When Drinking in Moderation Becomes Your Pet Rattlesnake

If you’ve developed a robust drinking habit over the years, and you periodically (or frequently) go beyond your intended consumption limits, you may have told yourself a time or two that “I just need to moderate, like I used to…just reign it in”…or something to that effect. After all, nobody who’s drinking often really has the slightest interest in completely quitting. That’s crazy talk right!? Who does that? I mean, maybe that’s necessary for those people in AA who wrecked their lives and just couldn’t be “responsible drinkers”. But that’s not me. I just enjoy a good glass of (fill in the blank with your favorite form of the sauce) like any fun-loving, sophisticated adult!

Sadly, we buy into the notion that problem drinking is a one-size fits all affair called “alcoholism”. And so long as you can point to that extreme diagnosis and affirm that you’re not there (yet), then there’s no need for something so extreme as to entirely eliminate your best friend in the bottle.

Chanting that well-worn mantra “everything in moderation” to yourself and viewing that goal as a sort of holy grail ideal can be powerfully persuasive when that little voice inside starts piping up with concerns about how much you’ve been drinking lately.

And after all, you used to drink moderately, right? Maybe you were one of the few who dove straight into heavy drinking in your youth and started getting smashed on the regular right from the get-go. But more than likely, you dabbled, and then dabbled some more, and then over time began leaning on booze as a multi-purpose cure-all for whatever void you needed to fill that day: fun, excitement, stress-relief, blotting out from some unpleasantness in your life, etc.

But there is an unbridgeable chasm between the moderate drinking of your yester-youth and the platinum-plated ideal of moderation you are now seeking. And that chasm is the harsh fact that your drinking habit is largely a one-way street, typically moving in one direction and one direction only…and that direction is toward MORE. MORE quantity, MORE frequency and MORE tolerance.

This is actually a very predictable phenomenon in light of how our brains and bodies are designed to protect us and seek biological balance. The same way your skin darkens when exposed to sunlight as a means of protecting your skin from harm, so too your brain will increasingly adapt to your alcohol consumption pattern, seeking to blunt its effects on your brain function by taking evasive action to diminish alcohol’s systemic disruption and eliminate it from your body as swiftly as possible.

And this is only the physiological component of your relationship with drinking. The second (and more powerful) is the psychological conditioning you have engaged in (whether you realized it or not) whereby you taught your subconscious mind (aka your inner auto-pilot) to associate alcohol with every manner of fun, reward, social connection, stress-relief, anxiety-relief, sleep-aid, parties, work events, weekends, sporting events, vacations and you can probably list 10-20 more…

What this means is that the moderate drinking you did back in your youth was done as a “novice” drinker so to speak. Meaning, your brain had not yet become a Jedi-Master of processing alcohol and re-tooling your brain chemistry before, during and after your drinking bouts. And you had yet to lay down the deep psychological tracks tying booze to an overwhelming percentage of your routine, life events, memories and emotions.

Therefore, trying to unwind that knowledge and capability you have developed vis a vis alcohol (even if you take breaks from drinking…even long breaks) is akin to if you tried to forget how to ride a bicycle.

Imagine making a concerted effort to do that. How absurd right? I mean, you really can’t. It is a skill that you programmed into your brain, in connection with your nervous system…and even if you haven’t ridden a bike for several years, more than likely if you hopped on a bike and started pedaling, that skill would materialize lickety-split! What might you call that? How about a One-Way Street? You learned something that you cannot unlearn.

So when it comes to your drinking habit and your efforts to moderate, if you are failing at your attempts to stay within a certain limit (number of drinks, number of days per week or whatever) and creatively crafting new and more elaborate rules for yourself to follow…just understand that you are fighting an uphill battle. Because your brain is not really able to go backwards with this issue.

Chances are, wherever your drinking stands today is where it is going to stay. OR it might get worse as you continue progressing down that One-Way Street (The Alcohol Drinker Spectrum).

Therefore, attempts at moderation (aka, going back to lower, less harmful drinking levels) is likely to be a very hit-or-miss proposition.

When I was struggling to succeed at moderating my own drinking habit several years ago, I often analogized that it was sort of like trying to keep a pet rattle-snake in the house…but here’s the kicker…the rattlesnake isn’t in a cage or aquarium. Nope! It’s set free in your house! You may or may not see it at any given time. Sometimes it may rattle its tail and let you know where it is so you can take precautions. But other times you’re going to accidentally get too close and then BANG! It bites you.

That is what trying to moderate your drinking can resemble once you reach a certain threshold on The Alcohol Drinker Spectrum. It becomes a risky (and potentially dangerous) proposition, where occasionally you may muster enough grit and determination to force yourself to stay within your limits, congratulating yourself afterwards while basking in the relief that you don’t really have a drinking problem and don’t truly need to quit.

I refer to these experiences with my Coaching CIients as “Moderation Mirages”, where it appears briefly that you are in the clear just because you kept things in check for a few days or even weeks. But then out of the blue at your neighbor’s barbeque, or on that Friday night after a hectic week at the office, or at the wild Halloween party…BANG! You fly off the rails and drink whatever amount exceeds your self-imposed limit, and likely experience a variety of negative after-effects (internal and hopefully not, but possibly – external).

This harsh truth was what led me to finally accept that the most reliable, peaceful, healthy, easy and sane path forward for me (and others in this boat) is to embrace a life of alcohol freedom. It does not need to be a permanent commitment from the start, and it does not need to take the form of adopting a traditional “recovery” based methodology. It just needs to begin with taking a vacation from this one slice of your life.

If you’ve been consuming greater than 10 drinks per day (and especially if its closer to 20+) then you REALLY need to consult a medical professional before attempting to pull the plug on your drinking.

But if you are lower on the spectrum and more so resemble what I call a “Middle-of-the-Road” drinker (as I was) then your withdrawal symptoms won’t amount to much beyond feeling a bit out of whack and possibly enduring some bouts of insomnia during the first few weeks.

Your best gauge in this regard is whether you’ve been able to take more than a few days off consecutively in the past. If you have, then thankfully the withdrawal for you (like for many) will be largely psychological in nature, with minimal (if any) physical symptoms.

Living with a pet rattlesnake loose in your home would be stressful, unpredictable and downright dangerous. Why on earth would you want to, when simply getting rid of it would offer you complete and total peace of mind and ensure you would NEVER get bitten again?

If you're drinking more than you'd like to, today is the best day to begin taking control...

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