415: Why You Go Back to Drinking After Long Breaks

Take a Break from Drinking

Rachel Hart

Alcohol, Lifecoach, Alcoholicsanonymous, Self-improvement, Hungover, Society & Culture, Smartrecovery, Drinking, Cognitivebehavioraltherapy, Education, Cbt, 12steps, Sobriety, Drunk, Recovery, Personal Journals

4.8 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 4 March 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Have you ever taken a long break from drinking, only to find yourself eventually going back to it?

So many people find themselves stuck in this frustrating cycle of stopping and starting again, wondering why they can't seem to make the change stick.

Listen in to hear one of our Take a Break coaches, Adriana Cloud, explore this common struggle. We discuss how the health benefits of not drinking, while important, are often not enough to overcome the deeper desires that alcohol fulfills and how to get off the seesaw of drinking and not drinking for good.

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/415

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Why do so many people have long periods away from alcohol? And then they go back to drinking.
0:07.3	This endless back and forth between drinking and not drinking, when you're stuck in it, it can feel
0:13.0	really confusing and demoralizing. This is episode 415, and I'm explaining why this happens,
0:20.1	how the health benefits from not drinking often
0:22.9	conflict with the deeper desires represented in the eight drink archetypes and how to get
0:28.6	off the seesaw.
0:30.9	Whether you want to drink less or stop drinking, this podcast will help you change the habit.
0:36.2	From the inside out.
0:38.2	We're challenging conventional wisdom about why people drink and why it can be hard to resist
0:43.3	temptation.
0:44.7	No labels, no judgment, just practical tools to take control of your desire and stop worrying
0:51.0	about your drinking.
0:52.5	Now here's your host, Rachel Hart.
0:59.5	All right, everybody, welcome back.
1:02.0	I have, yet again, a special guest, Adriana Cloud,
1:06.0	who is one of my coaches inside of Take a Break.
1:10.0	And we are going to talk about some thing that has been
1:13.4	coming up in the membership recently. So Adriana, take it away. Hey, Rachel. Yes, here's the
1:19.3	question that comes up. And I think it will be helpful for us to talk about it because I'm sure
1:23.7	it's quite common. It was common for me, actually, when I was still drinking. And it's
1:28.6	basically this situation where I shake long breaks, but inevitably I get to a point where I start
1:34.9	to think, well, my drinking wasn't so bad. And so I go back to drinking. So what do I do?
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -28 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Rachel Hart, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Rachel Hart and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.