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

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.

Welcome everybody. Welcome to today's show.

We are going to be talking about using a drink to unwind.

This is such a common thing that I see with so many of the people that I work with.

It was also something that I used to do all the time too, which is why I want to address it early on in the show.

Today we're going to be talking about why we use alcohol to unwind, what we're teaching our brain, when we drink to take the edge off, and how to start to change this habit.

Now if you listen to the last episode on desire and paying attention to how your thoughts create desire,

you may have noticed that some of your thinking is connected to using alcohol to unwind at the end of the day.

So you might have had thoughts like, I just need to relax, I really deserve a break, I want to treat, I just can't deal with this day, I need to feel better.

All of these thoughts are very connected to this sense of needing to take the edge off, needing to unwind.

Now before I go any further, I want to be really clear that using alcohol as a way to relax or treat yourself, there's nothing wrong with that.

I talked about this a lot in the very first episode where I went over my approach and what makes my approach different when talking about alcohol and talking about why it can be a struggle to take a break or cut back.

But one of those pieces that I think is really, really important is the idea that alcohol is morally neutral.

Drinking is not a vice, sustaining is not virtuous, we don't need to label our choices as good or bad or right and wrong.

And I think that's really important when we're talking about this issue of using alcohol to unwind to be really clear that there's nothing wrong with doing that.

The only reason why I bring this up and I wanted to talk about this today, because for so many people, it's part of the reason why it can be a struggle to cut back.

Now a glass of wine or beer or cocktail, it definitely does relax you.

Alcohol is a depressant, it acts as a depressant on your central nervous system.

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