22. Grey Area Drinker - This was me, is it you?

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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 in 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 be truly joyful without alcohol in your life. Join

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me here each week to find out how. Today I'd like to tell you a story about how I found myself in the place known as Grey

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Area Drinking. Now, I'm not really one for a label, a title or a neat little box, and if you'd have tried to put that label

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on me while I was still drinking I'd have dismissed you straight away either politely or perhaps not. The passing of time

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is a wonderful thing, however, and I look back and can now see clearly see that I was, for a very long time, a grey area drinker.

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A grey area drinker is someone who falls into the bracket between never drinking and severe alcohol misuse. Society tends

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to view problematic drinking in black and white terms. You're an alcoholic and you need to be fixed, or you're not an alcoholic

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and are therefore okay. Well, I think it's more nuanced than that. Jolene Park, who I trained with, has an excellent TED Talk

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on the subject of grey area drinking. She sees it as the space between the extremes of rock bottom drinking and every now

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and again drinking. A grey area drinker could be consuming a couple of glasses of wine each evening or could be someone who

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binge drinks at the weekend, or someone who can abstain for a month at a time to prove they haven't got a problem. I was capable

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of any of those behaviors, and looking back I fitted the description of a grey area drinker very neatly. I was never physically

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dependent on alcohol, but I used it to help me to alter my state of mind into relaxation on a regular basis. This can be a

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really confusing place to be when you first start to see alcohol for what it is. I'd say, but I'm not doing anyone any harm.

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I'm sinking a couple of glasses of wine on the sofa, and then I'm going to bed. What's the problem with that? Ah, past Sarah,

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let me tell you the ways. But past Sarah wouldn't have listened to a word future Sarah had to say on the subject because she

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wasn't ready. In the past, I moved up and down the grayscale, different ages, different friendship groups, different jobs,

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different circumstances, different seasons, and different living arrangements all led to different drinking patterns, and

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when I say different, I mean constant. Apart from the periods in my life where I was pregnant or breastfeeding, I didn't ever

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choose to have a really extended time away from alcohol. What I came to realize was that the more I moved up and down the

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grayscale, the more or less colorful other areas in my life became. If my joy was a rainbow, the vibrancy of that rainbow

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either faded or shone brightly depending on how much I was drinking. I stopped myself from making a change around my drinking

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for a long time as I didn't want anyone to define me as an alcoholic. The movies would have you believe that the end of your

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drinking career needs to be very dramatic with a family intervention and a massive rock bottom. But what if you choose for

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your drinking days to end with a quiet fizzle out instead of a big firework or drama? That's how it was for me. My grey area

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drinking changed shades of grey over a couple of years. At my worst I was, well, let's perhaps save that for another episode,

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but it wasn't fabulous. And by the time I was ready to try my alcohol free life experiment, I was moderating my drinking and

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never drinking more than 2 drinks in one time. However, the shades of grey no longer felt good, and I wanted a full on Technicolour

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rainbow, and I knew that to get one I had to do away with the other. So I did. Those grey clouds parted, and 1 by 1 all the

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other areas in my life that had, up until then, been a bit less than joyful, for started to shine brighter. Would you like

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to lessen the grey and dial up the rainbow in your life? If so, be honest with yourself, make a solid plan, and find some

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support if you need it. I'll be there cheering you on the whole way. Thank you for listening to this episode. Please listen

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in again next time. You can sign up to my 5 day drink less experiment and find out about working with me one to 1 at drink

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less live better dot com. I'd love it if you could 5 star rate and review this podcast. It would make me as happy as Larry

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if you did. Who's Larry? Anyone know? If you do, drop me a message and tell me. Thank you. And, PS, I believe in you.