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Gray Area Drinking: The Hidden Struggle You Need to Know About

• Courtney Andersen • Season 6 • Episode 219

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Episode 219: Gray Area Drinking: The Hidden Struggle You Need to Know About

In episode 219 of the Sober Vibes podcast, Courtney Andersen discusses Gray Area Drinking. Courtney breaks down what gray area drinking is, how to recognize it, and how to take back control of your relationship with alcohol without waiting for a crisis.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

  • The definition of gray area drinking
  • Signs you might be a gray area drinker
  • The impact alcohol has on mental and emotional well-being
  • How to take steps toward an alcohol-free life (without pressure or labels)

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Courtney Andersen:

Welcome back to the Sober Vibes podcast. I am Courtney Anderson, your host and sober coach, and I am here to help you navigate life without alcohol and thrive. You are listening to episode 219, and today I got quite the episode, and this was inspired by a meeting I had a couple of weeks ago in our sobriety circle and where we were talking about gray area drinking. Okay, I really do think, though, that gray area drinking can fit into that category of moderation, but we're just going to talk about gray area drinking today. Okay, so this is for you, especially if you've ever wondered is my drinking really that bad or do I actually have a problem? Alcohol addiction, alcohol use disorder, isn't always black and white. That's why, now, it is being talked about more on a spectrum, and this is where the experts, whoever they are in the world, have now expanded this into alcohol use disorder and alcoholism being on that far left, right and all of in between, on what you can, what you identify with right, like a binge drinker, going into the moderation, going into the gray area drinker. So, in going into this conversation, you really don't have to hit a rock bottom. Right For drinking to be a problem. Right for drinking to be a problem. However, I'm going to tell you I am a firm believer that rock bottom is just your point of when you have had it. I have known people to have a thousand and one rock bottoms. Were they all terrible? No, no, they weren't. Were some terrible, absolutely. But I truly just think that that rock bottom comes to a moment where you're like, dude, I've had enough of this Time to move the fuck on and time to move the fuck on without alcohol in my life. So if this resonates with you, I hope you stick more around because you're really go. I'm going to be breaking it all down for you and I hope you enjoy this episode.

Courtney Andersen:

So what exactly is gray area drinking? It's between social drinking and full-blown alcohol dependence. You might not need alcohol every day, but when you do drink you feel uneasy about it, right? Maybe you set rules for yourself. Here comes where that little moderation is coming in. I only drink on the weekends. I won't drink alone. I won't do shots. I will only stick to beer. I will only stick to six ounces of wine, but deep down in my soul I'm like pissed because I'm not having more than six ounces of wine. You might find yourself bending these rules.

Courtney Andersen:

Does any of this sound familiar? And if you're nodding your head in your car or on your therapy walk, I get it. I get it because, I have to say, towards the end of my drinking career which I have expressed many times on this podcast I was closer to a binge drinker. You know what I mean and so I understand, because even what I'm listing and talking about right now it does take me back to. It's like yeah, I mean, I did this to myself too. This is towards the end, especially that last year and a half of my drinking this is what I was eventually getting myself to to then eventually just say no more drinking alcohol.

Courtney Andersen:

So gray area drinkers often don't fit into the traditional idea of a quote unquote alcoholic. They might be high achievers, successful in their career, showing up with their families, mom's, doing the most right, but alcohol is still taking up way too much mental energy. I laugh because this is true, because once you get out of the cycle, that is when you see it where you're like holy balls. I have spent way too much time and energy thinking about alcohol, thinking about when my next drink is right, and then you see the amount of control it actually had over you. I know people don't like to say that the substance doesn't have a control over them, but it does, and you will see it when you are out of the relationship with it. You may feel anxiety about drinking, regret the choices the day after, even try to cut back, but the struggle to do so is consistently, and that is that cycle that you get into, which is awful. So let's talk about signs. You might be a gray area drinker. There's a ton of red flags. Okay, you often wake up feeling guilty about how much you drank the night before. You tell yourself you'll just have one or two, but that rarely happens.

Courtney Andersen:

You take breaks from drinking. This is a huge one, because this is too like what we talked about on our sobriety circle, meaning you take breaks from drinking, but once you go back, it's like you never stopped and it gets worse. It's like you never stopped and it gets worse. Seriously, I will scream this from the rooftops of my house, where then my neighbors will be like what the fuck is this bitch doing? But so many times with people, they will take a break from drinking, go back and it will be worse than what it was, and that's only going to continue. I have yet to found a person who has had a problematic relationship with alcohol and then takes time off of drinking and goes back to it and they ended up where they originally began and it's worse than what it was.

Courtney Andersen:

You're not physically dependent, but alcohol plays a big role in your life. Then you like to think this is where I say that a lot of people are emotionally dependent on it. You keep questioning your relationship with alcohol, but talk yourself out of it, of making a big change. I want to say this too you also are seeking validation from others when let me rephrase this you will ask others or share with somebody that you have a drinking problem or have a question in your relationship with alcohol, or maybe to ask them and they are like what are you talking about? No, you don't have a, you're not an alcoholic. That's what it always goes back to. No, you're not an alcoholic, you don't have a drinking problem. What are you talking? You're the best mom, you have this fucking amazing career, you hold down the fort. I envy you, right? And then you seek that validation like okay, I don't have a problem. I'm going to tell you this right now Stop asking fucking people if you have a problem with relationship, I want you to have a problem with alcohol. Because they're going to fucking tell you you don't have a problem with alcohol. If your inner voice has been telling you for years, something is not right here, stop asking others.

Courtney Andersen:

There is so often time that professionals therapists, doctors that women are telling them that they might have a problem with alcohol and these doctors are telling them they don't because they're not following the standard of well, how many drinks have you had per week? Okay, we all lie. And seriously, the therapists who are telling these women and men too, I'm sure I just know a lot of women of what I've been told that when they address this with their therapist and the therapist was like no, no, no, you don't have a problem with relationship. Fucking stop. This is what people are paying you for to fucking listen to them. And this one pisses me off like beyond, fucking beyond. Go fire your therapist. Actually, if they are telling you you don't have a problem with alcohol, when you're addressing this to them Because guess what, nobody who has a problem with alcohol is bringing this up to a professional therapist I'm like winded. This pisses me off so bad. Why would somebody make this shit up.

Courtney Andersen:

Who wants a problematic relationship with alcohol, if any. You want to be normal. You don't want to feel guilt at the end of the day or the day after for fucking drinking. God, there's going to be a lot of profanity in this one, but it's true, like I mean. Listen, I know there are people out there who are unwell. Okay, there's people out there who will fake a cancer diagnosis for sympathy and like all of the bullshit and the bad in the world that you hear. But honestly, I really highly doubt that there's somebody out there trying to fake a drinking problem. So therapy, their therapist, if you're listening, and your client comes to you and says, motherfucker, I think I have a drinking problem, listen and say expand on it. Whatever you do in therapy talks right.

Courtney Andersen:

My therapist, before I fired her when I was still in my active relationship with alcohol, the bitch was right. She said do you ever think that you need to give up drinking? And I fired her because she was on to me. Okay, it's just one of those things she knew. She knew, she saw through me, she understood. You're pretty aware You've worked on this a lot of your life because I have been in therapy since I was, I don't know in middle school. You know what I mean. I had the awareness but it was the one thing that kept me in this pocket and being stuck and it kept self-sabotaging and destructive my life. So bravo to that therapist, who she saw through me.

Courtney Andersen:

So if any of these of what I just said before I went on the tangent of the therapy talk and the professionals, if any of these hit home to you, just remember you're not alone. There are, I have to say, I feel like there's so many more of these gray area drinkers than there are of the quote unquote extreme alcoholics. Right Again, your rock bottom is when you've had enough with alcohol, when you're when you have had enough of the feeling like this and wanting to get out of that cycle, and when you keep going back to booze and you see that it's not, it's not changing, it's not getting better, right, then that's when you're like, okay, I just need to give it up and I get it and the process. You have to keep giving it up, but when you keep doing the dance with it, you're going to keep being in that cycle. Hey, good people of the world want to make your sober journey a little easier.

Courtney Andersen:

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Courtney Andersen:

So what is the impact of gray area drinking? So here's the thing Gray area drinking might not look like a crisis from the outside, but it takes a toll. It can affect your mental health, your sleep, your confidence, right, because when you keep doing the thing that you've been doing, it is going to. And alcohol for everybody. It's a self-esteem depleter, man, because then you're waking up the next day in the cycle and you're like what the fuck, what is wrong with me and the delulu that alcohol has over you and that just totally fucking rips you to shred and gives you no clarity and the decisions you make in your drinking, right, and the 2 am cries with snot bubbles. It's a lot, it is not good and it can even too fully affect your ability to be fully present, right, you might find yourself using alcohol to cope with stress or anxiety and over time it can become that cycle that's really hard to break.

Courtney Andersen:

I want to say this right now and this is not a lot of people talk about this the past five years, because this episode will air on April 3rd. I want you to think about where you were five years ago, seriously. I want you to think about where you were five years ago. The state of the world. We were all in a motherfucking lockdown and now nobody's talking about the stress and the impact this had A lot of that time, during COVID, a lot of people their alcohol usage fucking skyrocketed.

Courtney Andersen:

There was emotional trauma that happened, physical trauma. If you listen to me and my sister's episode last week of LOT, we talked about how that pandemic was the start to the end of the baby boomer generation and totally fucked them up. And it fucked a lot of people up and there has to be time to recover and heal from a global pandemic. And this is nothing political, but what that did to human beings in this world. The amount of trauma that was in the news, the amount of trauma that was happening all over the world and it burned a lot of people fucking out. There were a lot of parents who did not want to become teachers, right. There was a lot of people who was impacted by that financially. There was a lot of people who it actually people relapsed because it took away their day-to-day structure.

Courtney Andersen:

Now, post-covid times, look at how just the world has changed. Your job has changed. You know fatigue on being on fucking Zoom calls, all of it. There is so much psychologically that has happened, mind, body and soul to the human being. If you're not a sociopath that it's impacted you, okay. So you're drinking increased about it You're drinking increased due to it.

Courtney Andersen:

A lot of people that have come into my coaching the past couple of years. It's like recovering from just that and the amount of drinking they started to do. And still now, to this day, people are using alcohol to cope with the way of the world, especially to again, I'm just with America in particular just politics alone, and what politics have become. It's insanity and it's very, very sad. Okay, I'm going to leave it at that with politics, well, but I just want you to see that there has been an impact of the last five years and there's no motherfucker coming to us with the government of being like here, let's help you with what just happened mentally, okay, nobody, it's on you to do that for yourself and to heal from that right. So again, just think about it. But nowadays, it's well, you all pretend like it didn't happen, in which it did, and I just want to give you that If you are still your fight or flight, response or fall, it's still fucked up over that. It's okay. It's okay. I get it because it's weird, and in the past couple of weeks I've been thinking about that Like God damn, that was weird what happened five years ago and I started this podcast like a month before the world shut down. So it's just like even two of the evolution of the past five years of this specifically and what we've talked about.

Courtney Andersen:

So, yes, if you're still recovering from that or burnt out from it, or your job got busier because there's been more layoffs and you've had to do more responsibility, the burnout going back to you don't need like this huge rock bottom. But your rock bottom is knowing that alcohol is not good for you and it's time for you to live life without it and move on from it, right? So you can decide to step away from alcohol at any time, simply because you want to feel better, you want to think clearer and you want to live more freely. Maybe you want more energy, because alcohol depletes your energy. So, how to break free from gray area drinking, if you're realizing that your drinking falls into this area? Right, you might be wondering what now? Courtney Bitch, tell me. And here are some steps to help you break free.

Courtney Andersen:

Number one you need to get honest with yourself. You need to get honest with yourself. No more judgment, right? No more judgment of well, I'm not like that. Stop saying that. Stop. Yes, you are not like that. But you have your own situation of what your relationship with is with alcohol. Again, this is where this goes back to that emotional dependent. You cannot think that you're better because you are more high functioning and I've said this through a lot through these years the high functioning ones are the worst, because that's where that judgment comes in right. So you need to take a real look at how alcohol is making you feel mind, body and soul. You need to even take a look in the rear view mirror and how has alcohol really truly showed up in your life?

Courtney Andersen:

Okay, I'm going to give you this exercise to do. I'm not trying to trigger anybody, so if this starts triggering you, then please stop. But this is this is brutal, tough love, honesty. I want you to write a list of things that you have done in your like what's drinking? Where has drinking taken you, even if that is just with massive goddamn anxiety the next day, and be like I don't have any energy. I don't have the capacity to play with my kids, right, I have missed their early days because I was in my cups. Be honest with yourself.

Courtney Andersen:

Number two start experimenting with some sobriety. Okay, I'm not going to tell you to do challenges, because you guys know how I feel about this. I just want you to take it a day at a time. Right, like how do I feel without it? Keep going back to how you feel without it. Find a community.

Courtney Andersen:

So sobriety circle is a good one. If you want that, you've got to start doing some things differently, and a lot of people think they can do this on their own and, honestly, it's way easier with like-minded people. And I have to say, majority of the women in the sobriety circle in my group coaching community, they're all gray area drinkers and they're all the same High achievers, gray area drinkers, realizing that enough is enough. You need to start replacing that habit. Okay, identify what role alcohol plays in your life Stress release, social anxiety, right, like the coping and find healthier ways to fill the gap. And I'm going to tell you it's not going to be easy those first couple of weeks, because you're going to be going through a fucking detox weeks, because you're going to be going through a fucking detox.

Courtney Andersen:

And you also need to realize how long alcohol played in your life. How long was that relationship in your life for 20 years, 30? Right, 10?, 5? You need to look at it like okay. That's why I just suggest to everybody give yourself some grace, educate yourself, educate yourself.

Courtney Andersen:

Read some quit books. You can always get mine. I just read a good one called Dopamine Nation. I will link it in the show notes. Everything I talk about I will link in the show notes for you. Dopamine Nation was a good one because it really, really, really talks about the pain to pleasure response in your brain and how we're all just trying to escape the pain. That is also why I went on a tangent about what happened five years ago, because that shook us all, a lot of people too. I didn't even say it, but a lot of people lost somebody during that time. You know what I mean. And then again it's like now we're just sitting here and it's like not a lot of people talk about the emotional toll that that took on people, because we're on to the next. So another one too.

Courtney Andersen:

I'm going to add number six into this. Okay, because this is like when people go back, when they think to themselves, like well, it's been some time, right, it has been some time since and it's okay if I can drink. This is where I am going to grab you and shake you, not really hard, but just shake you a little bit and say to you you have to remember in your journey where alcohol takes you. So the pretending that that never happened doesn't work anymore. You have to connect on a daily basis, especially those first couple months, and then go on to a weekly basis and then maybe go on to a once a month. But you need to keep connected to where alcohol took you and stop forgetting it. Stop letting your ego come up and be like, yeah, you can handle it, no problem.

Courtney Andersen:

And I know sometimes too, when people have slips, it's because of unexpected things that happened, that they had an expectation of how it was going to go, or, and then it didn't go that way. And I know it's really, really hard when you have, you're like laser focused on on on something going the way that you had planned, and then it doesn't, and it shakes you to your core in the way that you had planned, and then it doesn't and it shakes you to your core and it's what do I do now? And it fucks you up or you had an unexpected loss, right. And that is where you have to really really pause, take some deep breaths and be like, okay, if you do slip that the next day you need to just get back on the horse and keep moving forward and don't let that slip define you, but learn from it and learn the lesson of it. Of here it is, here it is again. This is how I feel, but before you get to that, that is why, also, too, a community helps and support helps you to fucking.

Courtney Andersen:

Then you tap into that to remind yourself, but also to to pause and be like what do I really need right now and what can I go to besides alcohol? Should I just have some fucking water? Just what? My whistle with some water right and take some deep breathing, do some breathing exercises and really think to yourself mentally what is this going to solve?

Courtney Andersen:

If I drink, this is only going to give me maybe one hour tops of that pleasure, and then I'm going to be in fucking pain for the next 23 hours and I'm going to have to then, because I introduced alcohol into my system, that then I'm going to have to detox this and go through the whole process again of detoxing alcohol, because you're letting it into your system and alcohol is a highly addictive substance and then you're just going to want more and more and more of it and you're going to start feeling the freedom, after about 30 days, of being out of the cycle, when the want for it is not as much as it once was, where you're not as much as thinking about booze as you once were. Okay, trust me, I've experienced this and I see it too with women that I coach, and it happens it's 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, so on, and it is a process and you have to trust it. But I'm just here to remind you too, with the gray area drinker people who don't have problems with booze when they wake up in the morning, they don't feel guilty. With booze when they wake up in the morning, they don't feel guilty. So if that guilt is coming over you 90% of the time after you're drinking, it's time to live a life without it. It is not going to get better and especially, too, if you are a woman over the age of 35, the shit is not going to get better. It's just not. And you know what, if you're 24, listening to this take it from everybody who walked before you of this is not going to get better. It actually, for women, just gets worse because of hormones and then of the perimenopause menopause. So, and you want to go into that shit feeling your best, you truly do so.

Courtney Andersen:

If you liked today's episode, I would love to hear what you thought of today's episode. Please shoot me a DM If you haven't already. Please rate, review and subscribe to the show. Share it with a friend if they come up to you and they're like I've been questioning my relationship with alcohol. Share it with somebody and, as always, keep on trucking out there and keep kicking ass.

Courtney Andersen:

And if you're in that cycle with the gray area drinker, you have to also too. It's like how do you want to show up? Do you want to keep showing up like this? And if the answer is no, then it's time to just completely give it up. Okay, and don't think of a year from now, don't think of two years from now, don't think of three years. Just think of today. And the best decision you can make for yourself today is giving up alcohol right and continuing to make choices that support that lifestyle, especially in those first three months. So, because you got to step back a little bit to help you not drink, you just do. You have to step back from a couple things, socially even, to all the work that you take on that kind of stuff, but that's for another episode, another day. So again, keep on trucking, kick ass out there, and I will see you in the next episode. Thank you.

People on this episode

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Courtney Andersen

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Kimberly Elledge

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