You are listening to the Take a Break podcast with Rachel Hart, episode 15.

Whether you want to drink less or stop drinking, this podcast will help you change the habit from the inside out.

We're challenging conventional wisdom about why people drink and why it can be hard to resist temptation.

No labels, no judgment, just practical tools to take control of your desire and stop worrying about your drinking.

Now here's your host, Rachel Hart.

Hello everybody, how are you doing?

What is it like outside in your world right now? I will tell you that I woke up this morning to fog horns that we're singing.

And stepped outside in San Francisco is just enveloped in fog. You cannot even see the Golden Gate Bridge.

But I am learning slowly and surely to appreciate the fog and appreciate the fog horns.

So I've also been hearing from so many of you who are listening to the podcast and I really, really enjoy your email.

So keep sending them my way. You've also been sending in questions for me.

And so I thought that on today's episode, I would devote the topic to one of the questions that I received.

So here's what one of my listeners wrote into me. Rachel, I've always struggled with my drinking and feeling like I might like booze a bit too much.

My hangovers are getting worse as I get older and I'm at a point where I'm just so sick of how I feel. I'm really ready to feel better.

I've been listening to your podcast and they really helped me start to understand my drinking in a new way, especially thinking about it as a habit that I can learn to change.

But there's one place that I feel stuck. I'll get some steam going and I'll do really well, not drinking for a couple weeks.

And then I just fall off the wagon and I don't know what happened. I seem to keep repeating this pattern over and over and I don't know how to get back on track. Help.

So how many of you out there can relate to what this listener wrote about the idea that one day you were on the wagon, you were doing great, you felt really good.

And then suddenly you fell off and you have no idea what happened.

I think that the really fascinating thing is this concept of being on the wagon or falling off the wagon is so widespread that it no longer applies just to drinking.

I'll hear people talk about being on the wagon or falling off the wagon when they're trying to kick any habit, but especially when people are talking about food and dieting.

So today I want to answer this question of why we fall off the wagon. But in order to do this, you need to understand the two really simple reasons why you drink in the first place and how they're actually at odds with the concept of being on or off the wagon.

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