You are listening to the Take a Break podcast with Rachel Hart episode 265.

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 everyone, welcome back. We're talking today about something that's so important

when we start to use drinking as self-care. This is so common, right? You have a bad day,

you're stressed out, maybe you're grieving a loss, maybe you got a migraine or you're unable to sleep

and the habit starts to become, if I pour a drink, I'm going to feel better, right? And you look at

how you use alcohol and what's behind your desire and you may discover that, yeah, drinking has

become a way for me to take care of myself. It's become a form of self-care and listen, it makes a

lot of sense because we are taught from a very young age, go find something outside of yourself to

feel better. Here's a cookie, here's a treat, turn on the TV, right? We are taught to go on this

external hunt to feel good. Let me find the thing outside of myself that is going to help me in

the situation. So we learn that from a very young age, we get that message from a very young age

and we watch most of the adults in our environment do exactly that when they're struggling with how they

feel. And this is why I think it's so important not to view the habit of drinking in isolation,

not to put it in a silo, but to actually connect it to the big picture and to just be honest and

think, yeah, how often do I look outside of myself to feel better, not just opening a bottle of wine

when I have a bad day, but reaching for chocolate or grabbing the remote or picking up my phone or

going shopping, how often is that part of my search to feel good? Now, I want to be really clear

here. I don't think any of this is bad. I don't think humans are meant to live a life devoid of

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