From Witching Hour to Power Hour: Getting Through the Hardest Part of Sobriety

Hey everybody, welcome to the Addiction Unlimited podcast where you get to learn everything you want to know about addiction and recovery. I'm your host, Angela Pugh, co-founder of Kansas City Recovery, Life Coach and Recovery and Alcoholic. To learn more about me, you can listen to episode zero on your podcast app or find us on the web at AddictionUnlimited.com. Hello my friend, welcome back to Addiction Unlimited where we talk about what comes after sobriety and how to build your unlimited life. I'm your coach, Angela Pugh. Today we're talking about that feeling. You know that feeling. It's 5 p.m. on a Tuesday, you're driving home from work or it's Friday night, everyone's posting their wine glasses on Instagram or you're standing in the parking lot at your kids' soccer game watching all the other moms with their Stanley Cups full of hard celtzer or wine. Your chest gets tight, your mind starts racing and that little voice in your head kicks in, I want a drink. And it's not just a passing thought, it's a wave, a craving so strong, it feels like it might knock you over. This is what I call the witching hour and if you're in early sobriety, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Now for most people, it kind of blows me away how many people say it's 5 p.m. like that is the most common answer I get. But here's the thing, your witching hour is personal. It's based on your patterns, your habits, your life. Maybe it's on your drive home when you normally stop at the gas station and grab a can to drink in the car. Maybe it's when you start cooking dinner because you always had a glass of wine in your hand while you chopped the veggies. For me, it was 8 p.m. I was a bartender and 8 p.m. was when I would typically have my first drink. So that's the time my brain was trained to kick in and start screaming for alcohol. The point is it's that predictable window of time when the craving feels most intense and most impossible to resist. You know exactly when yours is. And that's actually good news because when you can predict it, you can prepare for it. And here's what nobody tells you. Will power alone is not going to get you through this. White knuckling it might work for a day or a week or two, but it's exhausting and it's not sustainable. What will work is planning. And I need you to hear this loud and clear. If you are doing nothing, then you are planning to drink. Let me say that again. If you know Friday night at 5 p.m. is your hardest time and you're sitting back doing nothing about it, that's not neutral. That's planning to drink. You're just waiting for the craving to hit and then scrambling to convince yourself you have a good enough reason to give in. Today we're going to talk about what's really happening during your witching hour, why it feels so impossible and most importantly, what to actually do about it. Because once you understand what you're really craving and you have a plan in place, everything changes. So here's the truth that will set you free from this whole thing. The drink was never about the drink. I know you've heard me say this before and I know you're thinking, what the hell do you mean it's not about the drink? I want a damn drink. That's literally what I'm craving. But stay with me. When you say I want a drink, what you're actually saying is I'm exhausted and I don't know how else to turn my brain off. Or I'm so anxious, I can't freaking breathe and I need relief right now. Or I feel so alone and disconnected and I just want to feel like I belong somewhere. Or I'm so fucking bored and uncomfortable in my own skin and I need an escape, right? The F now. It's one of those things. The drink was never the point. The drink was the solution. It was how you relaxed, how you transitioned from work mode to home mode, how you numbed the exhaustion of the week, how you escaped the overwhelming anxiety, how you connected with people, how you felt seen and heard and cared for. Alcohol was doing a job. Actually, it was doing about five different jobs at once. It was your relaxation strategy, your social lubricant, your boredom cure, your emotional regulator, your reward system and your connection tool. And now, now you're not drinking, but everyone else is. And you're sitting there with all these feelings, the exhaustion, the overwhelm, the loneliness, the boredom. And alcohol seems like the only solution because you don't have any other solutions yet. That's what the witching hour really is. It's not about wanting a drink. It's about needing relief and not knowing how else to get it. So let's break down the different types of witching hours because understanding what yours is really about is the first step of getting through it, right? There's the daily decompression. This is the classic. You've been on all day, performing, producing, managing, solving problems, answering emails, being professional. Your nervous system is fried. Your brain is buzzing. You need to transition from work mode to home mode, but you don't know how to downshift without that drink. What you're really craving is really from the exhaustion, a way to signal to your body that the workday is over. It has permission to relax. It's the buffer between work stress and home stress. Or we have the weekend void. Friday hits and suddenly you have all this unstructured time stretching ahead of you. Everyone else is out having fun, posting their cocktails, living their best lives. And you're sitting at home wondering what the hell you're supposed to do with yourself now. This is about phomo. It's about boredom. It's about feeling like you're missing out on life itself. It's about not knowing who you are or what you enjoy when alcohol isn't the main event. It's about loneliness, that deep aching feeling that everyone else is having fun and connecting, and you're on the outside looking in. What you're really craving is connection, fun, a sense that your life isn't over just because you're not drinking, and identity beyond the person who drinks. Next is social survival. Maybe you're at your kid's birthday party and all the other parents are drinking. Or you're at a family gathering and your aunt is pouring the wine and asking you why you're not having any. Or you're in the parking lot at the soccer practice and all the other moms have their Yeti cups and you know what's in them. You're surrounded by people, but you've never felt more alone. You don't fit in. You're the weird one, the sober one, and being around all that drinking makes you feel isolated, anxious, and hyper aware of how different you are. What you're really craving in this one is too belong, to not feel like an outsider, to connect without the awkwardness, to not have to explain yourself, to just feel normal. That's the social survival. The next one is the emotional overwhelm. This one doesn't have a set time. It hits when anxiety spikes, when something stressful happens, when the feelings get too big and too much, right? Your kid has a meltdown, you get an email that sucks, you have a fight with your partner, the Sunday scary kick in. You feel too much and you just need it to stop. Alcohol was your off switch. It was how you numbed out how you made things feel manageable. But what you're really craving with emotional overwhelm is emotional regulation. You're craving a way to feel your feelings without being consumed by them, relief from the constant mental noise. Okay, so now you understand what you're really dealing with. You know your witching hour isn't about the drink, it isn't about the underlying need that drinking was meeting. So what do you actually do about it? Well, here's the truth. You need different tools for different situations. There's no one size fits all solution. But once you know what you're really craving, you can find other ways to meet that need. And here's the most important thing I'm going to say in this entire episode. You have to have a plan. You have to be proactive. I know I talk about this all the time and it probably drives you crazy. This is why I published a whole freaking planner because you have to have a plan, right? You can't just sit back and hope it gets easier. You can't just see what happens because doing nothing is a plan. It's a plan to drink. If you know your hardest time is Friday at 5 p.m. Then you put something in place for Friday at 5 p.m. every single week. It doesn't have to be the same thing every time. One Friday calling your best friend might be exactly what you need. The next Friday, quiet time reading or meditating might be the right move. But you have to do something. Otherwise you're just sitting there waiting for the craving to hit, waiting to feel terrible and then convincing yourself you have a good enough justification to drink. So before we dive into specific strategies, I want to mention that if you're witching hour is that daily 5 p.m. crash, that moment when you're driving home from work and your brain is automatically queuing up the craving, I did an entire episode on breaking that specific habit. It's called how to break the 5 p.m. drinking habit without losing your mind. And I go deep into the neuroscience of why that time hits so hard, decision fatigue, the interrupt ritual, how to rewire that autopilot loop that your brain has learned. And I will link that episode in the show notes because it's a great companion to this episode. So if you haven't heard that one, you can go back and listen to it. I'll link it in the show notes for you. But today, I want to give you tools for all the different types of witching hours we just talked about because it's not always about that daily decompression, right? So let's talk about what those plans can look like for each type of witching hour. For the daily decompression, you need a replacement ritual, something that signals to your body, the workday is over, you can relax now. So try this. Change your clothes the second you get home, like immediately. This creates a physical transition, right? Make a special mocktail or a fancy non-alcoholic drink in a nice glass because the ritual matters. Take a hot shower or bath. This physically washes off the day. Do 10 minutes of intentional movement. A walk around the block stretching yoga. This releases the physical tension your body is holding from the day. Put on a specific playlist that's just for this transition time. The key is it needs to be something you do every day at the same time. Your nervous system needs a new pattern, right? A new signal that it's safe to downshift. For the weekend void, you need to get ahead of this one. Do not, I repeat, do not, hit Friday evening without a plan. Try this. Schedule something. A movie, a dinner reservation, a specific activity. Give yourself structure. And if you do a dinner, whether it's with your partner, your spouse, your friends, whatever, specify like, dude, I really need just an alcohol free time to chill and laugh and just enjoy myself without worrying about all this bullshit, right? Like let people know that this is your intention. People want to support you. And if people don't support you, you don't need to be spending your time with them anyway, right? You only need to be spending time with people in places that fully support what you are doing to better yourself in your life. Fuck everybody else. You don't need to fuck with those people, okay? Then call someone, a sober friend, your sponsor, someone from your support group. Connection is the antidote to loneliness. Or start a project you've been putting off. Organize a closet, start that puzzle, dive into a hobby, give your brain something to do. And move your body in a way that feels good. Go to a workout class, take a long walk, dance in your living room, whatever it is, move your body that also moves out anxiety from your body. And plan a thing for Saturday morning, right? A 5 p.m. or 7 p.m. on Friday is your witching hour. Plan something for Saturday morning that you're excited about. When you know you have something good coming, something you're looking forward to, it's easier to protect your Friday night. And here's a hard truth. You might need to change how you spend your weekends for a while. If your entire social life revolves around drinking, you might need to step back and build a new one. It's not forever, but it might be for right now. Okay, for social survival. This one's tough because you can't always control when these situations happen, but you can prepare. Okay, so try this. Arrive with your own drink already in your hand. A fancy mocktail, a flavored seltzer, something that looks intentional, right? This prevents the what are you drinking question or can I get you a drink questions? Have your one line already. I'm taking a break from drinking. I'm not drinking right now. I just feel better when I don't drink. You don't owe anyone an explanation. But having something prepared reduces that anxiety. In my online course, the recovery starter kit, I have a whole section about this with scripts, like a thousand different, not really a thousand, but a lot of different one liners because when you know already in advance, you've already planned exactly what you're going to say, then you don't panic in the moment. It just rolls right out and everybody moves on with life, right? Also, for social survival, find one person to connect with. Instead of trying to work the whole room, focus on having one real conversation with one person. And give yourself permission to leave early. This is the next one. Seriously, you do not have to stay at that party until the end or whatever social event it is. If you are struggling, you are allowed to leave. And lastly, debrief after it's over, call someone and talk it through, journal about it, process how it felt. Don't just whitenuckle through it and pretend it was fine. And also remember, the other people at these events are not thinking about you nearly as much as you think they are. Everyone is in their own head. You being sober is not the main event of everyone else's evening, right? This is just something we build up in our heads. Nobody else really cares that much. All right, for emotional overwhelm, when the feelings hit and they're too big, you need tools that regulate your nervous system in the moment. So try this. The 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 grounding technique. That is, five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two you can smell, one you can taste. This brings you back to your body. Box breathing, breathe in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four, repeat that until you feel calmer. This takes seconds and nobody even knows you're doing it. You can do it anywhere. Call someone immediately, not later, not when you feel better, but right now, this is what your support system is for. Call somebody is be like, damn, dude, you will not believe, well, my crazy ass brain is saying to me right now, you know, call someone, move, do jumping jacks go for a run, shake your body, anxiety is energy that needs to move through you, right? Movement moves it out. Lastly, write it out, journal, text yourself, scream into a notes app, get the feelings out of your head and onto paper. The most important thing is do not try to think your way out of this, right? Do not try to think your way out of emotional overwhelm. Anxiety and big emotions live in your body, not your brain. You need physical tools, not mental ones. Now, I know I just gave you a lot of different strategies. Maybe you're sitting there thinking, okay, Angela, this all makes sense, but how do I actually put it into practice? How do I organize all of this and make sure I'm not just going to forget about it when my witching hour actually hits? And I hear you. And honestly, that's exactly why I built my recovery starter kit from the ground up because here's what I know. You need more than just good ideas. You need a system. You need someone to walk you through exactly how to set up your environment. So you're not ambushed by cravings. How to calm your mind when triggers hit. How to build support that actually feels good, not forced. And how to create that daily rhythm we've been talking about, the one that makes sobriety feel steady instead of shaky. And the recovery starter kit is my self-paced online course. You do it at home on your own time. It's your thing. And it takes everything we've talked about today, understanding your witching hour, knowing what you're really craving, having a plan. And it gives you the structure to actually implement it. And it's under 200 bucks, which I know is way more affordable than my six week coaching program. And that was intentional. I wanted something you could access right now, especially during the holidays, when money's tight, but you still need support. You get instant access to all the video lessons, worksheet, scripts for handling those awkward social situations, journaling prompts. You also get 30 days free in my sober society private community. And listen, if you're white knuckling it through the holidays right now, if you know your witching hour is coming and you don't have a solid plan, this could be exactly what you need. because remember what I said earlier, if you're doing nothing, you're planning to drink. And this gives you something. So I will drop that link in the show notes too. Addictiononlimited.com/kit, and I will put it in the show notes with everything else. So now let's talk about reframing your witching hour into your power hour. What if 5 p.m. instead of being the time you whitenuckled through a craving, became the time you do something that actually fulfills you? What if Friday night became the night you invest in yourself instead of numbing out? What if those uncomfortable social situations became opportunities to practice showing up as your real self? I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying it happens overnight, but every single time you get through your witching hour without drinking, you're proving to yourself that you can do hard things. You're building evidence that you don't need alcohol to relax, to have fun, to connect, to cope. You're learning what you actually need and discovering who you actually are. And you're building a life that doesn't require numbing. That's power. All right, let's bring this all together because I want you to walk away from this episode knowing exactly what to do the next time you're whitching hour hits. Okay, first, the big revelation. The witching hour is real. It's hard. It might be the hardest part of early sobriety, but it's not about the drink. It never was. The drink was the solution you were using for something else. Exhaustion, overwhelm, loneliness, anxiety, disconnection, boredom. When you say I want a drink, what you're actually saying is I need relief and I don't know how else to get it. So here's what you need to do step by step. Step one, identify your witching hour. You already know when it is. Maybe it's 5 p.m. on weekdays, maybe it's Friday nights, maybe it's when you're cooking dinner or driving home or sitting in a soccer game. Maybe it's 8 p.m. like it was for me. Write it down, name it, because you can't prepare for something you won't acknowledge. So identify your witching hour. Step two, understand what you're really craving. Is it the daily decompression? Are you exhausted and fried and needing to transition from work to home? Is it the weekend void? Are you bored and lonely and feeling like everyone else is having fun without you? Is it social survival? Are you at an event surrounded by drinking and feeling isolated and different? Or is it emotional overwhelm? Are the feelings too big and you just need them to stop? Different witching hours have different underlying needs. You have to know what yours is really about. Step three, make a plan. This is not optional. If you do nothing, you are planning to drink. You're just waiting for the craving to hit and then scrambling to justify giving in. So you need to put something in place before your witching hour arrives. If it's the daily decompression, you need a replacement ritual. Change your clothes immediately, make an alcohol-free drink, take a hot shower, do 10 minutes of movement, create a new signal to your nervous system that the workday is over and you can relax now. If it's the weekend void, you need to schedule something. Do not hit Friday night without a plan. Call someone, start a project, move your body, plan something for Saturday morning that you're excited about. Give your brain something to do besides obsess over what you're missing. If it's social survival, arrive with your own drink, have your one line already, find one person to connect with instead of working the room and give yourself permission to leave early if you need to. If it's emotional overwhelm, you need tools to regulate your nervous system in that moment. The five, four, three, two, one grounding technique, box breathing, call someone immediately, move your body, write it out. Do not try to think your way out of big feelings. You need physical tools for big feelings. And step four, understand that it won't be the same thing every time. Some days calling your best friend is exactly what you need. Other days quiet time alone is the answer. Some days you need to get out of the house. Other days you need to create a cozy ritual at home. The key is having a menu of options and choosing what fits that specific day. Now, here's why all of this serves you because here's what I know you care about. You want to feel better. You wanna stop struggling. You wanna get through your day without feeling like you're barely hanging on. You wanna actually enjoy your life instead of just surviving it. And that's exactly what understanding your witching hour gives you. When you know what you're really craving and you have tools to meet that need, you stop white knuckling it. You stop feeling powerless. You stop walking around terrified of that moment when the craving hits because you actually know what to do about it. This is when you start building evidence that you can handle hard things. You start proving to yourself that you don't need alcohol to relax, to have fun, to connect, to cope. You start discovering who you actually are and what you actually need. And that's when you get to start building a life that doesn't require numbing. That's what's on the other side of this. A version of you who isn't controlled by a craving. A version of you who knows what you need and how to give it to yourself. A version who doesn't need alcohol to survive their own life. But you have to do the work. You have to identify your witching hour. You have to understand what you're really craving. You have to make a plan and you have to execute that plan. Even when you don't feel like it. Even when it feels awkward or hard or like it won't work. Because here's the thing. It might not work perfectly the first time. You might try calling a friend and still feel the craving. You might make a mocktail and still want wine. You might do the grounding technique and still be pissed off and feel anxious. That's okay. That's normal. You're building new patterns and building new patterns takes practice. Listen, when you were a baby and decided you wanted to walk, you didn't jump up off the couch and just walk across the room the first time, right? I mean, what happens if babies were like, "Well, fuck this. This is hard. I'm never doing this again." Like, come on, you guys. This is what I always say. We've got to grow the fuck up. If it doesn't go our way the first time, that doesn't mean it's a failure. It means I keep doing it to get better at it. And that's why I say you do it even when you don't feel like it. You keep doing it. Don't give up. And every single time you get through your witching hour without drinking, you're proving something to yourself. You're building a foundation. You're creating new neural pathways in your brain. And you're showing your brain that there are other ways to feel better. And eventually, your witching hour stops being the hardest part of your day and starts being your power hour. The time you invested in yourself, the time you chose you, the time you proved you can do hard things. So, let me leave you with this. You know you're witching hour. You know what you're actually craving. Now you have the tools. All that's left is to use them. So make your plan. Write it down, put it in your phone, tell someone about it, get in our Facebook group and post it there. What's your plan? Do whatever you need to do to make sure you're not hitting your witching hour unprepared. Because you can get through this. You can turn your hardest moment into your most powerful one. And the version of you on the other side is absolutely worth fighting for. You've got this. I promise you, if I can do this stuff, you can do it. I promise you have no idea what a hot mess of a human I was when I started this journey. So you can do this. I promise you that. And don't forget this Friday, a bonus drop from the Unlimited Life Starter series. We're working our way through the 10 most powerful episodes from the Addiction Limited Archives to rebuild your rhythm structure and emotional piece. I hope you got a ton of valuable information from this episode. Don't forget, I will link all the things in the show notes. The Recovery Starter Kit online course, of course, Book of Call with Me is always in the show notes. The related episodes, always in the show notes. I love, love, love you guys. I hope you're having a fantastic day. And I will see you next week. You've reached the end of another great episode of the Addiction Unlimited podcast, candid and honest conversation about addiction and recovery. Be sure to visit us at addictiononlimited.com to join the conversation and access show notes and links to everything we talked about. Love this episode. Please take 30 seconds to subscribe, rate, and review on iTunes to help us improve and give you the information you want. Thanks for listening. See you next week. [MUSIC PLAYING]