Should You Take A Booze Break?

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If you've decided that you want to change the way that you're drinking, then one of the most obvious places to start is to stop drinking altogether. Maybe you do a dry January or a sober October. You take an entire month off, or perhaps it's six weeks, three months, uh, until your birthday or until your holiday or the next big event that's coming up, whatever date you've circled in your diary. Taking a break from alcohol is probably one of the most common ways that people start to change their drinking. And there are some really good reasons for that. But if what you actually want is to learn how to moderate your drinking, then is stopping drinking entirely the best way to start? Because if you're not aiming for full sobriety, could you actually be practicing the wrong task by taking a clean break from alcohol? You're listening to the Mindful Drinking and Moderation in Midlife podcast, where it's my goal to help you take back the power of choice from alcohol. I'm your host and mindful drinking mentor, Denise Hamilton Mace, and this is the start of your journey to a life less intoxicating. Okay, so the first thing to say here is that this is not an episode about why you shouldn't take a break from alcohol. Okay, I want to make that clear from the beginning because taking a break can be incredibly useful for some people. Obviously, we've covered dry January and sober October, which we're coming up to very shortly on this podcast many, many times before. So I'm not going to tell you that they're a bad idea. They're great for some people, but they don't work for everybody. So what I want to look at today is whether taking a break is the right idea for you right now. Because sometimes we can start on these uh challenges, or uh we can use this as a moderation method before we've actually really thought about the goal that we want at the end of it. So, my goal for this episode today is to help you to understand better what it is that you're trying to achieve by taking a month-long break, or however long it is, from booze, and whether this is the best way to do it. So, we're going to go through some of the pros and the cons of taking a complete break from alcohol. We're going to look at what a clean break can and can't teach you about your relationships with alcohol, and then I've got for you five questions that you can ask yourself to help you decide whether taking some time off is actually the right starting point for you.

Why You Want To Take A Booze Break

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Okay, so let's start with why you're considering taking a break in the first place. It's likely that you have decided that something about your drinking needs to change, obviously. But that doesn't necessarily mean that anything dramatic has happened. You might have had, I don't know, a really long stint of um boozing more than you wanted to, or it might simply be that you've been noticing that lately you're always drinking a couple of glasses more than you intended to, or you're always feeling just a little bit worse for wear, and you want to do something about that. So, first of all, that's fantastic. That's why you're here and you're already taking steps to building a life less intoxicated and taking back the power of choice from alcohol just by recognizing and trying to do something about it, whether it's to improve your sleep, your health, your finances, your relationship, whatever it is, you're making positive steps in the right direction. And to do that, taking a break can be a really sort of obvious course of action because it's very clear. You don't have to keep making decisions about whether you're drinking tonight, you don't have to decide how much you're drinking if you are or what you're drinking, you're just not having any booze. And sometimes simple is the best. Simplicity is what you need. Um, I did an episode for you just last week on whether or not you were overcomplicating your moderation. So if taking a break is the clear and simple path forward for you, and that's what fits your life at the moment, then maybe it is the right next step for you to take. But before you decide that that's what you're going to do, I want you to think about what you actually want from it, what you want to gain at the end of your experience? Because is it that you're curious about what your life feels like without alcohol? Um, do you want to see whether it improves your sleep or your relationships or the things that we've just mentioned? Do you feel that maybe alcohol has become too automatic and you want to interrupt the pattern and the habit? Or do you still know that you want alcohol in your life and you're just looking at different ways to make that a more viable possibility? Because wanting to keep alcohol in your life in some capacity, and wanting to practice not having alcohol in your life at all are two very different things. And it's important that we keep that in mind as we go through taking a break, because then we know what we're working towards.

The Pros Of Taking A Break From Alcohol

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So we can start with the pros because, yeah, let's be positive. Um, the first pro is probably the most obvious one, but that's that it is simple. Choosing to take a booze break is a very straightforward approach to moderating your alcohol for a period of time because there is only one rule: you just don't drink. And if you're somebody who um thrives with structure, who likes to know what you're doing, when you're doing it, how you're doing it, then that can be really, really helpful. You know, you're not going to be standing there um in the kitchen at 6.30 on a Wednesday or Thursday evening trying to negotiate with yourself, thinking, well, I did say that I was only going to have a couple of drinks this week, and I had a drink on Wednesday, and I'm going out on Saturday. So I shouldn't have a drink today, but maybe if I have a small one, you know, there's none of that. You don't have to put yourself through that for however long that you've decided that you're not allowing alcohol into the room with you. And so removing those distractions can be um really, really helpful, particularly when you're first starting to think about changing your drinking. A

Space To Think

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second pro is that it gives you some space to actually assess your relationship with alcohol. It is sometimes quite difficult to see the role that alcohol is playing in your life whilst you're still consuming it. But when alcohol is not an option, then you give yourself the space to start noticing the moments when you would normally have been reaching for alcohol and thinking about having a drink. You give yourself the room to recognize whether your desire for a drink is born out of automation, whether it's habit when you've just finished work, whether it's stress relief when the kids have finally uh gone to bed and the house is quiet, whether it's um it's unconscious habit when you're cooking and you automatically pour yourself a glass of wine, you know, whether it's your social situation, which particular groups in your social circle you drink more with, and so on and so forth. And that's really useful information for you to gather about yourself. Because during that this break, what I wouldn't recommend is that you try to um uncover, dissect, and then fix all of those things all at once. It's about noticing them, recognizing them, uh, and understanding that they play a part until you're in a position where you are ready to tackle them one at a time. Always one at a time, please.

Know How You Feel

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Um, another big advantage is that you get a much clearer idea of how you feel without alcohol playing a role. So I did mention this when I did a previous pros and cons episode for you, which was episode 163, uh, the pros and cons of different moderation techniques. I'll link to that in the show notes for you, of course. Um, but if you are drinking less but you're still consuming alcohol, it can sometimes be a bit harder to work out exactly what's responsible for the changes that you are noticing. Because if you've cut your units uh intake in half, for example, um, and you might be getting a little bit more sleep, and you might be getting a little bit more exercise, or you are not round with somebody as much, or the person who annoys you at work has gone on holiday. You know, there's a lot of different things for you to try to attribute your change in feeling towards. So by taking just a clean break from alcohol, you can get a much clearer idea of whether you feel better, uh, you sleep better, your mornings go better, you have more energy, so on and so forth when there's no alcohol in your schedule for that

Practice Your Sober Socialising

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time. And then the final pro for this list is that it gives you an opportunity to experience situations sober. So, social situations I'm talking about here. Uh, I don't just mean sitting at home on the sofa, watching a movie with your other half, although that is still a significant consideration. And I will be doing an episode for you shortly on drinking at home because I think it's one area that doesn't get enough attention. But I'm talking about here specifically those social situations that are out of the home, maybe just with your partner, maybe with your friends, maybe with work colleagues, but you get an opportunity to experience those without any alcohol and see how they feel for you. So, you know, what happens when you go out for dinner and you don't have alcoholic wine with it? What happens when you go to the pub and all your friends are having uh shots, maybe, and you're choosing not to? What happens at a birthday party or after you've had a really shit day at work and everyone's been driving you crazy? Um, you know, all of these social situations that you find yourself in that you would usually have reached for alcohol, you will be experiencing them completely songs alcohol, and you get a chance to see what that feels like for you. If that's a lifestyle that you actually can enjoy and be yourself in and feel comfortable in, and feel like you're gaining from being in that situation.

The Cons Of Taking A Break From Alcohol

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So there are clearly some great benefits to taking a complete booze break. On the flip side, though, there are also some cons to taking a booze break because this is life, and life is full of pros and cons as we know.

All-Or-Nothing Thinking

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So the first con is the all-or-nothing thinking that a booze break perpetuates. Because the thing that makes a break from alcohol so simple can also be the thing that makes it quite difficult. Okay, there's only one rule, and that rule is no alcohol. That's how you succeed at a break from booze. So, what happens if you do have a drink? What happens if on day 17 of your 30-day break you had a really crappy day and you decided that you wanted a drink? Or on day 22, you had a great day and your friend told you that, I don't know, uh, they were getting married and you went to the pub and popped a bottle of champagne to celebrate. It could be day two, it could be day 22. It doesn't really matter. The question here is what happens if you do have a drink when you've decided that you are having a clean break from it for a month? Does that mean that you failed? Does that mean that you have to start again and tomorrow becomes your new day one? Do you just carry on and pretend that it didn't happen? Or do you think, oh, well, I've blown it now, I've I've I've completely cocked this all up, so screw it, I might as well just go back to doing exactly what I was doing before. If you tend to be the type of person who, when something goes wrong, you can spiral, uh, catastrophize, or feel that everything else is pointless, then the rigidity of one solid, all-powerful rule might actually be undoing the very thing that you're trying to do. Because life isn't black and white. I've said it before and I'll say it again: things don't always go to plan. Things are going to happen that will derail you, that will get in your way, that will interrupt your best of intentions and your best laid plans. And if you're not able to bend around that, then you might find yourself breaking. And if you can't mend yourself after that break, then where does that leave you?

Not Living A "Normal" Life

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The next con to think about is whether you're actually living your normal life, air quotes normal life, during your booze break. Because if you decide that you're not drinking alcohol for a month, and during that month you don't go to the pub, you refuse to go to your best friend's birthday party, you don't go to any of the work socials, you don't go for dinner with your other half because you'll be in a restaurant and they have your favorite wine, etc., etc. And you get to the end of that month or that end of that break, or however long it's been for you, and you've successfully not had any alcohol for those 30 days, you pat yourself on the back, you say, fantastic, great, I did it, didn't have any booze, but I also didn't leave the house. So what have you learned about yourself and how you can interact with alcohol differently if you didn't do anything the whole month? If you don't go to the pub and try drinking differently? Uh, what do you learn about yourself if you don't go to the birthday party and hang out with your friends in that environment? What have you learned about how to handle being offered another drink or how to um deal with the people that have questions about what you're doing? You haven't failed at anything. Okay, you've perfectly succeeded in your designated booze break. You did exactly what you set out to do. But if your eventual goal is to moderate alcohol and to put booze back on the table after those 30 days, as we said in the beginning, then you still have all of that learning left to do if you haven't tried any of it during your break.

White-Knuckling Your Way Through

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The next con on our list is that when you do take a clean break from alcohol, it's that you spend that entire break white knuckling it through, waiting for it to finish. It's that sort of counting down the days until you are air quotes allowed to drink normally again. And it's soul destroying. You know, oh my gosh, I've done all week, but I've still got three weeks to go, 14 days to go, 10 days to go, oh my god, there's only three days to go. I can't wait until I can start drinking again. If your entire focus for your booze break is only on what you're not allowed to do, and when you are allowed to drink again, then what's likely to happen when you get to day one of permitting alcohol in your life again? For some people, they get to the end of that booze break and they head straight down the pub and they get straight back on it just like they were before. Have you gained anything if you spend your entire break just thinking about getting back to drinking the way you were? What is ideal in those situations is that during that booze break, during that time off, is that you're developing skills and ideas and plans for what happens afterwards, for what happens after day 30 or 31 or whatever it is. You can be really, really good at not drinking for a month and still have absolutely no idea what you're going to do the following month if you go through your booze break just white knuckling and waiting for it to be over.

Are You Practising The Right Skill?

SPEAKER_00 18:03

So, what does all that mean then? If we take our pros list and our cons list, and of course, that's just um my overview of some of the pros and cons. You might have some more, you might have different ones, but if you take that overview, I think what we have to take from that is what is it that you want to practice during your 30-day, 31-day, three-month, whatever it is, booze break. Because if your goal is to explore a life completely without alcohol, then taking that booze break makes complete sense because you're practicing the thing that you are considering doing. You are experiencing a life without alcohol, learning how to socialize with that, uh without it, rather, uh, and what you'll drink instead, how you'll feel, all of those things. But if your goal isn't sobriety, if it is to still have alcohol in your life, then moderation involves a different set of practices that you need to consider. It's about looking at whether you want to drink tonight and how much you want to drink and which alcohol-free drinks you're going to swap in in between your alcohol-full ones, for example. And the thing with a booze break is that you don't make any of those decisions when alcohol is completely off the table. So if you take a month off and then go straight back into your previous drinking habits, then the break hasn't necessarily taught you how to make those decisions differently. Now, that doesn't make the break pointless, and I want to be clear here that the suggestion is not that you should only take a booze break if your goal is pure sobriety. It's simply that you need to be mindful of what it is that you're practicing for and how the action of your practice feeds what it is that you want in the long term.

Five Questions To Decide If A Booze Break Is Right For You

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So, five questions that you can ask yourself to help you determine whether a clean break is the right first step for you. Question one, what is your actual goal? Okay, so what do you want to achieve? It's not just I want to drink less, we all know that. But what does that actually mean in your life? What does it look like? Do you want fewer drinking days? Do you want to drink less when you're out? Do you want to stop drinking so much at home? Do you want to know what it would feel like if you didn't drink at all? Are you questioning whether you want alcohol in your life anymore? And this is just a stepping stone for you getting there, or do you know that you want to continue drinking and you're trying to work out what moderation can look like for you? Because once you know what you're actually trying to achieve, then you can ask whether a break moves you towards it, or it puts more challenges in that way. Now, before I get to question two, if you are listening to this one and you're thinking, well, that is the thing that I'm struggling with. I don't know whether or not I want to moderate, whether I want to drink mindfully, whether I want to cut back, whether I should start with a break. Then that is exactly why I created the beginner's guide to mindful drinking and moderation in midlife. It takes you through the biggest questions that you and people just like you have when it comes to starting out on your mindful drinking journey, including looking at what you actually want, how you're drinking now, and the different ways that you can start making changes and where that can take you. It is a beginner's guide designed for people who are new to moderating their alcohol or who have tried before and not found the insight that they wanted to gain from all the efforts that they put in. I'll link to it in the show notes for you, but it's a really useful tool for working through exercises like this one to help you understand what's the best path is for the way that you want to drink in the future. Okay, question two is what do you want to learn from your booze break? So if you are going to take a break, what information do you want to have gathered at the end of it? Maybe you want to find out whether you can socialize without drinking. If so, Then that is fantastic, but you have to make sure that you socialize. You can't sit at home and still figure out whether or not you can have a good time with your friends if you don't have any booze. Maybe you want to understand, um, as we mentioned before, when and how your urges to drink show up. Okay, great. So in that time, you need to pay attention to them, you need to note them, you need to find a way to uh record them or understand them or interact with your urges and know what is triggering your patterns and your habits that you'd like to move on from. Uh maybe it's about your sleep and your energy. You know, I'm a big fan of sleep, uh, and you want to notice how alcohol is impacting your sleep. Maybe you start doing some experiments and you're thinking, okay, you know, after one day with no booze, how do I sleep? After three days with no booze, how do I sleep? And if you do happen to have a drink during your intended break, because you are only human and it's okay that sometimes you will do things uh differently to your intended path, then you can also use it as an opportunity for learning, instead of beating yourself up about it, by the way, and throwing the baby out with the bath water. You could actually go, okay, all right, damn it, I didn't mean to drink, but I did. But interestingly, I've not had alcohol for a whole week. I wonder how I'm going to sleep tonight now that I have had a drink, or how I'm going to feel tomorrow morning now that I have had a drink. And so you can take learnings from within your booze break, even if it doesn't go 100% exactly as you planned it. Um, question three, how do you handle rules? Okay, so we've covered this in terms of the fact that a booze break is a clear, singular instruction. You do not drink alcohol. Does that make it easier for you? Um, or are you the type of person who rebels against rules even when they are your own? You cannot see me, but my hand is in the air right now. I am terrible at doing as I'm told, even when told by myself. Um, so how do you handle those rules? Will you follow them? Will you break them? If you break them, how do you rebound from that? Do you throw the baby out with the bathwater, as I said? Do you give up? Do you give in, or do you bounce back and go, right? Now, this is how I'm going to move forward from this, and this is how I'm going to improve my efforts from this one. Now, neither one of these is right or wrong. Really important to say that this isn't about you are a good person if you can follow the rules, or you're a bad person if you can't. I've given you the example before of my kids. Logan loves a rule. He will follow the rules so the cows come home. He gets annoyed if he doesn't have a rule and he doesn't know what he's supposed to be doing. Isla's favorite word is rebel. She wants to break as many rules as she possibly can for no reason other than that's what she wants to do. They're both wonderful human beings. They just approach life differently, and that's perfectly fine if you are one or the other, whether you're a Logan or an Isla. Okay, question four. Will you live normally throughout your break? All right, now we've spoken about this. If you stay home the entire time and don't experience life, what are you going to gain from taking your booze break? That's not to say you won't gain anything. Obviously, um, physically, biologically, your body is going to have a break from processing alcohol, which is a boon for your liver, for your kidneys, for your heart, for your skin, for your hydration, for all of these things. So that's wonderful. Um, but psychologically, will you gain as much if you don't live normally? So if you are going to take a break, are you going to continue living your life? If your friends ask you to the pub, are you going to go? If there's a birthday coming up, if there's a work due. I don't know, if you're going for a Sunday lunch and you're going for your roast where you usually have a glass of red wine, will you still go and uh choose an alternative drink to have? Perhaps an alcohol-free red wine or a beer or a or a non-alcoholic cocktail. Which parts of life are you prepared to continue to commit to whilst you're taking your break so that you can keep learning how your life works with less alcohol in it? And then question five is what happens afterwards? Possibly the most important question of all, but what are you wanting to have happen when your break ends? You've done 30 days, 31 days, it's Friday night, you are off out to dinner at your favorite restaurant. Alcohol is no longer off the table. You can have whatever you want, and the waiter gives you the wine menu, and right there is your favorite Argentinian Malbek. What do you do? Do you want to dive straight in and order a large glass or a carafe for yourself? Do you want to sit and consider whether you want it based on other things that are happening in your life in and around that time? Do you want to extend your booze break? Are you feeling like you're you are gaining more than you thought? And actually, do you know what? I might want to keep this going for another week, maybe, or two weeks, or however much longer you feel like committing to. Um, did you discover during your break that there are situations where you genuinely don't want alcohol to be a part of it anymore? And that actually you are going to have a glass of wine with your dinner tonight, but when you are at the work due tomorrow that you have to go to, that actually that's a situation in which you don't want to drink alcohol. What are you taking forward from this so that the time after your booze break becomes an intentional, decided action rather than you just blindly falling back into old habits?

Final Question

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So, should you take a break from alcohol? Maybe. I can't answer that for you, but hopefully these questions can help you to answer that for yourself. For some people, taking a complete break, a clean break is exactly the right place to start. And to those people, I say, fantastic, go for it, start now. Do not wait for the best time, the right time. It doesn't exist. Your calendar will always have stuff in it. But if you are certain that you want to just take a break and give yourself a clean slate, then go for it. It removes the decision, uh, the decision fatigue, it creates more space, it gives you a clean comparison, it can show you things about your habits and your relationship with alcohol that are much, much harder to see when you are still drinking. But taking a break is a tool, okay? It is a tool that you can use to forward your life in the direction that you want to go in. And like every other moderation tool that we talk about on this show, whether it's useful or not depends on what you're trying to use it for and what you're trying to get out of it. So before you decide that the answer to drinking less is automatically to stop drinking altogether for an arbitrary month, ask yourself what you are trying to achieve. Ask yourself what you want to learn, and ask yourself what you're going to do with that information once the break is over. Because if you're not aiming for full sobriety, it's worth asking yourself one final question. And that is, could taking a clean break from alcohol mean that you're practicing the wrong task? That's it from me for this week. I would love to know how you get on with these questions about whether taking a clean break is the right approach for you or not. I love hearing from you. In the show notes, there is a button that says send me a message. You can send me a text, you can send me a voicemail, uh, you can email me, whatever you want to do. I'd love to hear from you. It's one of the favorite parts of my day. Uh, I will see you next Wednesday for our next episode. And until then, cheers to a life less intoxicated.