Women and Wine | How to Stop Overdrinking
If you are a high functioning woman you can absolutely cut back on drinking wine or quit all together. Maybe you want to stop for a week or a month. It is really up to you and it is 100% doable. I don’t believe the only route is AA. I know this for sure because I changed my relationship with alcohol without AA. I went from drinking a few glasses of wine on most nights to wind down, which became more of a habit to now allowing myself a drink or two on Friday or Saturday’s. What I learned is the less I drink, the less I drink and the less I want to drink. Why? Because I feel better. I look better. I have more self confidence and don’t kick myself in the ass. It’s part of my anti-aging routine. I get so much more done. I wake up authentically, believing in myself and setting the world on fire.
Why do women drink alcohol? Well, it is socially acceptable. We see it in glossy advertisements and on TV. Drinking is painted as having fun, more fun than if you did not drink at all. We drink with our girlfriends, we drink at social gatherings, we drink to wind down from a long day, we drink when we cook, have a bath and the list goes on and on. It feels sophisticated and classy with our beautiful wine glasses and expensive wine. We learn at an early age that it is something we want to get to. It’s a goal. In our teens we may sneak alcohol and drink with friends. We like how it “appears” to make us feel better. We get fake id’s and we cannot wait to turn 21 to drink legally and go to bars to meet friends and have fun. Society tells us that if we cannot drink like a fish then we have a problem.
There are lot of net negatives to overdrinking alcohol. Waking up dehydrated, feeling like shit, mentally abusing ourselves, extra weight gain, not remembering conversations, expense, arguments, DUI’s, spending the night with someone that you thought was a great idea the night before and the list goes on. How do you feel when you drink too much? Add your net negative to this list.
Overdrinking wine is a form of buffering. Buffering is when we use external things to change how we feel emotionally. It’s something we do to keep from fully experiencing our lives, to hide from reality, to procrastinate, to not show up and face the music. We don’t want to face the truth because we do not want to experience any type of negative emotion. We feel entitled to feel happiness and pleasure all the time. The truth is life is 50/50. You going to feel happy and you’re going to feel not so happy. You’re never going to feel 100% happy all the time. I know this because you would not know what happy feels like if you did not experience sadness.
Wine is a false pleasure. It is a dopamine hit. Giving up or cutting down on false pleasures makes us more available to experience the real pleasures in life. Constraining your drinking makes you more alert and available. You show up more authentically vs showing up sloppy.
Life can be a hard battle. If we could have this false pleasure with no consequences, nobody would care. But there are consequences. Overdrinking does cause pain. Overdrinking only provides a temporary release from negative emotion which always comes back harder than it started.
When you go out and get drunk, you think you are having so much fun until you wake up with a hangover and feel like shit all day. When you pursue wellbeing and limit your drinking you don’t experience hang overs. When you quit/limit your drinking, you stop experiencing embarrassing drinking moments and remember your conversations.
When you trade false pleasures in your life for wellbeing, you can gain confidence and that confidence begets more confidence, which begets more confidence, which begets more confidence. The more confidence you have, the more empowered you feel, the more emotional wellbeing you have, the more you have to give and offer the world. We are at our ultimate happiness when we are able to be our best version of ourselves and contribute to the world.
5 Ways to Stop Overdrinking Alcohol
- Make yourself a priority. Your mental wellbeing is everything. You have to do this for you. You have to learn how to fall in love with yourself. All of you. Invest in yourself. This is a game changer. You get to live a healthy, happy, sexy life. You get to feel better. This step is critical.
- Manage your brain. Do daily thought downloads. Empty out that beautiful brain of yours and write down what you are thinking about with pen on paper. What stories are you telling yourself about drinking? Why do you think you are overdrinking? Get curious and honest with yourself.
- Plan your drinking ahead of time and stick to that plan. If you want to drink 3 days a week, write it down. What are the days, what will you drink and how many will you drink? When you experience how it feels to not drink on your off days and you wake up feeling refreshed and whole you will want more of that.
- Allow your urges. This is the toddler in your brain that tells you “I want a drink now!”. You will need to learn to allow those urges. It is just a feeling. A feeling will pass but you have to allow it no matter how uncomfortable you feel and you will feel uncomfortable. The other side of uncomfortable is change.
- Invest in a life coach that specializes in How to Stop Overdrinking + Self Love. All great athletes have coaches and all humans should have coaches too. A life coach will help up level your life. When you work towards something new or want to change something that is not working you are up leveling. Together we work on the future you want to create vs being past focused
You have one life right now. Live it big and full. You get to decide. And guess what, you get to change your mind and begin again and again until you get it right however many times it takes. You know when it is right because you can feel it deep within your soul. It’s a wonderful flutter. A feeling of love. I help you get there. It is the greatest investment you can make for yourself.
You are beautiful. You are seen. You are enough. You are loveable. You are worth it.
I will always believe in you.
