417: Why Your Rules Aren’t Working

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

🗓️ 25 March 2025

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Have you ever set rules for yourself around drinking, only to find that they don't work? You have the best of intentions, but somehow you always end up right back where you started. What's going on here?

As it turns out, there's a very good reason why your drinking rules aren't effective - and it has nothing to do with a lack of willpower or discipline on your part.

In this episode, you’ll learn how your relationship with alcohol started forming long before you ever took your first drink, and how to finally break free from the frustrating cycle of setting and breaking rules.

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/417

Transcript

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0:00.0	Have you ever set rules for yourself around drinking? So maybe you decided you were going to drink less or just take some time away from alcohol and you had all of these good intentions. You set the rule, but it didn't work. Well, this is episode 417 and I'm going to explain the real reason your rules aren't working and what you need to do instead.
0:22.7	Whether you want to drink less or stop drinking, this podcast will help you change the habit
0:28.0	from the inside out. We're challenging conventional wisdom about why people drink and why it can
0:34.2	be hard to resist temptation. No labels, no judgment, just practical tools to take
0:40.3	control of your desire and stop worrying about your drinking. Now here's your host, Rachel Hart.
0:51.1	So the other day, I had this interaction with my two and a half year old that got me thinking about the drink archetypes.
0:59.8	So I will tell you that in my family, we drink a lot of LeCroix.
1:04.5	I mean a lot.
1:05.4	And the other day, my husband got home from work, and the two of us were in the kitchen talking.
1:11.9	I was cooking. He was telling me about his day. And my boys were already home and my littlest came wandering into the
1:17.7	kitchen and he started kind of rifling through the pantry. I didn't think much about it because I was
1:22.4	caught up talking to my husband, not really paying attention to what he was doing. And then my two-year-old kind of popped
1:28.2	around the corner. And he says with this big smile on his face, it was so cute. He says,
1:33.0	for mama. And in his outstretched hand, he's holding a can of grapefruit LaCroix. And I was like,
1:42.8	oh, that's kind of funny and cute. Thank you. And then he goes over to
1:46.8	his father. And from behind his back, he hands him a can. He says, for Papa. And he has a can of
1:56.1	lime LaCroix for my husband. And my husband and I just stood there for a moment, kind of flabbergasted.
2:02.8	Like, what is going on here? Did our two-year-old just deliver us our correct drink order without
2:08.4	either of us asking? So we hadn't asked our toddler to go to the pantry and get us LeCroix,
2:14.9	yet he knew our preferences. And he also knew the correct time to deliver
2:21.6	them. We often start drinking LaCroix in the evening while we are kind of unwinding from the day.
2:29.3	My husband's getting home. I'm working on dinner. But we never sat down our son and said,
	...

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