The Truth About "Taking a Break" From Alcohol

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. I'm your coach, Angela Pugh. Thank you for hanging out with me today, listening to the pod. I want to talk about this phrase today that I hear people say all the time and that is, I'm taking a break. Right whether it's dry July or just a random 30 days or 75 hard sober October, a cleanse or reset, whatever the thing is. And don't get me wrong, I actually think taking a break can be incredibly valuable, but here's what I've learned after working with tons of people over the last 20 years. The people whose lives completely change aren't the people who took the longest break. They're the people who eventually made a decision and those are two completely different things. Today I want to explain the difference and why understanding it might finally get you unstuck. Most people don't choose a break because they want sobriety. They choose a break because they want relief. Relief from hangovers, guilt, anxiety, from fights, from embarrassment, from the exhaustion of it all, right? Nobody wakes up one morning and thinks, you know what sounds fun? Let's not drink for a month. We take breaks because something isn't working. We're exhausted. The anxiety is worse. We've embarrassed ourselves. Our relationships are suffering. Our health is changing. Or maybe you just have that quiet voice in the back of your mind saying like, I can't keep going like this. So you decide to take a break. And I want to be clear, there's nothing wrong with that. Those breaks serve a very real and necessary purpose. But here's the difference between a break and actually quitting. When you're taking a break, your goal isn't freedom. Your goal is to feel better. And subconsciously, you want to feel better so you can tell yourself you can drink again. Let that sink in for a minute. Because that one sentence explains why so many people take breaks year after year. And never actually get free. And this is where your addicted brain is brilliant. It says, let's just prove we can stop. And then 30 days becomes proof. Not proof you don't have a problem, but you think it's proof you still have control. Then your brain says, look at us. We did great. We deserve it. See, I knew we weren't that bad. And suddenly the break becomes permission to drink again. This is why so many people can stop drinking, but they can't stay stopped. In AA, we talk about it takes every single drink it takes to get sober. That doesn't mean relapse is required, right? I never relapsed. And it definitely isn't permission to keep drinking. But it means something much more important, every attempt teaches you something, every break gives you more information, every relapse strips away another illusion. What you're doing is collecting evidence. Evidence that you don't have control over alcohol. Evidence that willpower isn't enough evidence that moderation won't work. Evidence that you're going in circles doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. And if that's you right now, if you've done dry July four years in a row, I don't want you to hear that as failure. I want you to hear it as data. You're closer than you think. You just haven't looked at the evidence yet. And when you look at the evidence and make a real decision, it doesn't necessarily feel exciting. It's usually more quiet and heavy and scary, also peaceful and a little exhausting, right? Sometimes it's all of that in the same hour. But underneath all of it is one thought that makes all the difference. And that's just, I don't want this life anymore. Not I hope this works. Not I'll see how it goes. Not I'll revisit in 30 days. Next, I'm done living like this. You've gathered enough evidence. You've had enough Monday mornings enough promises, enough day ones, enough trying to outsmart alcohol. And one day you realize you're tired of negotiating. That's the beginning of a real decision. And part of this is coming to terms with something that's really hard to understand, right? Like no matter how high functioning you are, no matter how cool you are, how smart you are, how amazing your friends think you are, none of that has any impact on your drinking. Alcoholics are incredibly smart and capable people. We love to think we can do it differently, right? I'm not like all those other people. I won't need the things they need. I can figure this out on my own. I can do it differently. So with every drink, with every disaster, with every humiliation, you start to get real. You start to see you aren't special. You aren't different from the rest of us. You aren't better or smarter or unique. You're just an alcoholic like the rest of us. And when you get to that place of admitting the reality of the situation, instead of hiding behind your ego, that's when you're really ready to create change in your life. That's when you stop fighting, stop negotiating and get real relief. And when you make a decision, your questions change, right? Instead of how long you ask, how do I build a life I don't want to escape from? Instead of when can I drink again, you ask, what do I need to learn? Instead of can I survive vacation, you ask, who do I become now? But everything shifts because you're not managing a countdown anymore. You're building something new. And I want to say this clearly because I don't want anyone listening to think taking a break is wrong. If you're only ready for a break, take the fucking break. Seriously, learn from it, observe yourself. Notice what your brain says. Notice what you miss. Notice what you don't miss. What curious, because every break teaches you something, just don't confuse a break with the decision because those are two entirely different journeys. Sometimes one leads to the other, but they're not the same thing. And here's where I need you to really listen because this is the part that messes people up more than anything else I've talked about in this whole episode. Most people who say, I'm just taking a break or tricking themselves. Because underneath it, there's a little hope. A quiet little hope that this break turns into something more, right? That 30 days somehow becomes forever. That this time is going to be the one that sticks. But here's the problem. You can't hope your way from one path onto the other. A break and a decision aren't two speeds on the same road. They're two different roads entirely, different motivation, different mindset, different daily choices. You can't be on both at the same time. So what actually happens is this. Someone says, I'm taking a break for 30 days. But quietly underneath that, they're hoping it changes everything. They're hoping it lasts, hoping this is finally it. But they're not doing what it takes to make it last because they told themselves and everyone around them that it's temporary. So they don't build the support. They don't look at the deeper stuff. They don't change the things they actually need to change, right? They just whitenuckle the calendar. Then day 31 comes and they drink again and they're furious at themselves and feel like they failed. But you can't succeed on a path you never actually clarified. You weren't failing at quitting. You were succeeding at taking a break. And then once the break ended, you went right back to your normal. Taking a break might be the language you need right now. It might feel softer and safer. It's easier to say out loud and that's fine. Sometimes that's the only door you can walk through. But if what you actually want is for this to be permanent, you have to be honest about that because permanent requires a different set of actions. It requires you to stop managing account down and start building a life. And you can't build that while a part of you is just waiting for day 30 to arrive. Okay, let's bring this all the way home. We covered a lot. So let's walk back through it because I don't want you to just listen to this episode and nod your head, right? I want you to actually use the information. So we started with the truth that most people don't choose a break because they want sobriety. You choose it because you want relief and there's nothing wrong with that. But relief and freedom are not the same goal. One is trying to make drinking manageable again. The other is trying to build a life that doesn't need it. And we talked about your bargaining brain, how it treats a successful 30 days as proof you have control instead of proof you have a problem. And that's why so many of you can stop for a while but you can't stay stopped, right? And I ask you to see those breaks differently, not as failures but as evidence. Every single one of them is teaching you something whether you've been willing to look at it or not. And we talked about what a decision actually feels like not exciting, not a lightning bolt moment. It's a little quieter, heavy and sometimes scary. But underneath it, the one sentence that changes everything is I'm done living like this. That's the doorway. We also talked about how your questions change once you actually decide you stop asking how long and start asking who do I become now. That shift is everything because it means you've stopped managing account down and started building something real. And then we talked about the trap, right? The quiet hope that a break will magically turn into forever without you actually doing what forever requires. And that's the one thing I really need you to sit with because it's a game changer. If you've ever finished a 30 day break, gone back to drinking and been furious at yourself, I want you to hear this. You didn't fail at quitting because you never actually decided to quit. You were on a different road the whole time. When you realize that you have even more evidence about what you need to do to have a different result. And all of this is so important because so many of you have been carrying around years of guilt over failed attempts that were never actually attempts at what you thought they were. You've been judging yourself by the wrong measuring stick. And once you can see the real difference between a break and a decision, you stop wasting energy being disappointed in yourself for not succeeding at something you never actually set yourself up to do. So here's what I want you to remember, you don't build a different life because you managed to not drink for 30 days. You build a different life because one day you decide you're no longer building your future around alcohol. That's the shift. That's when recovery stops feeling like a punishment and starts feeling like freedom. Whether you're listening during dry July, sober October or on some random Tuesday because you're sick of feeling this way, don't worry so much about whether you're taking a break. Ask yourself a better question. Am I gathering evidence or am I preparing to make a decision? Because decisions change lives. Breaks simply hit the pause button. And if you're sitting there realizing you've been gathering evidence for years or realizing you've been quietly hoping instead of clearly deciding and you're ready to decide and take real action and change your life and you want to do it with me, then book a call to see if it's the right fit for you. We will figure out honestly where you actually are right now, not where you wish you were but where you really are and what the next real step looks like from there. Go to addictiononlimited.com/call and grab a time on my calendar. You'll answer a few quick questions and then schedule addictiononlimited.com/call. I would love to talk to you. And right now I have two coaching spots open. So again, addictiononlimited.com/call. I 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. [BLANK_AUDIO]