444: A drink makes everything better [Thought Swap]
Take a Break from Drinking
Rachel Hart
4.8 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 11 November 2025
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How often do you catch yourself thinking, "A drink makes everything better"?
Maybe it's at parties, during vacation, or just unwinding after a long day. Maybe your list of things that are "better with a drink" seems endless. If a drink makes everything better, does that mean not drinking makes everything worse? And if that's true, how can you ever cut back without feeling like you're missing out?
Tune in this week to discover three specific thought swaps to help you question the story that a drink makes everything better, so you can start poking holes in beliefs that are keeping you stuck in patterns that aren't serving you.
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/444
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A drink makes everything better. I used to be fully on board with this thought. Parties were better |
| 0:06.1 | with a drink. Watching baseball, better with a drink. First dates were definitely better with a drink. |
| 0:11.9 | The list of my head of things that were made better by drinking went on and on, which is why cutting back, |
| 0:17.2 | or God forbid, not drinking seemed so daunting to me for so long. This is episode |
| 0:23.1 | 444, and I'm going to give you ideas and how to start questioning the story that a drink |
| 0:28.5 | makes everything better in a believable way, because that piece is key. Whether you want to drink |
| 0:35.1 | less or stop drinking, this podcast will help you change the habit from the inside out. |
| 0:40.9 | We're challenging conventional wisdom about why people drink and why it can be hard to resist temptation. |
| 0:47.4 | No labels, no judgment, just practical tools to take control of your desire and stop worrying about your drinking. Now, here's |
| 0:56.0 | your host, Rachel Hart. Today I'm going to give you some thought swaps, ideas for how to start |
| 1:05.9 | poking holes in the story that a drink makes everything better. I long believe this story, and so do many of my |
| 1:13.1 | clients. But here's a problem. If a drink makes everything better, then isn't the reverse true |
| 1:18.0 | as well that not drinking makes everything worse? And if so, how are you ever going to learn how to say |
| 1:23.5 | no or to stop before you go overboard without feeling like you're always missing out. |
| 1:29.3 | So I'm going to give you some ideas for how to counter this story in a believable, |
| 1:34.0 | non-judgmental way. This part is really, really important because most people do what I did |
| 1:40.0 | when I first started to try to cut back. We try to force ourselves to be good or to be more |
| 1:45.8 | responsible by focusing on all the harms of drinking or the parts of it that we don't like or that |
| 1:51.8 | we feel awful about or that we regret the next day. I spent so many years trying to force change |
| 1:58.5 | by constantly reminding myself of how it was bad for my health |
| 2:02.2 | or all the moments that I wish I could take back. And while that was partly true, it didn't |
| 2:07.5 | capture the whole story. And you know what? It wasn't very convincing for me in the moment when I |
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