How Drinking Gets Out of Control Without You Noticing

You show up to work, you pay your bills, you're holding it all together. And if someone tried to tell you you had a problem with alcohol, you'd have a pretty convincing argument for why they're wrong. Now, I'm not here to tell you that you're wrong, but I am here to show you something specific, a sign, one that most functional drinkers don't see until it's a lot harder to turn around. Once I show it to you, you're not going to be able to unsee it. Proceed with caution. Those of you who are new here, I am Amber Hollingsworth. I have been helping people and families overcome addiction for more than 20 years now. Most of the people that I see are highly successful. They're more than functional. They're not people who've lost everything. They're people who are still making a lot of great things happen in their life, but somewhere in there, the substance that they're using, usually alcohol, is causing them some problems. And luckily these are really smart people because They see it early and they're able to address the issue before it does get like full-blown hardcore. And it's really hard to stop at that point. First, let's give you credit where credit is due. Functional, although it's not a clinical term, it is a real thing. You're not imagining it. You are managing your job and relationships and responsibilities while also drinking probably more than you should. And that takes effort. Most people don't acknowledge that. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that because you drink, your life is secretly falling apart. That's not necessarily true. But here's what is true. Functional isn't a destination. It's a window, a window that has a tendency to close rather slowly and quietly. And unfortunately, usually at the worst possible time. Catching it early is super important. The question I want you to ask yourself isn't, Am I an alcoholic? That's just going to make you defensive and you are going to come up with a list of reasons why your drinking is not nearly as bad as other people. Instead of that question, I want you to ask yourself, is my drinking still working for me? Because there's a difference and the difference shows up in specific ways. Let's walk through these 5 signs that tell me and should tell you that your drinking is starting to cross a line. Not the line that most people think of, not the, I lost my job, lost my family, Woke up in a ditch line. There's actually an earlier line, the one that's easier to do something about if you can catch it. I'm going to describe these signs, not clinically, but the way you would experience them, not in a textbook kind of way, because I want this to be useful for you. Think about the last time you were at a party, a work event, a family gathering, somewhere that was supposed to be enjoyable. Now think about whether there was alcohol there and ask yourself, would I have felt the same without it? Most people will say to that question, well, alcohol makes things more fun. That's Kind of the point, right? And they're not wrong. That's true for a lot of people, but here's the distinction. The difference between drinking makes things more enjoyable and I can't enjoy things without drinking. You see, there's the difference. One is a preference and the other is an early sign of dependency. So when you find yourself declining invitations because there's not going to be alcohol, when you show up somewhere and immediately scope out the bar, when a vacation or celebration sounds flat, If it's going to be dry, then that's not about preference anymore. That's actually your brain telling you that it has quietly recategorized alcohol from nice to have to required for enjoyment. You probably didn't decide for that to happen. It just happens gradually. It's important to recognize the signs. And here's another question I want you to answer honestly, and I mean really honestly, not just what sounds good, but the truth. Ready? When was the last time something really stressful happened and you dealt with it without drinking? Not avoided it, not numbed it later, but actually moved through it without alcohol. For a lot of functional drinkers, that question is harder to answer than it really should be. Again, this happens gradually. No one decides this. Drinking stops being something you do alongside other ways of coping, and it becomes the way that you cope. Hard day at work? Pour a drink. Fight with your partner? Pour a drink. Kids are driving you crazy? Pour a drink. Anxious about something tomorrow? Pour a drink tonight. Now, none of those individual moments are like catastrophic, but what's happening underneath them is significant because it means that you're losing access to your other coping skills. You're losing access to your other coping tools, not because they don't work, but because drinking works faster and it works more reliably. And your brain, which is always looking for the most efficient route to relief, starts routing everything through alcohol. The problem isn't really the stressful day. The problem is that the toolbox is getting smaller and smaller, and it happens so gradually most people don't even notice it. Think about it this way. If drinking disappeared from your life tomorrow, what would you do with stress? If that question's making you feel uncomfortable and squirmy, that's a piece of information to pay attention to. Now, coping is like a muscle, right? If you don't use it, you lose it, right? So if you stop using your coping muscles, they start to deteriorate on you. Now this next one is kind of subtle and it's the kind of thing that is super easy to rationalize. It might look something like making sure you stop by the store on your way home, checking that there's enough in the house before the weekend, feeling mildly anxious if you realize you're running low, timing dinner or social events around when you can have a drink. Now this might even look like knowing exactly how many drinks you'll have tonight before tonight has even started. These aren't really like dramatic things. They look like habits, like Preferences or routines, but there's a word for when securing a substance starts to organize your schedule around it. And that word is not habit. Here's the test. How do you feel when something interrupts the plan? Whether you get stuck at work later than expected, that window closes, or when you're at an event and the bar runs out, being mildly annoyed is normal. Having significant irritability, anxiety, or feeling like something's being taken from you, now that should be telling you something different. Planning around drinking means it's running the logistics of your life, and that's a different relationship with alcohol than most functional drinkers want to admit. Sign number 4 is you're irritable or anxious until you have a drink. This is like neurological. It's not necessarily a character flaw. It's tricky because it's easy to explain away. I'm just stressed. I'm tired. I had a long weekend. I just need to decompress. And yes, all of that might be true, but I want you to pay attention to the timing. Does the irritability, the restlessness, the low-grade anxiety? Does it reliably show up in the hours before you normally drink? And does it reliably go away once you do? If the answer to that is yes, that pattern has a name because what's happening neurologically is that your brain has adjusted its baseline to account for regular alcohol intake. And when the alcohol isn't present and your brain is expecting it, it creates an internal pressure, an unsettledness, a need. And you're going to experience that as irritability, anxious, on edge, hard to be around. And then you drink and it goes away and you feel like yourself again. But the thing is, feeling like yourself after drink is not the same as relaxing. What's going on there is actually relief from withdrawal. You know, and I recognize it as withdrawal because it can be mild, especially in the early stages, even functional withdrawal that you've learned to work around without putting your finger on exactly what it is. That's what I mean when I said a window of functionality and how it closes quietly because these signs develop while everything else looks fine. Have you noticed how all of these signs are inside of you and they can't necessarily be noticed from the outside. So you might ask a friend if they think you have a drinking problem and they'd say, no way, man, you drink less than me or something like that. But these are signs that only you would know, which means only you can answer these questions. All right, ready for sign number 5? This one might be the hardest. Do you get defensive when someone mentions your drinking? Now this one is really important. Think about the last time someone like a partner, a family member, friend said something about how much you drink. Maybe it was a comment, a look, a joke, That wasn't entirely a joke, what happened inside you? If the answer is anything close to immediate defensiveness or a need to explain or justify irritation, a list of reasons why they're wrong or why they don't understand, I want you to sit with that for a second. Because the thing of it is, is people aren't defensive about things that don't matter to them. If someone told you you drink too much coffee, you might shrug, maybe mildly disagree and move on. But when it's alcohol and the reaction is bigger than the comment warranted, that means that that reaction is coming from somewhere. That defensiveness is often your brain protecting something it's decided it needs. It's not a moral failing. It's actually a pretty predictable response, especially if you feel like this someone is threatening to take it away. Because at this point, it's something that your nervous system is reliant on. Ask yourself this, if my drinking wasn't a problem, Why would the suggestion that it might be feel like such a threat? So the 5 signs are, you can't have fun without it. It's your only way of dealing with stress. You're planning your day around it. You're irritable until you have a drink and you're defensive when someone brings it up. Maybe all 5 landed for you. And maybe you're sitting there thinking, you just described me to a T, but I'm still not sure this is a problem, which is totally fine. I'm not asking you to make some kind of big decision right now. What I'm actually asking is I want you to let yourself be honest honest about what you just recognized in yourself, because the gap between functional and this is getting hard to manage is not as wide as most people think it is. And the earlier you see it, the more options that you have. This isn't about waiting around to hit bottom, burn every bridge, wait for something terrible to happen. This is about catching it before any of that happens. If something in this video resonated with you, if you recognize yourself in any part of those signs and part of you wants to understand what to do about it, I want to invite you to Strength Based Recovery Where I work one-on-one with people, not about figuring out what's wrong with you, but about building on what's going right. It's private. There's no judgment involved. You don't have to go to any kind of group or meeting that you don't want to go to. In fact, no one's going to push you to do anything you don't want to do. I'll put the links to recovery coaching in the description along with some other really helpful resources. But if you're not ready to talk to someone one-on-one, Because you're still in that thinking about it stage, that's totally fine. Subscribe to this channel. There are tons of videos on here that's going to help you sort through it and make decisions for yourself about where you're at in the continuum and what you need to do about it. All right. I'll see you guys in the next one.