3 Ways Drinking Lowers Your Tolerance for Feeling Good
…and what to do about it
I haven’t had a sip of alcohol in 1,879 days. That’s roughly 5 years and 2 months. My decision to abstain from alcohol wasn’t due to a rock bottom or dependency. No, by all accounts, I was classified as a “normal” social drinker. My relationship with alcohol was left to the weekends, where I’d hit up happy hours, brunches and nights out on the town just as every other person my age seemed to be doing.
My decision to go alcohol-free was based on something else entirely - a decision that appeared to be rather novel 5 years ago: I wanted to feel good. Not just physically, but mentally. I wanted to feel vibrant, happy, and alive. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself that I was all of those things as a drinker, the harsh reality is that I constantly felt like there was a tiny cloud of micro-doom floating over my head. Although I wasn’t depressed, I also wasn’t happy. After years of implementing best practices from books on self-help, personal development and spirituality with limited results, I determined that perhaps my ability to feel good wasn’t about doing more, but rather, about doing less…and of one thing specifically: Drinking alcohol.
Initially, I tried to simply cut back on alcohol, making attempts at moderation that never really worked out in my favor. More often than not, “just a few” would turn into “a few too many” and the sense of existential doom would resume.
Finally, in January of 2017, I made the decision to take a prolonged break from alcohol. That break produced profound breakthroughs which eventually paved the way for a full-on (albeit unintentional) breakup. I haven’t looked back since. Why? It’s because my abstinence in combination with the personal growth and spirituality work I was already doing created a level of good-feeling in my life that was so magnificent, the appeal of alcohol became completely nonexistent. In other words: It felt good to feel good and I was not interested in compromising that miraculous good feeling.
As I gained more space from alcohol, I began to study the science, psychology, and metaphysics of why we drink and how alcohol affects us (I now run a coaching business for high-achieving women interested in practicing elective sobriety, by the way). My studies in addition to my observations in my own life and as a coach were amazing. The more I dissected our relationships with alcohol, it became clear that drinking actually lowers our tolerance for feeling good. Here’s how:
Alcohol is a depressant. You surely got the “alcohol is bad for you” lecture in Junior High…I’m not here to lecture you. However, I will remind you that alcohol depresses your central nervous system, therefore making all of your feelings less easily accessible. Typically, we think of alcohol as something we use to numb the intensity of negative emotions. However, as researcher and author Brené Brown says, “We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.” The important factor to note here is that this numbing effect isn’t null-and-void after your hangover subsides. Nope. Emotionally, alcohol is like a hazy veil, subtly sticking around, giving you a slightly dull effect for days. And, if you’re like me, by the time that hazy effect had begun to wear off, another weekend had already rolled back around, making the dull-feeling rather everpresent.
Drinking lowers our joy threshold. Frequent drinkers often operate from a low-level state of apathy or melancholy….unfortunately, most people don’t realize this until alcohol is out of the picture. After going sober, many people experience the phenomena known as the “pink cloud” or a sudden, inexplicable experience of euphoria. My client Laura described it like this, “There are moments, more often than not, where I’m consumed with laughter. It’s like this part of my brain was anesthetized and now I’m experiencing joy again.”
Alcohol reinforces negative self-worth stories. No one is going to like what I’m about to share, but most individuals who drink on a frequent basis are subconsciously holding on to a negative self-worth story. Consider for a moment the reasons you drink. If you’re like most people it’s to be more fun, relaxed, or outgoing. Or you might find yourself drinking as a way to feel less stressed, anxious, or awkward. Either way, this more or less motivation indicates that, on some level, we do not feel enough on our own. Therefore, we use alcohol as a shortcut to reach various emotional states we feel incompetent to reach on our own. In other words, the subliminal message you send yourself is some version of “you’re not enough.” People who want to feel good certainly won’t achieve it if they are constantly falling victim to a low self-worth story.
The problem is, on some level, we don’t know how to truly feel good. Maybe, on some level, we don’t actually believe we’re worthy of feeling good. Here are some common characteristics of individuals I’ve worked with who demonstrate they’ve lowered their tolerance for feeling good; see if any of these apply to you:
You’re a people pleaser. You frequently put others’ needs before your own.
You identify as an empath. For someone who experiences emotions deeply, any emotional extreme can feel overwhelming, even positive emotions.
You catastrophize. You’re always picking things apart, criticizing or waiting for the other shoe to drop.
You feel embarrassed or skeptical to act “too excited”. You restrain your display of happiness for the fear of looking foolish or having the rug pulled out from under you.
You deflect compliments. If someone compliments you, you quickly dismiss the kind words by belittling yourself or shifting the compliment.
If any of those sound like you, I feel you. I spent most of my life unwittingly blocking good feelings from my life because I didn’t feel worthy of having or capable of experiencing joy. So you may be wondering…what does drinking alcohol have to do with any of this? Well, alcohol is the most socially acceptable tool we have for subtly numbing our emotions. So, if you’re subconsciously feeling unable to tolerate feeling good, what better way to minimize your ability to do so than by imbibing in the most socially acceptable emotional anesthetic out there?
Now that you’ve got the picture, here are three steps you can take to increase your tolerance for feeling good:
Stop drinking. Surely you saw this one coming. Notice I didn’t say “cut back,” I said, “stop.” Here’s the deal, you don’t have to stop drinking forever, but if you truly want to experience the euphoric effects of feeling good, you need to allow alcohol to cycle out of your nervous system and allow your system to recalibrate. This is not a quick process and, because every body is different, making it difficult to determine when your nervous system might get back to homeostasis. So, if you attempt moderation or short breaks before drinking again, it’s likely you’ve never experienced the true effects of being fully in your feelings. My recommendation is to commit to a 90-day break before reevaluating.
Do the work. In the self-help world, the process of working on yourself is known as “doing the work.” Although there is no set curriculum for “the work” it might involve processes such as seeking therapeutic support, learning emotional regulation, engaging in personal inquiry, and deepening your spiritual connection. Although you’re bound to feel profound effects from abstinence alone, adding in self-work of some sort will accelerate the process of tuning in with your emotions.
Increase your capacity for feeling good. Most people don’t realize that their capacity for feeling good has been depleted. Like a pair of jeans that’s been shrunk in the dryer, we need to slowly work on stretching out your capacity to feel good. As you make tiny moves to create more joy in your life, you’ll notice that your overall experience of joy increases, too. One way you can do this is to become aware of the micro-delights that happen in your day. I like to call these delights “glimmers.” Glimmers are tiny moments that generate pleasure and delight when recognized. Glimmers could be something as simple as appreciating the beauty of nature or noticing that a stranger has smiled at you. Glimmers are the first sip of a perfect cup of coffee or the way the sunshine hits your face. They are small moments that add up to good feelings. Tracking glimmers is similar to a traditional gratitude practice, but taken to the micro-level. I recommend you take this exercise seriously and create a note in your phone’s app to track glimmers for just one week. Do this and then reevaluate how you feel.
You deserve to feel good. Not some of the time, but all of the time. Although I don’t believe alcohol is bad or wrong, I do know that it inhibits our ability to truly feel good. Sure, drinking might feel good for a few hours, but the result is always a depleted emotional system (and frequently lethargy and low-level anxiety). I don’t know about you, but this is not my definition of feeling good. In my five years of being a non-drinker, I can say that what I’ve gained has far outweighed any initial perceived loss. I know now that the things I feared losing most by becoming alcohol-free were never truly mine anyway.
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Want to learn more about what you stand to gain by exploring an alcohol-free lifestyle…take my free quiz here. Also, I’d love to connect with you. You can find me over on Instagram @amandakuda.