You are listening to the Take a Break podcast with Rachel Hart episode 252.

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.

All right, my friends. So we are talking about something that comes up a lot on the podcast,

but I haven't done an episode specifically devoted to this in a long time. We're talking about

alcohol being morally neutral, neither good or bad. So early on when I started this podcast,

one of my early episodes, I think it was number 35, introduced this concept, this idea.

And the point was really to help all of you start to understand and see that your judgment

of drinking too much and judging that as being a bad thing and also judging, saying no and

abstaining as being a good or virtuous thing is actually part of the problem. This is something

that I didn't understand for the longest time. And I went through many kind of iterations of like,

oh god, I was so stupid. Why did I do that? And trying to convince myself that alcohol

was bad for me and it was poison. And I was constantly labeling it as good or bad, right or wrong.

And what I didn't understand that all of these judgments, not only were they optional,

because it truly is neutral, but they were actually fueling the habit for me.

So just think about when you said to yourself, I've been so good all week. I really deserve a

treat. We do this with the glass of wine. We do this with the bag of chips. We do this a lot. We

attach the label of being good because we've been saying no to our desire. Now the problem with that

is that it furthers this idea, this belief that saying no to an urge, saying no to your craving

...