6 Reasons You Drink Most Nights
You don't have to get wasted every night for this to be an issue
Many people struggle with feelings of shame about how much they drink, even at levels that are not commonly considered to be “a problem.” To reassure themselves, these people note that they experience no physiological dependence on alcohol, and “only” have one or two drinks a night to “take the edge off.” However, at some point, especially if these people generally try to be healthy in other ways, e.g. nutrition, exercise, therapy, they start to feel uneasy about what they increasingly recognize as a need to drink almost every evening (or almost every weekend). Here are six reasons that you may drink more frequently than you would ideally want to, and how your drinking relates to your relationships, mental health, and overall wellbeing.
1. You are self-medicating anxiety or depression. Many people do not recognize that it isn’t normal to feel extremely stressed, negative, or upset all the time, because this is what they observed in their family of origin. They think “everyone” feels overwhelmed and requires a substance to feel positive. This is not the case, and is not healthy, but if you have never seen anything else, it feels normative to you. Incidentally, some people are also self-medicating social anxiety, the type of anxiety where you are fearful of others judging you and feel very inhibited and anxious in social situations. If you can’t socialize without alcohol, your use usually ramps up on the weekends, and your spouse may have mentioned you are embarrassing at social events when you drink too much.
2. You don’t allow yourself to “clock off” unless you’re too drunk to work. With the advent of smartphones and email, work is often 24/7. When people are very perfectionistic and anxious about doing well at work, they feel they have to respond to all emails in real time… UNLESS of course, they are not going to respond well. The only way that they can take themselves off the clock is to get drunk enough (usually 1-2 drinks suffices) that they cannot be sure that they will respond intelligently to a work email. This is a subconscious motivator for those who struggle with scrupulosity and perfectionism.
3. You drink so that your partner drinks. Many women will only have sex when drinking, so the man drinks in order to drink alongside her and start the couple down the path of sex; a video about this is below and a podcast episode is here. Another reason is that many women find their rigid, angry husbands to be more laid back and easygoing (or sleepy) when drunk. Drinking together is the only way that either of these people feel good in their relationship. Usually in this situation, both partners grew up with drinking in their families and do not recognize how dysfunctional this is.
4. You drink to have sex. As just discussed, many men drink with their wives so that they have sex. On the other side of this equation, many women drink in order to get into the mood for sex. Their inhibitions decrease, and in some cases, this is the only way they can deal with their feelings of distaste or even revulsion around sex. People with sexual trauma histories often feel fear or disgust around sexual activity after the dopamine of the honeymoon stage wears off. In these cases, drinking allows these women to keep the peace in their marriages by having sex despite these feelings. This is not a healthy path, and eventually many of these women start to feel angry about feeling they need to have sex at all, and consider this retrospectively as coercive (as discussed here).
5. You dislike your life and feel you need to escape from it. Many people are trapped in lives that they do not find fulfilling or meaningful, often because they are not spending their time and energy in ways that make sense to them, or because they are unhappy in their primary relationship. I discuss both of these in the episode “I Have A Perfect Life, So Why Aren’t I Happy?” It feels risky and fraught to deeply examine whether you want to make significant life changes, like career change or divorce, so you are using alcohol to anesthetize yourself on a regular basis and avoid thinking about anything upsetting. This is like how people used soma in Brave New World:
“Swallowing half an hour before closing time, that second dose of soma had raised a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds.”
6. You do in fact have physiological dependence and a drinking problem. You no longer know how to feel relaxed without alcohol, but you think that because it is “just one or two” (and usually a lot more on weekends), then you can keep telling yourself it’s not an issue. This is often seen in adult children of alcoholics, who have a genetic predisposition toward addiction, but believe that things are sustainable because they don’t drink as much or with as bad consequences as their parent.
If this post resonated with you, therapy is a great first step toward finally reckoning with your relationship with alcohol. A skilled therapist will help you figure out which of these issues is most at play, or other factors unique to your situation, and what next steps to take. And till we meet again, I remain, The Blogapist Who Says, Just Because You Did “Dry January” Doesn’t Mean Not To Interrogate February Through December.
For therapy, go here for Dr. Whiten and go here for other clinicians in her group practice Best Life Behavioral Health. For coaching with Dr. Whiten, go here. Order Dr. Whiten’s books, Couples You Meet in Counseling: 7 Common Relationship Dynamics That Sabotage Closeness, 52 Emails to Transform Your Marriage and How to Talk to Your Kids about Your Divorce: Healthy, Effective Communication Techniques for Your Changing Family, and listen to The Dr. Psych Mom Show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. Join The Dr. Psych Mom secret Facebook group for more discussion about these kinds of issues!
This blog is not intended as medical advice or diagnosis and should in no way replace consultation with a medical professional. If you try this advice and it does not work for you, you cannot sue me. This is only my opinion, based on my background, training, and experience as a therapist and person. Also, all examples involving people or clients are hypothetical amalgams, not actual people.