Good evening, everybody. How are you all doing? Welcome to the show. We got a great show plan for you.

DMs always open. If you got a DM first, put on the DMs on our Loveline IG page.

Oh, so much to talk about. And it's holiday time and it's a funky, funky, funky time right now.

You know, all that's going on in the world. So, you know, we might be

misusing some of our coping mechanisms. So we're going to have that difficult adult

conversation and talk about, hey, is maybe your alcohol use creating a problem? It's going to be

a little bit of a soft, not confrontational conversation. But I think certain times, certain seasons,

certain holidays, it's a really good time to really kind of sit down and look at the relationship we have to different coping

mechanisms. Always remember the difference between self-care and coping mechanisms.

Copic mechanisms are the wide umbrella. That's all of the things we do to deal with whatever's

going on in our lives. they can be positive or they can

be negative, the impact of the coping mechanisms. Self-care are the parts of coping mechanisms that are

just positive. Self-care never has a negative outcome. Self-care can only be the things that make us

feel better after we do them or while we're doing them. If it's something that starts

to create problems or harm in your life, it maybe is a coping mechanism, but it might be a really

bad one. And alcohol is one of the ones that a lot of people in our culture turn to. I work with

and have always worked with a lot of people that are working with or struggling with their

relationship to drugs and alcohol. I don't tend to

really use the word addiction because it feels so permanent, feels so black and white. And I prefer

to talk about our relationship to drugs and alcohol for, because for a lot of us, it's situational

and it will change. It's not a static, solid thing. We use the word addiction. We think of things

like, once an addict, always an addict. And if you're an addict, then you not only can't use drugs, you also can't use alcohol.

...