Mindful Drinking
Have we met in the past 10 years?
If so, you likely know that I can drink.
You likely know that I enjoy drinking.
If we’ve ever gone out drinking together you know the night can go one of two ways…
- Start out super fun and stays that way
- Ends in tears because someone (likely drunk as well) said one stupid thing to me, I latch on to it and can’t let it go until it grows into this really ugly
I am beyond grateful for everyone in my life who didn’t judge me for the ugly nights. For friends who would stop studying to walk around campus with me so I could scream about something. The friends who would buy me my hangover cure food the next day. For the people who, when I’d apologize about my behavior, would tell me not to worry about it.
Thankfully, regularly drinking to excess is no longer the norm, mostly because I started working out and wanted to lose weight.
Even though I don’t really drink much anymore, I’ve still had a few nights where I drank to excess and things went perfectly fine. The next day was rough, sure, but no harm no foul. On the flipside, many nights ended relationships.
On the nights when things went fine, I started in a celebratory mood. Excited to be spending time with whoever I was with, the night took on that fun loving tone.
If my mindset is, I need to get drunk tonight because this person/situation is pissing me off, then I stop and consider what’s really going on with me.
I’ve gotten drunk many nights, due to annoyance, anger, disappointment. Which let’s be real, is all just fear that I didn’t want to face so I tried to drink it away.
After a few of these nights that just ended in fights, added turmoil to relationships, I recognized that I needed to change my approach and pay attention to my headspace going into the evening.
If it’s celebratory and I’m in a genuinely good mood, then I’m all about it.
Also — it can totally switch too, right?
Alcohol likes to play games with us. We can be feeling really good and then all of a sudden a flip gets switched and it’s over.
Now, if I decide to drink because I’m in a good mood and notice I’m starting to get annoyed, I’ll switch to water. It takes a lot of willpower especially since alcohol likes to lower that for us. It’s definitely not easy and I’d be lying if I said it worked every time.
So I created another cue…
Spitting. Yep, you read that right.
I don’t know what it is, but after a certain number of drinks I always need to spit and when that happens I’m like get me water and food and a bed cause it could get ugly here in 5, 4, 3,….So, once the spitting urge starts, the drinking stops!
I was telling this whole story in a yoga training class (minus the spitting anecdote) and one of my fellow yogis mentioned to me that its like mindful drinking and I was like YESSSS!!!
My drinking habits now are all about bringing attention to my headspace going into the evening. Am I trying to drink away some fear based reaction? If so, then I face it, like I discuss here. Or am I genuinely happy?
Some days I’m able to catch myself in an ugly tail spin, other times I can’t.
But the reality is, I just don’t drink that much anymore to avoid this whole thing. It’s been a process, I didn’t stop overnight.
I just realized that I would much rather wake up feeling good and energized to continue chasing my sunset.

Originally published at www.justchasingsunsets.com on August 24, 2017.
