A friend of mine recently told me about her husband getting drunk at a party and she was annoyed with him for not knowing when to stop: “He should’ve known when to stop!”.
And this got me thinking.
I have woken up on more mornings than I’d like to admit, with similar words echoing around my aching head: “You should've said no”... “You should've gone home”... “You should’ve stopped at two drinks” and so on. The echo chamber. A spiral of self-disgust and shame.
Have you ever fallen down the same spiral? Found these words playing on repeat, whether you wake up slightly tired and foggy-headed or completely broken and wiped out from the night before…
“I should’ve known when to stop.”
“What’s wrong with me - why can’t I stop at one or two?”
“Urgh, I knew I should’ve come home early.”
“Why did I keep drinking?”
Whatever the words - they all carry the same shame.
But here’s the thing. To know when to stop, to say no, to go home, to stop at one or two or three drinks, requires presence of mind. It requires some form of being present in the moment - mindfulness. And this is exactly what we don’t have when we’re drinking alcohol.
You cannot be mindful when you’re intoxicated.
Alcohol affects the prefrontal cortex first - the amazing part of your brain responsible for controlling impulses, making decisions, and regulating your emotions.
Alcohol might convincingly wear the disguise of boosting our mood, making us feel better or allowing us to escape, but underneath, it’s nothing but a depressant.
It gets its sticky little hands on our prefrontal cortex and begins to anaesthetise it. And this is exactly the part of our brain that we need to stay wide awake! We need it alert and fully functioning to stop us from having that next drink and to remind us that we need to go home so we don’t wake up wondering what we did the night before, falling down our shame spiral again.
In other words, you can only be mindful when making that initial decision: to drink or not to drink.
With every mouthful of alcohol you consume, you’re turning down the volume on your mindfulness. Numbing your ability to be present.
So, all those years I beat myself up for being weak, blaming myself for not knowing when to stop, I’d set myself up to fail right from the start.
Ultimately, the decision you make when contemplating that first drink is the one that counts. So make it count.
Try this:
If you’re offered a drink or contemplating having ‘just the one’, firstly take a deep breath. And then another deep breath.
Check in with your feelings. Are you feeling content? Happy? Sad? Angry? Frustrated? Exhausted?
What is it that you really want right now - to relax, to have fun, to unwind, to escape, to numb?
Remind yourself that alcohol may give you the illusion of what you want, but it won’t be real. And it will certainly take more than it will give. On every level.
Then, ask yourself what else you could do to make you feel more content, to ease the frustration, to unwind. Maybe you need to eat some lovely food, dance around your living room, watch something hilarious on TV with friends or family, go for a walk… or whatever it is that brings you joy and helps you to relax.
Most importantly of all though, remind yourself of how amazing you are without that stuff in your body - because you are.
