434: How to Let Go of Regret About Drinking

Take a Break from Drinking

Rachel Hart

Alcohol, Lifecoach, Alcoholicsanonymous, Self-improvement, Hungover, Society & Culture, Smartrecovery, Drinking, Cognitivebehavioraltherapy, Education, Cbt, 12steps, Sobriety, Drunk, Recovery, Personal Journals

4.8 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Have you ever found yourself lying awake at night, replaying all the "stupid" things you did while drinking? That mental highlight reel of moments you wish you could take back, the choices that make you cringe, the decisions that still make you shake your head in disbelief?

Regret about your drinking weighs you down like a heavy backpack filled with rocks. You're hauling it around everywhere, convinced that feeling bad enough about past mistakes will somehow protect you from repeating them. But that backpack isn't helping you change. It’s keeping you stuck looking backward instead of moving forward.

Sobriety coach Adriana Cloud is back on the show this week to discuss how to let go of regret about drinking, and how, when you stop wishing for a time machine and start being a detective about your past decisions, you gain the insights needed to create different outcomes.

Find a personalized approach that helps you change your habit in my new book, The Ultimate Guide to Drinking Less, here: https://rachelhart.com/guide/

Discover alternative approaches to drinking less inside our membership program, Take a Break: https://rachelhart.com/tab/

Get the full show notes, transcript, and more information here: https://rachelhart.com/434

Transcript

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0:00.0	We've all been there, angry at ourselves for drinking too much, for being stupid, for making choices
0:05.7	we wish we could take back. But here's the truth. Regret about your drinking isn't practical.
0:11.0	It's like hauling around a heavy backpack for no good reason. It doesn't help you change.
0:15.6	This is episode 434 and we're talking about how to finally set that backpack down, how to understand why you made
0:22.4	the choices you did, redeem regret, and use its lessons to move forward.
0:28.3	Whether you want to drink less or stop drinking, this podcast will help you change the habit
0:33.6	from the inside out. We're challenging conventional wisdom about why people drink and why it can
0:39.7	be hard to resist temptation. No labels, no judgment, just practical tools to take control of your
0:46.6	desire and stop worrying about your drinking. Now here's your host, Rachel Hart.
0:56.7	All right, everybody, welcome back.
0:58.8	I am so excited today because I have Adriana Cloud joining me again.
1:04.7	She coaches along with me inside the membership.
1:08.4	And we have been talking about something that's been coming up a lot that we
1:14.7	hear people struggling with. And in fact, as we were getting ready for this episode, we both
1:20.0	struggled with this as well. But it's the idea of being really angry at your past self for being stupid or the stupid things that you did
1:32.3	while you were drinking. And where we particularly see, or I've noticed this come up a lot,
1:37.8	is people will start making progress. They'll start really changing their relationship
1:42.8	with alcohol. And this often feels like something
1:44.9	that they just can't let go of, a thing that they can't move past. And what I have found is that can
1:51.5	actually really stall people's progress because it's like, well, okay, I'm doing so good,
1:57.3	but I can't go back and undo all the stupid things that I did in the past. So that's what we're going to talk with you guys about today. We have a lot personally in just working with people to share about this and to really help you understand if you're in this place, how to start to move past it, because it's something that we have both personally done a lot of work around.
2:19.3	And I think this comes up for everybody. And yes, everybody who is changing a habit and they are
	...

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