Amber Hollingsworth breaks down alcohol use disorder as a spectrum. If you're low on the scale, you might cut back with limits. Moderate to severe cases usually need full abstinence, which often brings physical, psychological, and relational benefits.
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How to get your drinking under control. That's what we're going to talk about in today's video. Now, for those of you who don't know me, my name is Amber Hollingsworth, and you are watching Put the Shovel down, the YouTube channel designed to help you understand the science and psychology of addiction so you can get your life and your family back on track. Okay, so back to our question, how to get your drinking under control. So your first step is going to be to figure out how severe it is. And I'm going to put a link to a video at the end of this video that will help you measure exactly where you're at on the continuum, which leads me to my next point, and that is that alcohol problems actually happen on a continuum. People tend to think, well, I'm an alcoholic, or I'm not an alcoholic. And so for people who think, okay, I'm not an alcoholic, then in their mind it means, oh, I don't really need to give up alcohol. Sometimes people will use terms like problem drinker or functional alcoholic, but the deal is, it's all on a continuum. To me, it's about, what stage are you in in the addictive process? Now, a lot of people really resist the term alcoholic. One reason people resist the term is because there's some stigma and strong emotions attached to the word. But another big reason why people resist the term is because in your mind, if you think, oh, I'm an alcoholic, then there's another thought that comes quick after that. That means I have to stop drinking completely. And that is a huge reason why people resist that term or label, which is kind of understandable. Although it is important to note that the term alcoholic and addict, those aren't even really official clinical terms. It's not like we diagnose somebody as an alcoholic, but it is a pretty commonly used term that we all have some basic idea around what that means. The official term is alcohol use disorder, but essentially that's a fancy way or a nicer way of saying alcoholism. If you have problem drinking, then you are probably somewhere on the scale of alcohol use disorder. But the big question here is, how do I cut my drinking back? Well, there's good news and there's bad news. If you are very, very low on that alcohol use disorder scale, remember, I'll put a video up here at the end and you can watch that to figure out where you're at, and then you can possibly cut your drinking back. And one of the pieces of advice I would have for you is you probably inherently Know that there's a point in your drinking, you know, maybe how many beers it is or how many drinks it is when you lose control. And you've got to set your limit under that. Because once you reach whatever point that is for you, you've really deactivated the filter part of your brain, the front part of your brain that would allow you to keep your drinking under control very early on in an alcohol use problem and you put some limits on it. You can possibly get that under control. Now if you're on the moderate to severe end of the continuum of the alcohol use disorder scale, then you are probably going to have to stop drinking completely if you really want to get your drinking under control. Now you might be thinking, hey, that's not true, I've cut it back before. Hey, that's not true. I've went for periods of time and got sober before. But actually, as you'll see when you watch the criteria, that is one of the criteria for alcohol use disorder. So I'm not telling you that you can't cut it back periodically. You may can stop for 30 days, you may can stop for 60 days, you may can keep your drinking at somewhat of a stable level for short periods of time. But the problem is, is it's like Russian roulette, but eventually the dam always breaks and bad stuff happens. And those are those moments when we think to ourselves, oh my gosh, never again, I hate this, I'm never going to do this again. But then we trick ourselves back into the thought of having how can I control my drinking? You see, that is the trick. Thought that so many people struggle with most of the people in fact, that come in my office when I say, hey, what is your goal? Do you want to stop drinking or do you want to cut it back? People always say, I want to cut it back. Well, I'm going to tell you a little inside information here that I don't even tell my clients when they sit in my office and tell me that, which is it's probably in fact very, very likely not going to work. Like I said, it may work temporarily, but it probably will not work long term. And as you go through the process of figuring that out the trial and error way, you're probably going to find that alcohol causes more and more and more damage to yourself, to your relationships, to basically every aspect of your life. And a really important thing for you to remember is, is that alcohol use disorder, remember it's fancy for alcoholism, they tend to be progressive illnesses. So whatever stage you're in Right now, the issue is going to get further and further and further. Just like, you know, the more you drink, the more your tolerance gets higher and higher and higher and the problems get bigger and bigger and bigger. Now, I know this may sound really horrible, and this may sound like the worst news that you have ever heard, but honestly, once people come to terms with this, usually after a lot of trial and error and figuring it out on their own, they actually feel so much better when they quit drinking completely. I try to tell my clients, listen, I promise you that stopping drinking completely is so much easier than trying to manage your drinking. I know it's that thought in the back of our head that says, I just want to be able to drink socially and I want to be able to drink at events, and can I just have a couple like everyone else has? The thing about it is, if you have an alcohol use disorder, your tolerance is probably pretty high. So having one or two glasses of wine or beers or whatever probably isn't going to do anything for you except make you crave one more. And there are a lot of reasons for that, like biological brain reasons for that. And I'll put some video links up here if you want to learn more about exactly why that is. When you're in that stage of trying to manage it, it's like this constant battle and fight that you have with yourself. It's like this constant vigilance that you have to have on all the time. And once you make the decision to let go of that and let go of alcohol, you don't have to be focused on managing it all the time. And eventually you start to feel a lot better. Physically, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, you feel so much better. In fact, most people I see don't even realize how bad they feel until they get out of that storm.
