New Year’s resolutions can be a wonderful or terrible tool depending on how you use them. Many of us love the feeling of a fresh start as we tell ourselves we will let go of old habits and practice new ones sure to bring us the outcomes we crave, like health, clarity and abundance.

Many of us begin the journey to a new version of ourselves full of good intentions, all the while white knuckling it until we just can’t anymore eventually caving to old habits. For some of us it’s a day. For others it’s weeks or months before we give in to old habits, which are really just strong neural pathways in our brains. This fail is to be expected. It is expected because most of us do not have endless will power, meaning you can only white knuckle it so long before you let go. It’s important to understand that willpower is finite and we use it with every single decision we make through the course of the day. Decision fatigue is a real thing that will leave you feeling empty of will. And if your reason to change isn’t compelling enough to keep you on track you can pretty much count the days before you give up.

If missteps when changing behaviors are to be expected, then why do so many of us use them as a reason to give up completely? It’s an interesting question to pose to yourself. And if you do it enough, I bet you will find some thought errors that are way upstream in your brain where you use your falls from grace as ammunition to beat up on your worthiness. When we feel unworthy or less than, it’s really really hard to take proactive actions for ourselves. it’s as if we don’t have the energy to do what we know is right. That is because the way we feel is the driver for ALL of our actions plain and simple.

Over the years I have watched the phenomenon of “dry January” play out in many of my patients lives as they hit the reset button. And while 2020 gave many of us more opportunity to drink more than usual, possibly out of sheer boredom or to as a tool to temporarily buffer against all of the negative feelings we all experienced as we were forced into looking at the shadow side of our lives and our society at large, 2021 doesn’t seem to be the fresh start many of us had hoped for either. I want you to know, if your dry January is already under water it’s okay. it’s never too late to begin again. It certainly doesn’t mean anything about your worth. You are worthy in this exact moment regardless of any habit you may still have.

I thought I would take a moment to tell you what my relationship with alcohol is as a way to lessen the stigma around giving up alcohol, why I decided to change it, and what helped me get to a place of health with alcohol.

The truth is, there is no one size fits all relationship with alcohol. We get to decide as adults what we want it to look like and what we make it mean. If you are looking for inspiration to change your relationship with alcohol I hope this provides it and helps you to know you have people in your life that can help you get where you want to go based on true experience, not theory.

Let me start off by saying I am not sober. I did, however, decide & commit in July of 2018 to permanently change my relationship with alcohol. Two years prior to this decision, I married the man of my dreams in 2016, who happened to be a sommelier and fine wine importer. My house was and still is filled with fine wine from around the world. Wine had become a part of most days of my life and certainly all celebrations. It was a staple at dinner, enhancing the taste of food. It was routine to share a bottle and wind down together after a long day of work. Trips to wineries were with my husband were not uncommon and I loved them!

I never felt that I had a problem with alcohol in the way I perceived alcoholism. I didn’t drink in the middle of the day. I didn’t get blackout drunk or wake up wondering what I had said or done. And I didn’t have hangovers that prevented me from working at the level I was accustomed to. For many people around me, it was curious that I would want to change my relationship as they didn’t see it as a problem. In fact, some even saw it as a judgment against their behaviors which I found fascinating.

But what I did have was more reasons to stop than I had to continue. It wasn’t doing my health or waist line any favors. It was affecting my sleep, leaving me laying wide awake at 3am feeling like I was combusting in the desert sure to burst into flames at any second. I was irritable & tired the next day and losing my edge. I found myself in relationships with people where alcohol was a problem in their lives and was ruining precious relationships with their kids and significant others which was hard to watch. I even had a family friend die of alcoholism. It was also in violation of my own code that if I was consuming something most days of my life other than air and water I needed to examine why. I wasn’t at rock bottom. But I knew I didn’t want to stay where I was at either. For many of you faced with stopping drinking to enhance your fertility, you may find yourself in a similar situation, wanting something else more than the immediate gratification you could get from alcohol.

I had made the decision to change my relationship with it, but quickly realized I had a challenge. In the past when I had given something up, I threw it all out. Got it out of the house. Changed routines and white knuckled my way through. Distracted myself with something else etc. It was clear that approach was not going to work this time. Wine was now a permanent fixture in my home and in my travels. I had to learn how to not want it when it was right in front of me. Instead of changing my circumstance or trying to change those around me, I had to change my own my own mind. I had to learn how to watch the urges come and override them anyways. I had to learn to fall down and be kind to myself as I started again instead of berating myself. I had to learn how to communicate my fears to my loved ones that were going to continue to drink that this was somehow going to change my relationship with them (it didn’t btw). I had to learn to not make it a big deal in social situations and that it was okay to decide not to drink without going into my reasons why and being terrified of what others would think or say about my choices. I learned that feeling deprived was a choice from my thoughts that caused me to feel restricted instead of free. I had to learn by trial and error what i wanted my relationship to alcohol to actually be. It was a process. And one that I am super grateful to have. It has given me clarity on so many things- habits, judgments, self-loathing, commitment to myself, my learned tendency to buffer my feelings with food or drink, and better physical health and a more stable mental emotional landscape.

Ultimately, I landed in a place that is comfortable for me and allows me to reap the benefits of health and still purposely indulge from time to time. I choose to imbibe no more than 6 times a year. It’s usually a special occasion and I always decide at least 24 hours ahead of time that I am going to have a drink, what it is going to be and when I’ll stop. If I find myself with the thought, “Today sucks, I’d really like a glass of wine tonight,” I see it as a symptom/gift that there are some emotions I need to process instead of avoid and I do some journaling or talk with a friend instead. And if I do slip up and drink in a non planned situation, I unpack the why behind it and practice not beating myself up for not being perfect. For some, these self imposed guidelines my seem too strict and for others it may look like a slippery slope, but for me at this point in my life it’s my version of a middle road I’m happy to be on and that’s all that matters until I say otherwise.

If you are struggling with making changes to your relationship to alcohol or feeling deprived like you have to give up all of your favorite things for fertility sake, I hope this has given you perspective and inspiration of how your process will be unique to you. And if you are wanting support, I’m always willing to listen to and support you in a non-judgmental way in a coaching relationship no matter how long it takes for you to get where you want to go.