went along with it that I was able to make lasting change to the way I allowed alcohol to show up in my life. That is what we're talking about today. You're listening to the Mindful Drinking and Moderation in Midlife podcast with me, Denise Hamilton Mace, your mindful drinking mentor. After 24 years of working in hospitality and drinking daily, I finally recognized in my early 40s that alcohol was no longer serving me the way it was before. Now I want to use what I've learned as a publisher, writer, and public speaker on all things moderation to help you design, build, and live a life less intoxicated on your own terms. If you're ready to make a change without judgment or pressure to quit, then come with me as we dive into the world of low, no, and light alcohol, drinks, drinkers, and drinking so that you can take back the power of choice from alcohol. So for me, that belief that alcohol was my social identity came as a side effect of my job. I've mentioned before I worked in hospitality for 24 years. Drinking daily was part of my job, whether it was written in the job description or not, whether my bosses agreed with me or not, it was part of how I turned up for work, it's part of what I did. And so, as a natural side effect of working in bars for over two decades, you get to see what's considered like mature and sophisticated and progressive in the drinks world, where all the cool kids with like the funky tattoos and the top knots were sipping on with effortless grace. And of course, I wanted to be just like them. They didn't drink non-alcoholic beer. Oh no, no, no, no. They drank high ABV craft ales. And they didn't drink alcohol-free wine. No, they drank naturally fermented skin contact orange wines that even I had never heard of. Now, I believed that to be just like them, um, alcohol was my route to doing that. I'd like to point out before we go any further that I no longer hold that belief in any way, shape, or form. Thank goodness. It was fucking exhausting. Um, but it was something that drove a lot of my behavior for a very, very long time. And you know, it's hindsight being 2020. It's not something I could have seen at the time. It's not something that somebody else could have pointed out to me. It was only when I was ready to have a look at that for myself that I was able to start recognizing it and then doing something about it. So, in a brief episode today, because it is the Easter break here in the UK, um, and I'm guessing probably where you are from where most of my listeners are based. Um, and if you're anything like me, you're completely unorganized, you've got two small kids to entertain, and hopefully you're not like me in that yours haven't started off the Easter holiday with tonsillitis and antibiotics I also have to deal with. So you'll forgive me if today's episode is a little bit shorter, but the value is still going to be there, I promise. So, that first belief that a lot of people I think are holding on to is that you need alcohol to take the edge off. That famous phrase, my best mate said it to me all the time. Go on, D, just a little one to take the edge off. As if life were only good with no edges. But what I've come to realize now is that what if I like the edges? What if I need the edges? What if the edges are what help me to determine where one moment ends and another one begins? What if the edges are how we know we're alive? Look, I get it, uh rough day, uh, your boss is a dick, the kids are annoying, your other half is being a pain in the bum. All of these things, they do exist and they do impact us. Of course they do. Um, but they're also offering something else. They're giving us an opportunity, they give us a chance to win, to excel, to improve. When you're constantly just taking the edge off the rough, you also sand down the smooth. And I, for one, didn't want that anymore. Besides, there are other ways to take said edge off that don't have to include alcohol. Yes, that is one option, and you know this show is not about saying that you can never touch alcohol again. If that's something that you make a conscious choice to do, then that's very different from just relying on it as some sort of emotional crutch that doesn't actually do what it is that you want it to do for you anyway. So maybe that's one option, but so is exercise, so is time with people that you love, so is just being outside in the fresh air, the sun is shining today. You'll be amazed at the wonders that can be achieved by getting some vitamin D, natural vitamin D, on your skin while sitting in the park and watching the world go by. So there are other ways to take the edge off. Yes, alcohol is one of them, but it's not the only one. Another belief that I know a lot of people share is that worrying belief that you can't have fun or be fun without a drink. Now, again, total honesty, alcohol does lower your inhibitions. Yes, it does. It dampens your executive thinking and now it eliminates any thoughts of consequences as you go further and further into your evening. If you put all that together, right, you are bound to have some fun because you are not going to stop yourself from doing the things that you would if you were thinking more clearly, perhaps. And you are going to get yourself into wild and crazy situations, and some of them will be absolutely hilarious, and you'll be dining out on them for months or years to come. Sometimes they might not go entirely your way as well. But no one is suggesting that you can't have fun with booze. Well, that's not true. Some people probably are suggesting that, I'm not one of them. But when, this is another question I have for you, when did you begin to believe that you can only have fun with booze? Let's take the pub, for example. I love a pub, British pub is uh is institutional to the way that we live. But if all you do when you go to the pub and you are choosing not to have alcohol is sit in the corner, sipping on a lime of soda or a pint of coke, uh, while everyone gets stuck into the thick of things and enjoys themselves and they get up and they dance, and you just sit there watching from the distance, then of course you're not going to have any fun. So, what you need is evidence. You need proof to yourself and to others around you that there is more to life to be had, even in the moments that you choose not to imbibe full strength alcohol. So I want you to take a moment and think of a time, a time when you were happy, when you laughed or danced or felt pure joy. Genuinely, was alcohol the star of that moment, or was it something else? Was it the people? Was it the season? Was it the location? Was it the occasion? Was alcohol even a part of that moment? If it was, did it really, really enhance your joy or did it eventually begin to dull it? If you can think of just one moment of true and pure joy in your life that didn't involve drinking, then you have just proved to yourself that you don't need alcohol to have fun. Belief smashed. The next one is that I don't have a problem, so I don't need to change. We've all heard this one. We've all seen the Hollywood and television depiction of people with a drinking problem where you're stumbling around drunk at nine o'clock in the morning. Uh, and if that's not you, then everything is fine and nothing actually needs to change. But if you really believed that, then you probably wouldn't be listening to this podcast. Wanting to drink more mindfully isn't about rectifying an addiction that's destroying your life. It's about intervening before that quote-unquote problem has a chance to take root, to take hold. It's about recognizing that you can still like alcohol, you might like the taste, the smell, the texture, and all the things that come with it. You might still like all that, but still not want to have any tonight or this weekend or for this occasion. You don't need to wait. I've said this before and I'll keep saying it again. You do not need to wait for a rock bottom moment to decide that you want to have a different relationship with alcohol. I'm not calling it a better relationship, just a different relationship with alcohol based on what you want to get out of it, not what it wants to get out of you. One more belief that I think people often hold on to fiercely, uh, and it's this fear that I might not be very good at this. It's that I've tried it before and I didn't stick to it, so clearly I can't do this. Whether you tried uh a dry January or a sober October or just some undetermined break that you felt that you wanted or you needed, they say that um I think the quote goes something like those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. Now, doomed is a bit of a strong word, but the reason why that quote springs to mind while I was writing this piece is because when your attempts at moderating have quote unquote failed in the past, when they've not gone the way that you wanted them to do, one of the things that we all do is throw the baby out with the bathwater, throw the towel in, give up, and just proclaim, well, I can't do this, I'm not, I'm not trying anymore, I'll just keep doing what I've been doing for the last 20 years. And you have every right to do that, and if that's what you want to do, then more power to you, off you pop, that's great. But if you do actually want to make a change, then how about you take a look at what you did last time and you have an honest conversation with yourself about what went wrong? Maybe you started out with all the right intentions and you bossed days one, two, and three, but by day four you were waning, and by day five, you were back down the pub. Maybe it wasn't like that, maybe it was an instant and you just thought, you know what? I've been doing all right, but now I want to have a drink. Or maybe there was a high stress situation, maybe it was a work situation or uh a disagreement with your other half or with your parents or with your siblings. We all know that those people who are closest to us can often be triggers for big emotional feelings. Whatever it was, just because it went the way it did last time, that doesn't mean that it's going to go the same way this time. That doesn't mean that you can't change. One of the things that I would definitely advise that you do is take a listen to episode 163. It's five questions to ask yourself about the pros and cons of different moderation techniques. When you can start to look at what you did last time and see what worked and what went well, that's fantastic. But more importantly, when you get the chance to see where you had challenges, where there were perhaps opportunities to learn, to see which techniques work best for you in what different types of situations and what things could have been done differently, that's where you get the chance to grow and to develop and become more of who you want to be. That is where the change happens. That's where the beliefs that we had that were holding us back before, the limiting beliefs that were stopping you from achieving what you wanted, can start to become reshaped, reformed, and renurtured into something that serves you far better. That's where we begin to reshape our future and stop living in our past. That's it from me for this week. I hope you are enjoying the spring sunshine wherever you are in the world. And until next week, cheers to a life less intoxicated.