7. Escaping negative emotions and alcohol

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Hello darling heart and welcome to the Drink Less, Live Better podcast. This is the podcast that helps you to see that drinking

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less doesn't need to be stressful, lonely or boring. I'm your host, Sarah Williamson, and I decided to have a year alcohol

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free as a little life experiment and haven't looked back. With my experience and training I now help other women with their

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alcohol free or drink less adventures. I'm here to tell you that you can relax, connect and have fun without alcohol in your

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life. Join me here each week to find out how. If you listened to episode 6 you'd have heard me talk about how I stopped drinking

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without it feeling too difficult or miserable, and I told you some of the tools I used to get through the early days. Today

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I'd like to tell you a story about how I came to be more aware of the way I used alcohol to either mask or deny my feelings.

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Have you ever heard the acronym H. O. T? Apart from the word itself meaning stop, the acronym stands for hungry, angry, lonely,

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tired, and can be used as a mindset tool in a wide variety of situations, not least those involving eating and drinking. The

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model was originally developed to help people in recovery see when they might be vulnerable to returning to old habits. How

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do you feel right now? Can you stop for a moment and really recognize where you are emotionally? Do you feel great? Do you

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feel okay? Or do you feel not so good? If you aren't feeling your greatest, taking a moment to halt is one of the best things

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you can do for your overall mental and physical health. Here is how I used this tool when I was first alcohol free. The moments

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in my life when I was most likely to reach for a drink at home was sometime after 6 pm when the day felt like it was about

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to change gear, out of work mode and into either cooking time, family time, relaxation time was m, when I was standing in

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the kitchen thinking about cooking, it was all too easy to reach for something to eat quickly, which was generally unhealthy.

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But what I really needed at that time was a large glass of water. I made a conscious effort to switch my afternoon snacking

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habit to make sure I always had a good snack and drink at about 4 pm in the afternoon instead of waiting until I was ravenous,

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and therefore more likely to want to press the self destruct button and pour myself a glass of wine. I often mistook hunger

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for thirst and used wine as a thirst quencher. We all know that that's a ridiculous idea. And what about anger? Maybe it's

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simpler to describe anger as feeling general negative emotions. We aren't always able to think rationally when we're in a

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negative mindset. It's important to notice your feelings and try to establish why you are feeling the way you do. Will you

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feel better if you address the feeling head on? What has brought you to this feeling? Is this feeling likely to last a long

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time, or can you start to think of a positive solution now? Alcohol might temporarily numb the feeling of anger, but it certainly

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won't relieve the cause of the anger. What about loneliness? We all experience loneliness at times in our lives. Even when

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people surround us in a busy family, we may not be be actively interacting with them. What's more, with all of our modern

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technology many of us are plugged in electronically, but not connected emotionally. I used to stand gazing into the fridge

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wondering what I was looking for, and it took me a long time to come to realize that over the years I'd take to phoning my

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friends less. Before we had kids we used to speak on the phone every week or so, and somehow life had got in the way of that

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lovely practice and had been replaced by text and WhatsApp. I've reintroduced the practice of phoning my friends and feel

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much more connected and less lonely. A glass of wine won't ever fix lonely. And finally, tiredness, or perhaps it's exhaustion,

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or maybe a feeling of overwhelm. I used to get to 5 pm and think that it was now time to turn off. I didn't have a strategy

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that allowed me to happily change pace, and a glass of wine or g and t in my hand felt like a little pick me up or treat to

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see me through a task that didn't fill me with all of the joy in the world, I e cooking dinner. I looked for new ways to treat

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myself at this time. A quick 10 minute walk around the block to reinvigorate myself, a 5 minute guided meditation to calm

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myself, a few yoga stretches to remove tension from my body. These were all strategies that worked brilliantly. I kept a list

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of ideas in the back of my diary so I didn't have to think of them. I could just open the page and pick something. When you

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are already tired, it's difficult to come up with new strategies to cope, so always be prepared. A drink never did help me

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feel less tired. It just helped to mask the feeling of overwhelm. How can you start to remove the overwhelm from your life

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so you don't arrive at 5 pm feeling like a drink is the only option? Some of the emotions I've talked about today felt horrible

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when I first started to identify them in myself. I didn't want to admit that I was lonely. I've got a lovely family living

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in the same house as me, and I've got fabulous friends who are round the corner or on the end of the phone. I have a post

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it note with Holt written on it inside the cupboard where I used to keep my gin. The note is still there, and the gin has

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been replaced with alcohol free gin, fancy tonics and other delicious alcohol free drinks. I leave the note there as a little

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celebration for myself that the tool of alcohol is no longer needed to cope with any of my emotions. Designing a life you

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don't need alcohol to escape from is part of the key, and making sure I had a range of mind, body and soul nourishing tools

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to use to make that life a reality is something that has brought me joy and peace of mind over the last 18 months. I must

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make a special mention of Simone in Australia who has inspired this recording. Thank you, darling heart. Thank you for listening

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to this episode. Please listen in again next time. You can sign up to my 5 day drink less experiment and find out about working

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with me one to 1 at drink less live better dot com. It would make me happier than a Buddhist monk if you would please subscribe,

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5 star review, and comment on my podcast on whatever platform you listen. Imagine it like the tasting notes on the finest

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wine I am never going to drink. Thank you. And, PS, I believe in you.