You are listening to the Take a Break podcast with Rachel Hart, episode 106.

Whether you want to drink less or stop drinking, this podcast will help you change the habit from the inside out.

We're challenging conventional wisdom about why people drink and why it can be hard to resist temptation.

No labels, no judgment, just practical tools to take control of your desire and stop worrying about your drinking.

Now, here's your host, Rachel Hart.

Hello, hello, hello everybody. I hope you're having a wonderful day.

I want to tell you about something that happened to me recently when I was explaining to someone about my work

and the work that I do to help people change their drinking and really this whole kind of different perspective that I have about the habit of drinking and why it is challenging to change.

And I was talking to this person and she wanted to know about my clients. So she wanted to know if they were all like me in their late 30s for those of you who don't know I'm 38.

And I was telling her, you know what? No, I work with women in pretty much every decade of their life from their 20s and 30s and 40s, but also women in their 50s, 60s and 70s.

And she was so shocked. And she said, I can't imagine that someone wouldn't have figured out their problem with alcohol in their 60s and 70s.

And you know, in that moment, it occurred to me, oh really, most people have no idea how the habit works.

Because the thinking goes, if you drink too much, this must have always been the case for you.

So if you're drinking too much in your 60s and 70s, then you would have been drinking too much in all the decades prior.

Not just now, but also in your 50s and your 40s and your 30s and your 20s and basically whenever you started drinking.

That is really a cultural mindset that we have that if alcohol is a problem for you now, it's always been a problem.

But here's the thing, that's wrong. And you know what? It simply doesn't reflect the habit and how the habit unfolds for so many of the women that I work with.

And you know what? Even if you are someone who noticed that when you first started drinking, you had a tendency to drink more than you wanted to from the get go, I want you to keep listening.

And I want you to consider this because I bet that if pressed, you would be able to recognize how your drinking has changed over time, how it is ebbed and flowed.

You know, a lot of my clients will tell me, I'm so confused because alcohol wasn't always a problem, Rachel.

In fact, many people will tell me, you know, I didn't really drink in college. I was never really into partying or pretty much for most of my life, I consumed very little or I consumed it in moderation or I barely touched the stuff and then something changed.

All of a sudden it's a problem and that's when so many people come to me confused because they're scratching their heads, what happened, what changed because it doesn't fit with the cultural narrative that we have about alcohol and drinking too much and why it happens.

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