MINDFULNESS OVER MERLOT

It's time to update our attitudes towards recovery. ADRIENNE VAN DER VALK explains why-and how.

- ADRIENNE VAN DER VALK

IF YOU'VE EVER woken up with a pounding head and a vague memory of saying something embarrassing the night before, you may have told yourself, "I really overdid it. Better keep it to two drinks next time!"

For some people, that reminder will be enough to enforce a new limit. But for others, two drinks always becomes three or four or more. The broken boundary becomes a painful reminder that the commitments we make before alcohol starts flowing often don't align with the decisions we make after.

I say "we" because I am one of those people. Before I quit drinking, I made and broke rules constantly. Even when I didn't drink every day, I always drank more than I meant to, and my inability to moderate made me feel terrible about myself. I exercised self-discipline in other areas of my life. Why wasn't I able to rein it in when it came to alcohol?

One of the many things that confused me about my drinking was a culturally inherited belief that there were only two kinds of drinkers: alcoholics and "normal" people. In my mind, alcoholics were unable to function without booze, and certainly unable to go days at a time without drinking. This belief left me without a framework to understand my own situation. I was not physically addicted to alcohol, but when I did drink (which was often), my consumption was definitely not normal. So, was I an alcoholic or not?

Scientist, educator, and podcast host Gill Tietz asked herself this question for years while she struggled with problem drinking. On her popular podcast and YouTube channel Sober Powered, Tietz continues to look for answers in research studies while summarizing her findings for her listeners. One important discovery she shares is that disordered drinking falls across a spectrum, meaning the term "alcoholic" isn't very useful as a descriptor.