Alcohol Addiction- [The LIES people tell themselves about hiding alcohol/sneak drinking]🤥

In this video, we're going to cover the truth about sneak drinking. So if you or a loved one has fallen into the habit of sneak drinking, I mean, alcohol, of course, this video is for you. For those of you who are new here, I'm Amber Hollingsworth, master addiction counselor, and this channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction so that you're always five steps ahead of it and you can get your life and your family back on track. I've been working with people and their families that have substance use disorders for a long time, and I've heard everything you can think of under the sun about sneak drinking, and I want to help you understand the behind the scenes of what that really is all about. Now, when I have a client in my office who's sneak drinking, they usually have a litany of excuses as to why that's going on. So let's cover some of those first. First and foremost, they usually are telling me, or more importantly themselves, something along the lines of they only to sneak drink because the family member, usually the spouse or the parent or whoever, is so uptight and unreasonable, and they just get freaked out every time you drink. So you have to sneak and hide it just so you can either avoid the confrontation with them or so that you don't upset them. Maybe you're telling yourself that, but here's the thing. If someone in your life is getting upset with you because of your drinking, that's a really big clue that maybe it's a problem. Now, you might be telling yourself that you only drink because they get upset, but my guess is a big part of the reason they get upset because you sneak drink. And so family members, they feel obviously frustrated about the drinking, but even 10 times more frustrated because you're constantly sneaking it and they know something's up. And when they ask you about it, you totally lie right to their face. I've had so many clients, and they'll tell me, they're like, amber, if someone asked me if I've been drinking, I've been drinking. Like, I immediately say, no, I cannot even help it. I lie in that moment, even though I know it is completely obvious. It's just like a reflex. And a lot of times I'll say, now, sometimes, like the next day, I'll own up to it. But in that moment, it's like, no, I have been drinking. And sometimes, you know, they'll turn it on the other person or start an argument or deflect or use some of those other techniques to sort of get out of the hot seat now. Other excuses you might be telling yourself is, well, I just need a few to loosen up before I go out and meet my colleagues or before I go do this social event because I get a little uptight in social events. You might be telling yourself, well, I just need a couple of drinks to wind down and relax. You know, before bed or after work, something like that. You might be telling yourself, well, I just want to have a few drinks. I just want to have fun. I mean, I work really hard all the time. What's wrong with having just a little bit of fun? Well, if you have to drink to have fun might be a little bit of a problem. Because when you deal with an alcohol use disorder, one of the criteria is that you lose the ability to have fun and enjoyment from activities that involve alcohol. Like if you've had old hobbies or interests or things you used to enjoy doing, you might not enjoy those anymore. Once you've developed an alcohol use disorder, especially if there's not alcohol involved in that activity. Like for example, if you still love to go fishing and you drink when you go fishing, you might still like to go fishing. But if you used to love to go fishing and now you want to, you know, your father in law wants you to go fishing with them, but there's not going to be any alcohol involved, you probably don't want to do that. That's what I mean when I say, like you need it to be able to have fun, relax and enjoy yourself. And the reason for that is, is because alcohol may make you feel like you're relaxing. And de stressing in the moment is actually raising your anxiety through the roof in the long run. So over the course of time, it's making you more stressed, more anxious, and lowering your ability to deal with and tolerate that stress and anxiety. So you feel more and more and more like you're coming unglued or you're sort of bursting at the seams of anxiety inside. That's one of the big traps about alcohol, is it relaxes you. But then it makes that worse. Of course, that makes you feel like. It's called the I need an drink feeling. You know the one I'm talking about. But you see, no matter what those excuses that you're telling yourself about why that is happening, the real truth about why you're sneak drinking or your loved one is sneak drinking is because you feel shameful about it, you feel guilty about it. Somewhere deep down inside, you know you're doing something that you shouldn't be doing. I usually say if you're doing something that you can't tell someone else, whether it's drinking or anything else, anything, it probably means something that you shouldn't be doing. Now, I know you're giving yourself a lot of excuses as to why you need to do that. Maybe you're telling yourself you need to do that, protect that person. But I think you know deep down inside that that's not the truth. I deal a lot with businessmen who drink too much. And they talk to me about how they sort of purposefully wait till their wife goes to bed and then they stay up and drink after she goes to bed because they're having to hide it from their wife all day long. Or I deal a lot with people who have sort of the alcohol head under the seat in their car or in the trunk or in the garage. And another huge problem with this is when you get to the snake drinking point, you gotta really, like, gulp it back, right? You gotta get it in fast because you gotta do it undercover. And when you do that, the drinking problem usually escalates because probably at that point you've moved on to something that has less smell. You know, something like vodka is a pretty common one. And you're drinking a lot of it really fast because you're trying to get it down. And so it hits you hard and fast. And with your loved ones, they're gonna feel like you were fine one second and literally were with you the whole time. And 30 minutes later, you are just following drink. And they don't even understand what happens because they don't understand that you're walking into the other room, the bathroom, wherever you've got it hidden, and you're chugging it back. And then it hits you super quickly. And so once you get to that point of snake drinking, the whole problem, the whole alcohol use disorder really starts to go downhill quickly. So if you're doing this, there's a really good chance you've got a problem on your hands. Now, I'm not saying even that you're an alcoholic or that you're even alcohol dependent. I'm not saying that you to drink every day or that you're going into the shakes in the mornings, although that could definitely be the case, it's not always the case. But sneak drinking, even if it's not every day, even if you don't have to, even if you're not going to get physically sick without it, that's a really good indicator that something's going wrong. You know, most people think that having an alcohol use disorder or alcoholism is all about how much you drink. But the truth of it is, in the actual official criteria for alcohol use disorder, it says nothing in there about what or how much or how frequently you drink. It has a whole lot to do with how the drinking is impacting your life. And so, up next, I want you to watch these two videos. The first one is about the official criteria for alcohol use disorder. So I'm going to tell you out of the book, like, what the legit ones are to receive that diagnosis. And the second one is me telling you some unofficial criteria. These are things that I see patterns pretty consistently. They're not in the book, but I can tell you they're almost always there.