435: Why “One More” Never Feels Like Enough
Take a Break from Drinking
Rachel Hart
4.8 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 26 August 2025
⏱️ 16 minutes
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Summary
Have you ever wondered why "one more drink" never quite delivers what you're hoping for?
Most people assume that when you keep reaching for more alcohol, it's a willpower problem. But there's actually a psychological and physiological phenomenon at play here called diminishing returns.
Tune in this week to hear exactly why "one more" never delivers what you're hoping for, and how understanding diminishing returns changes everything about how you approach those moments when you want just one more sip, one more glass, one more round.
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/435
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | One more sip, one more glass, one more round. Most people assume that's a willpower problem, |
| 0:06.8 | but it's not. It actually has to do with a psychological and physiological phenomenon called Diminishing Returns. This is episode 435, and once you understand what that means when it comes to your drinking and how it shows up with |
| 0:21.5 | alcohol, you'll stop blaming yourself and start making very different choices. |
| 0:27.6 | Whether you want to drink less or stop drinking, this podcast will help you change the |
| 0:32.6 | habit from the inside out. |
| 0:34.9 | We're challenging conventional wisdom about why people drink and why it can be |
| 0:39.2 | hard to resist temptation. No labels, no judgment, just practical tools to take control of your |
| 0:46.0 | desire and stop worrying about your drinking. Now here's your host, Rachel Hart. |
| 0:59.6 | I've always been someone who believed more is better. At least that's what I told myself for a really long time, even as a kid. So there was more candy. |
| 1:06.2 | I was the first one in line. More Girl Scout badges, I wanted all of them. Even the ones that I didn't have |
| 1:11.6 | that much interest in. More attention from boys, I definitely wanted that. More achievement, |
| 1:17.0 | more gold stars, more validation. I was all in. And eventually in college, that mindset of more |
| 1:24.4 | is better transferred over to my drinking. One beer was fine, but two felt better. Three felt |
| 1:31.2 | great. Four felt even more fun. And I would just keep going from there. Back then, I didn't |
| 1:37.1 | understand why I had so much desire. I just genuinely believed, well, if one is good, more will make me feel better. What I didn't know, |
| 1:47.4 | and what most people don't know, is that I was bumping up against something called diminishing |
| 1:52.0 | returns. Diminishing returns simply means that the benefit of something goes down the more |
| 1:59.5 | you consume it. And it shows up in a lot of different areas in life, |
| 2:03.1 | not just with alcohol. You keep telling yourself that more is better. Yet in reality, |
| 2:10.0 | the more you have, the less benefit you get. In fact, you reach a point where how much you're |
| 2:15.7 | consuming starts to diminish your actual experience. |
| 2:19.7 | And that's exactly what happened with my drinking. |
... |
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