How Drinking Alcohol Is Keeping You From Reaching Your Potential

9 Sneaky Ways Alcohol is Keeping You Stuck

By the time I reached thirty, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was time to break up with booze. I knew in my gut that drinking was keeping me stuck, but I was having a difficult time articulating precisely how I knew this. From the outside, it looked like I had it all together. I had a master’s degree, a great job, a beautiful home, and a nice car. I also had a vibrant social and dating life, I was fit, I was healthy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. At one point, I’d even been named one of the top twenty young professionals under thirty by a posh Midwestern society magazine. It certainly looked like I was thriving.

I’d also doubled down on taking care of myself. I enrolled in therapy, purchased gym and hot yoga memberships, and focused on eating well. I started seeing healers and bodyworkers and even sat with a local shaman to help get myself into physical and spiritual alignment. Spiritually, I grew curious about what was out there and started seeking answers outside my physical sight. I traded late-night reality TV binges for self-help books and spiritual texts with the most earnest intention of making my inner world match my new vision for success.

Yet with all the wonderful things happening in my life and the massive amounts of inner and outer work I was doing, I wasn’t fulfilled. It’s not that I was depressed; I just wasn’t happy. I felt stuck, and—what’s worse—I felt guilty for feeling stuck. I kept telling myself I should just be happy because I lived a privileged life compared to so many others. No matter how many times I tried to talk myself into being grateful for everything I had (which, don’t get me wrong, I was), I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t quite achieving what I was capable of.

Frankly, I was tremendously frustrated that I felt so off track. After all, I’d invested thousands of hours (and dollars) in my education only to be unsure if my career was even a fit for me. I was doing all the health, wellness, and spiritual things that were supposed to lead to a miraculous and abundant life. Yet I was broke (and in debt up to my eyeballs), single (and brokenhearted after a whirlwind romance), and nearly exhausted from implementing the new positive behaviors I’d added to my life.

Then it hit me: maybe it wasn’t about how much I could add to my life but what I could subtract. I had officially reached capacity, and it was time to start purging. Reluctantly, I looked again at the only real vice I had: drinking. You already know I wasn’t keen on the idea of going sober. I was completely blocked by the fact that I wasn’t an alcoholic and there didn’t seem to be options for me. I was also blindly attached to the romanticized relationship I’d built with booze.

I can’t tell you how many times I tried to talk myself out of sobriety as a probable solution. I was headstrong and hell-bent on figuring out a way to make my relationship with alcohol work. Time after time, I ran the math to see if I could find a balance between my life and alcohol, and time after time, the answer was the same: if I sincerely wanted to live my best life, booze had to go.

Atomic Habits author James Clear said it best: “The ultimate form of optimization is elimination. Nothing is more effective than removing the ineffective.” No matter how much I tried to fight it, the most ineffective aspect of my life was my relationship with alcohol. Despite my biggest fears about pursuing a life of sobriety, I sensed intuitively that removing alcohol from my life was going to be the catalyst for something miraculous . . . and I was right.

If you’ve ever felt the same, let’s get clear about how, precisely, alcohol has been dulling your life, diluting your potential, and ultimately keeping you stuck.

Alcohol Steals Time and Energy

On the most basic level, it’s easy enough to understand how your relationship with alcohol has robbed you of the time and energy you need to be your best self. If you were to do a quick calculation of how many hours, on average, you spend preparing for boozy events, drinking, and recovering from drinking alone, you’d likely have a humbling idea of just how much of your life you’ve devoted to alcohol.

Reviewing your history is not an invitation to beat yourself up. I do not believe in the concept of lost time. Rather, I believe in divine timing, and I trust that every opportunity to change paths comes to us at precisely the right time. You were led to explore this lifestyle at this exact time because the time is right for you. Once you have stepped onto the right path (the path of your potential), time will expand in your favor and any perceived lost time will become entirely insignificant.

Alcohol Clouds Clarity

In order to become your fullest expression of human potential, you must first have the space to discern what that version of you looks like. Drinking alcohol dilutes clarity, not only in the moment but also longer term. When you drink on a frequent basis, you muffle the connection to your Inner Guide, which is your source of clarity and creativity. Without this connection, you end up following dreams and desires that are not actually your own.

If you’ve felt the subtle sense that you are on the wrong path but can’t quite figure out what the right path looks like, you need clarity, and the fastest way to get it is to create a clear channel of communication with your Inner Guide. Once my private coaching clients finally get alcohol out of the picture, they always marvel at how unclearly they had seen things as a drinkers. Their common sentiment is something like this: I didn’t know how much I couldn’t see, but now that I see it, I can’t unsee it.

Alcohol Fuels Self-Doubt

Alcohol does a doozy on your inner compass. While drinking muffles the voice of your Inner Guide, it simultaneously amplifies the voice of your Inner Critic. Your Inner Critic is the voice of skepticism, judgment, lack, and fear. When you drink, you give this voice a microphone to amplify its potency. You’ve surely felt this self-doubt and negativity during an active hangover (some call it hangxiety), but you’ve failed to recognize that regular drinking also increases the power of your Inner Critic over time.

When the voice of the Inner Critic is strong, you are less likely to dream big and take inspired action. Your Inner Critic is constantly deterring you from aiming for your potential in sneaky and subtle ways. If you’ve ever talked yourself out of pursuing a desire (no matter how logical the reasoning), it is a sure sign your Inner Critic is at work.

Alcohol Reduces Motivation

Even if you identify as a go-getter, achieving your truest potential will still require an entirely new level of motivation. Of course you’ve experienced the lackluster feeling you get the day after drinking, when a hangover is in full effect. However, it’s unlikely that you are aware of the subtle fog that resides for days after you drink. This residual effect can cause you to move more slowly, think slightly more negatively, and lack the motivation to get things done at your full capacity. Because you are a go-getter, this can be difficult to spot, as you are most likely moving and thinking faster than those around you. Yet it’s probable that you’re operating at only a fraction of the capacity that you’re capable of. Imagine what you could do if you were always operating at maximum motivation, efficiency, and inspiration. You’d be unstoppable.

Alcohol Alters Your Brain and Body

I was always under the impression that the physical effects of alcohol dissipated around the time my hangover wore off. This was an incredibly naive assumption. Alcohol is ethanol. Ethanol is a toxin. Toxins wreak havoc on the body in ways that are beyond our physical sight and immediate recognition.

In case you missed the memo from junior high health class: alcohol screws you up on the cellular level. It is a depressant that impairs the functions of all your vital organs. Over time, alcohol degrades your cognitive capacity, interferes with digestion, suppresses your immune system, decreases your sex drive, and increases the intensity of anxiety and depression. These negative consequences aren’t just for those who drink heavily. Nope, in fact, multiple health organizations (such as the World Health Organization and the U.S. Department of Agriculture) are tightening up on their prior recommendations when it comes to consuming alcohol.

In an August 2022 episode of his eponymous podcast titled “What Alcohol Does to Your Body, Brain and Health,” neuroscientist and Stanford professor Andrew Huberman reviews the findings of several reputable academic studies about the effects of alcohol. They all corroborate the same, unavoidable truth: although ethanol is a form of alcohol that is technically fit for human consumption, it is still toxic. Alcohol produces substantial stress and damage to cells, and it is indiscriminate as to which cells it damages and kills.

In other words, even if you drink in moderation—an amount that no one can seem to agree upon—you are still putting your body at risk because you are ingesting poison that disrupts your neural circuits and all the vital organs in your body. Even if you drink in small amounts, the enzyme that breaks down alcohol is forced to work at its maximum capacity.

Yet because most of the negative consequences of drinking increase chronically over time, it’s easy to let them go unnoticed. These are not glaring, bold consequences that we see immediately after drinking. It’s easy enough to chalk most chronic symptoms of alcohol use up to age or other preexisting health factors. Over time, we become so used to feeling blah that we may not even realize we’re not operating at optimum capacity.

It’s also important to note that the negative consequences of alcohol don’t just disappear once you’re no longer buzzed, drunk, or hung over. Because alcohol is a toxin, it continues to interfere with the overall optimal functions of your body for a disturbing amount of time. I like to explain it like this: Think of your body as a funnel. The top of the funnel is broad, able to hold a lot of fluid. The bottom of the funnel is tiny, like a hairpin. Most of us—even if only consuming moderately and on occasion—are refilling the top of the funnel before the funnel can empty. In other words, if you drink consistently, even in moderation, there is always a reserve. As long as there is a reserve, you will experience subtle, negative residual effects that keep you from performing at your best.

Because alcohol also creates chemical and mineral deficiencies in the body, it can take many months, if not years, for the body to recalibrate after alcohol is no longer being consumed. The unfortunate reality I see in many people trying to change their relationship with alcohol is that they don’t give themselves a long enough period of abstinence to see any true results. Let’s return to the funnel analogy: If you keep refilling the funnel—even if only in small quantities—before it’s allowed to empty, you’ll never experience the true benefits of being alcohol-free. Each time you think, Just one won’t hurt, remember that you are refilling the funnel and thus prolonging your ability to achieve homeostasis.

The positive physical effects of removing alcohol range from subtle—including better sleep, clearer skin, and more energy—to more profound healing of big-picture health concerns. I loved the physical energy and resiliency I gained from sobriety. After I gave up drinking, fitness became a fast replacement for partying because I suddenly had more energy and motivation to test myself physically. Further, my body recovered much more quickly, allowing me to spend more time in the gym exploring my new livelihood.

Keep in mind that each body processes alcohol differently. The length of time it will take you to fully realize the physical benefits of sobriety will rely greatly on your unique body composition, how often and how much you drank, your lifestyle, and any underlying health conditions. If you don’t see some physical improvement after ninety days to six months, you might consider working with a health professional who specializes in helping those living an alcohol-free lifestyle.

Alcohol Lowers Your Energetic Vibration

I was introduced to the concept of energetics when I started getting serious about my spiritual practice. From a metaphysical perspective, everything has energy. This energy is omnipresent yet invisible to the naked eye. For this reason, the study of energetic vibration and frequency is considered rather esoteric, although it is widely accepted in alternative medicine and spiritual traditions.

For example, the Eastern wellness practices of Reiki or acupuncture focus on attuning the body’s energetic frequency. Other energetic concepts include the study of the body’s aura and chakra system. From a spiritual perspective, meditation and breathwork practices, such as Kundalini, focus on cultivating positive energy in the body. You may have even been introduced to the practice of using crystals or sage or palo santo to clear the energy of a place or person.

The growing popularity of mystical studies on social media has given rise to the use of such expressions as “high vibe” and “low vibe” to describe the energetic frequency of specific people, practices, environments, or experiences. You may have experienced people or environments that cause you to feel energetically drained or stimulated for no specific reason.

You are a vibrational being in a vibrational universe. Everything you see has an energetic vibrational quality, but you’ve become so good at interpreting vibrations that you hardly realize you’re doing it. Most people are utterly unaware that they are, in fact, vibrational beings, highly sensitive to the vibrational experiences around them.

Your own energetic vibration is dictated by your thoughts, actions, feelings, and interactions. In this sense, you have so much more control over your energetic vibration than you realize. Yet we live in a society that encourages us to cheat our way to the feelings we desire. We’re taught to fill our voids rather than do the inner work required to achieve our desired emotional states. The most socially acceptable void filler is alcohol.

Alcohol is a depressant. Drinking literally depletes your physical energy, slows you down cognitively, and takes you out of energetic alignment. Of course we can still function with a lowered energetic vibration, but this is not the optimal state. Unfortunately, most of us have become so accustomed to vibrating at a lower energetic frequency, we are unaware of it.

Alcohol Stunts Emotional Growth

Most people use alcohol as an emotional crutch in areas of their lives where they don’t feel fully competent to cope. Even if you consider yourself a social drinker, you are most likely still using alcohol to subdue feelings of emotional discomfort, such as anxiety, self-doubt, or overstimulation. In this sense, we use alcohol to cheat our way through situations where we lack emotional skills. When we drink to bypass our emotional experience, we get the illusion that we are mastering a skill when we’re just cheating.

Think about it; if you were actually becoming more confident through drinking, eventually you wouldn’t need drinking to exude confidence at all. Likewise, if alcohol were actually helping you become less stressed, your stressors would be fully under control the day after you imbibe. In my experience, it’s much more likely that you spend the day after drinking wallowing in self-judgment and fighting to subdue amplified anxiety.

Drinking is like a life jacket for your emotions; it keeps you floating on the surface of your emotional experiences under the illusion that you know how to swim. But when you float on the surface, you miss the exhilarating opportunity to experience the true depths of life. Yes, this may keep you from having to grapple with negative emotions, but rest assured, it also blocks you from fully experiencing positive emotions.

Further, when we numb through negative emotions rather than experiencing them, they become stagnant in the body. Unresolved and unfelt emotions stored in the body can turn into depression and disease. Drinking as a coping mechanism also reinforces a negative, subconscious story that you are not capable of handling these emotions on your own.

Failing to process negative emotions keeps us stuck in negativity. You are deserving of happiness and true relief. The fastest way to get there is to consciously commit to removing any barriers you have to happiness. If you are harboring ages of repressed trauma, anger, sadness, worry, or anxiety, you are assuredly blocking your route to happiness.

Sobriety is an opportunity to show up fully for the emotional life experiences available to you and embrace your competence to do so. This will require some bravery, tenacity, and humility on your part. Remember that you have been cheating at the emotional game for at least as long as you have been drinking. When you begin to operate without the false support of alcohol, there will certainly be uncomfortable and uncertain moments. Bearing through these moments can be some of your biggest teachers and experiences of triumph. I aim to prepare you for these challenges in the coming chapters.

The world is your practice field. Each time you are faced with a social or emotional experience where you might have drunk before, you are reprogramming your mind by choosing to show up. Each time you show up, you take a stand for your self-worth by sending the message that you are indeed capable of withstanding all life’s circumstances.

Trust that you would not have been given the ability to experience emotions from sadness and heartbreak to bliss and joy if you were not meant to. You are more emotionally resilient and capable than you give yourself credit for. You have an unlimited capacity to feel your way through all emotional experiences that come your way, even those that seem insurmountable. In fact, you are not only capable but undeniably worthy of experiencing the full spectrum of human emotions available to you. From the depths of extreme sorrow and grief to the highs of unfettered joy and happiness, these emotional experiences are your birthright. The fullness at which you can experience life is directly related to the level at which you are willing to experience your emotions. Numbing of any kind pulls us out of the emotional experience, disabling us from living life in its fullest form.

Alcohol Erodes Authenticity

As drinkers, we’re all presenting dulled-down versions of ourselves. In his book Alcohol Explained, my friend William Porter has a brilliant line: “The fact is that whoever you are as a drinker, it is not the real you. It is a poor quality you.” As I look back on who I was as a drinker, this blunt analysis could not be truer. Although I thought that alcohol brought out a more engaging, carefree version of me, all it did was dilute my brilliance. I was not being my authentic self as a drinker. Hell, I’d put so much effort into becoming a cooler, more socially acceptable version of myself that I hardly knew who my authentic self was, and this started to spill over into my daily interactions. The self I presented was a cheap facsimile of me. It was a hologram of who I thought the world wanted me to be in order to be seen as fun and popular.

You are doing yourself and the rest of the world a tremendous disservice each time you choose to show up as the dull, diluted version of yourself. You are hiding the most unique, honest, and quirky parts of yourself that make you human and incredibly endearing. You are robbing the people around you of experiencing your humanness. True connection is built around humanity. It may feel like alcohol is bringing you closer to people, but it’s actually keeping you at a distance from them.

Alcohol Keeps You Stuck in “Good Enough”

Alcohol has caused you to settle for mediocre, good-enough life circumstances when you are capable of so much more. Each day, you have a choice to take a stand for your potential or take a stand for your complacency. No matter why, how often, or how much you drink, you are beginning to understand that drinking is ultimately a subconscious acceptance of a life dulled by booze.

You are worthy of more than good enough. Do not, for one more moment, let yourself be seduced by the idea that you should be happy with what you have. Yes, you can be grateful for what you have, but if your current life status is not a reflection of your truest potential, please do not force yourself into complacency.

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As you can see, the consequences of drinking alcohol - yes, even in moderation - extend far beyond the haze of a hangover. Alcohol impacts you intellectually, physically, emotionally, and spiritually in ways that are nearly imperceptible…until you take a step back. 

Want to dive deeper? This post is an excerpt from my bestselling book, Unbottled Potential. I’ve also shared a few resources down below.