8 Things I’d Tell You About Mindful Drinking If I Wasn’t Afraid To Hurt Your Feelings
Ready For A Reality Check?
Hi, No preamble today – let’s get into it…
1. You’re romanticising your drinking past, and you need to stop.
Late nights. Later mornings. Partying with your besties. Making “friends” with strangers. It was all ‘sex, drugs and house music’ and you loved it.
I loved it.
But it’s gone. It’s not coming back. And no amount of reminiscing is going to change that.
And even if it did, it would not be the same.
Seriously, do you really want to go clubbing until 3am and then stay up talking nonsense until 7 in the morning before dragging your arse in for an 8hr slog at work?
It sounds fun in theory, but in reality, you’d hate it.
It’s hard not to look back with rosé-tinted spectacles. But once you take them off, you’ll realise that drinking today is supposed to look and feel different.
It’s called growing up, and you can’t fight it, so embrace it.
2. Stop waiting for your rock bottom
“It’s not vodka on my cornflakes, so I’m not that bad.”
Huh?!
“Hi, Doctor, I cut my leg open last week, but I wanted to wait until it was falling off before I came in.”
That’s what it sounds like to me when I hear people say, “It’s not that bad.”
Why wait for the proverbial rock bottom to come hurtling towards you at full force before making a choice for the better?
It’s easy to live in the extremes, to rely on absolutes to guide us: clear problem = clear solution.
But here’s an idea: step up for yourself while it’s still your choice, while you’re still in control, before it becomes a necessity.
3. It isn’t the booze — it’s the stories you’ve told yourself about who you are with a drink in your hand.
Alcohol has become part of your identity. It’s tied up in all of your memories of the good times and the bad. Births, deaths, marriages and everything in between.
Separating who you are without a drink in your hand from the value you have to offer as a member of the human race is a mental hurdle you have to overcome.
You might see yourself as the life and soul of the party, as the social glue of your inner circle, but if you can’t interact with your nearest and dearest unless you’re three sheets to the wind, then there’s something else going on that you need to address.
Besides, I reckon I’m still hilarious to be around on a night out, whether I’m drinking or not, and I’m guessing if you let your hair down, you would be too, regardless of the ABV of your drink.
4. Your social circle will change – and it’s probably about time
Hopefully, you’ve made some good choices in your life and find yourself surrounded by kind, loving, supportive individuals who have your back through thick and thin.
But…
You might also know a few douchebags.
Be honest, it’s OK. We’ve all got one or two of those in our lives somewhere.
And look, those people might not get your choice to drink differently. They might not support your journey to a life less intoxicated or, at the extreme, take it as some sort of personal affront.
Screw ‘em.
Harsh? I don’t think so. And remember this post is what I’d say if I wasn’t afraid to upset you. So here goes:
Some people are in your life for a reason, and some people are in it just for a season (it’s cheesy, but it’s true).
If Sally-Ann and Jon-Jon are only hanging out with you because you’re great drinking buddies, then it’s time to put those fair-weather friends away for the winter and refocus your energy on the people who love you more and judge you less.
(What do you think? Too harsh? Tell me in the comments.)
5. Moderation might not be right for you.
I don’t advise that anyone spend their evening counting their drinks (talk about sucking the joy out of a night), but mindful drinking does require a level of situational awareness that can make your first few nights out a little more confronting than you’d expect.
If having to consider your drinking choices before you go out or while you’re there starts to take the pleasure out of the evening for you, then maybe this is not your path at the moment.
And if you spend more time thinking about when you’re ‘allowed’ to have your next drink or negotiating your own rules with yourself, then it’s definitely time to rethink your approach.
But don’t despair. Trial and error in the process of getting to know yourself better is the first step to success in anything.
Start small. A quiet Tuesday night catch-up at your local with your bestie is a much better litmus test than Saturday night down the Nag’s Head with Del & the boys (10 points if you can name that retro TV reference, my midlife friend).
6. You need to be impatient with your actions but patient with your results.
Changing decades of habit doesn’t happen in a week. Yes, I’m banging that drum again because you need to hear it.
You’ve been drinking your way for 20+ years. Changing that won’t happen overnight. But you do have to start now.
There’s entirely no point in waiting until the “right time” because it doesn’t exist.
There will always be a birthday, a wedding, a conference that you need to attend, so part 1 is to forget about all that and start making different choices today.
Part 2, then, is about accepting that the changes you want to see will take time. Going from active moderation techniques like zebra striping and bookending to passive moderation, where it integrates more seamlessly into your life, will take time.
Be patient, it’s worth it.
7. Most of the motivational content out there isn’t meant for you
I’ll preface this by saying up front that you are not in this alone. I’ve got you every step of the way. But the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of content online about alcohol reduction is made by and for people who view complete sobriety as the ultimate singular goal.
Now that’s not a bad thing. It might be your goal. In which case, you can skip the rest of this point.
But if it’s not your aim to give up booze entirely and you just want a little help and support for those times when you want to drink less, to stop at two and be happy about it, to be able to say ‘just the one’ and feel confident about it, then most of Instagram is probably not for you.
Whether it’s IG, TikTok, Pinterest or even LinkedIn, the rhetoric is pretty clear: booze is bad, and you should stay away.
The result?
When you do have one or two more than you intended, you end up feeling like a failure instead of a normal human being who’s on their own path and occasionally cocks up.
The moral of the story here: be careful who you listen to.
Find the right support for YOU and YOUR goals, and don’t let other people’s idea of the ‘perfect life’ derail your efforts at the perfect life for you. We don’t all want to cold plunge at 5am while reading Anna Kerennena and drinking two gallons of electrolyte-infused camel water.
8. The low/no drinks industry isn’t perfect, and you don’t have to pretend everything tastes amazing.
As an advocate for low, no and light drinking, the first question I was asked when interviewed on BBC Radio 1Xtra last year (clang goes the name drop) was: “But Denise, these drinks aren’t always so great, are they?”
No, my friend. No, they are not.
But they are a hell of a lot better than they used to be, and getting better each day. We’ve got beers that taste almost identical to the “real thing”, spirits, cocktails, wines and champagnes. There’s just no excuse for a lame dismissal of an entire category because you once had a warm Becks Blue in a crappy hotel bar.
And anyway, so what if they’re not all winners?
Are you really trying to tell me that you’ve enjoyed every single alcoholic drink you’ve ever tasted? I sure haven’t. And yet we soldiered through, downing shit shot after shit shot just so we could say “I woz there!”.
You don’t have to like everything in the low/no category, but stop using that as an excuse not to find new drinks to support the life you say you want to build.
Look, I’m not trying to be a dick here, but sometimes a little tough love is exactly what you need.
No more excuses, no more procrastination. You deserve a life less intoxicated. So start building it today because tomorrow’s coming, no matter what you do!
Prefer to listen? Catch ep#157. 8 Things I’d Tell You About Mindful Drinking If I Wasn’t Afraid to Hurt Your Feelings, wherever you like to listen.
Whether you’re drinking moderately, mindfully or not at all, finding the right kind of support for how you want to live is the first step on the journey to drinking differently.
Congrats! You’ve ticked that one off.
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