Addiction Unlimited Podcast

About to give up, reach for a drink, or follow the same old pattern? Angela shares how a split-second choice can change your direction—and why the victory starts before you know the outcome.

How do you know if you actually have a drinking problem?

You make rules about when you’ll drink. You negotiate how many you’re going to have. You promise yourself tonight will be different. You replay last night trying to figure out exactly what happened. You take breaks, make new rules, Google questions, take quizzes, compare yourself to other people—and somehow alcohol keeps requiring more and more of your attention.

At some point, that’s worth looking at.

In this episode of Addiction Unlimited, we’re getting away from arbitrary drinking counts and labels and looking at something far more revealing: your actual relationship with alcohol.

In this episode, we’re getting away from labels and arbitrary drinking counts and looking at something far more useful: your actual relationship with alcohol.

And after all the research, analyzing and comparing—you already have enough information—you just have to be willing to do something with it.

Because sometimes the amount of work you’re doing to prove alcohol isn’t a problem tells you more than another quiz ever will.

You don’t have to decide what to call yourself today. You don’t need the perfect label or one more piece of evidence. You can simply acknowledge that your relationship with alcohol isn’t working anymore—and let that be enough truth to take the next step.

Links mentioned in this episode: 

Book A Call Here: addictionunlimited.com/call

Sober Society Membership: addictionunlimited.com/membership

Related Episode:  Why Am I An Alcoholic – the Bio-Psycho-Social Truth About Addiction

Follow me on Instagram: @addictionunlimited

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/addictionunlimited

Have you had X number of consequences? Check seven boxes and congratulations, here’s your label. That’s not how I look at this. And I never tell people.

Angela (01:52.102)

If I’m trying to fix a major problem in my life, I just let’s get on with it. I don’t particularly care what we call it. I care about how I’m fucking up and what I need to do to stop fucking up. I also understand that not everybody feels that way. So when somebody says to me, I don’t know if I’m an alcoholic, I think maybe I just drink too much sometimes. The first thing I notice is that they’re asking the question.

at all because that tells me something has shifted.

Angela (03:02.24)

Something about this doesn’t feel right anymore. And that’s usually when we start asking the question. Then here’s what happens next.

Almost immediately after someone tells me they’re wondering if they have a drinking problem, they start giving me all the reasons they don’t. I don’t drink every day. I’ve never had a DUI, I don’t drink in the morning, I have a good job, my kids are taken care of, I don’t hide bottles, I can go days without drinking. And I’m just listening. Because here’s the thing: if an idea is completely preposterous to you.

You don’t have to build a defense against it. If somebody said to me, Angela, I think you might secretly be a six foot four professional basketball player. I’m not gonna spend the next three hours Googling the average height of WNBA players and gathering evidence to prove I’m not, right? I’m gonna say that’s absurd. And then I’m gonna move on with my life. When something happens,

Clearly doesn’t apply to us. We don’t usually have to convince ourselves that it doesn’t apply. So when you’ve built an entire defense around why you’re definitely not an alcoholic, I’m interested in why you need the defense in the first place. And I think part of the reason people fight this so hard is because they’re not only fighting a conclusion about alcohol.

Angela (05:07.69)

To a lot of people, the word alcoholic means, I’m not even really sure, weak, I guess, broken, irresponsible, a bad parent, a bad partner, a failure, somebody who can’t get their shit together. So sometimes when you’re fighting the possibility that you’re an alcoholic, you’re not even protecting alcohol. You’re protecting your identity. You’re saying

I’m successful, I’m responsible, I’m a good person, I take care of my family. I’m not that. And somewhere along the way, you’ve decided that being a person with an alcohol problem is incompatible with all those other things. I don’t see it that way at all. I wear the label alcoholic as a badge of honor.

Angela (06:06.112)

Even when I was drinking, I knew I was an alcoholic. There was nothing normal about how I drank.

But I lived in Los Angeles for many, many years. There were sober people everywhere, successful people, powerful people, celebrities. I had plenty of evidence around me that being sober didn’t mean your life was over, and being an alcoholic didn’t mean you were a loser, right? So I wore my alcoholism as a badge of honor.

Angela (07:12.556)

So I didn’t have to deal with any of it. That’s why I’m not particularly interested in convincing anyone to use the word alcoholic. I love the label. You don’t have to. The label isn’t the fucking point, right? The point is what is actually happening in your life, and are you willing to tell yourself the truth about it? Because I think one of the reasons people stay.

Angela (08:20.962)

But they don’t tell me nearly as much as people think they do. I want to know about your relationship with alcohol. How much mental real estate is it taking up? How much of your time is spent thinking about drinking, planning drinking, actually drinking, or recovering from drinking? Because I had three stages of life. I was thinking about it, doing it, or recovering from it. There wasn’t much room for anything else.

And that’s what I want you to look at in your own life, because maybe you don’t drink every day, but you’re thinking about it every day. Maybe you’re making rules about when you can drink, breaking the rules, creating new rules, counting drinks, checking how much wine is left before people come over, wondering whether you need another bottle just in case.

Angela (09:40.748)

And now you’re conducting a forensic investigation into Friday night while simultaneously negotiating the terms of Saturday night. Look at how much work that takes.

Angela (10:23.052)

Not whether somebody on the internet says six drinks makes you an alcoholic and five doesn’t. Look at how much of your life revolves around managing alcohol.

And if you want an interesting comparison, watch somebody who genuinely has an uncomplicated relationship with alcohol. These fucking weirdos don’t think about it at all. They’re not obsessing about whether or not they’re gonna drink tonight. They’re not freaking out about dinner with friends because they don’t know what they’re gonna drink. They’re not looking at the restaurant menu three days in advance to make sure they have mocktails. They simply don’t care.

What’s in their glass? If somebody offers them a drink and they don’t want one, they say, no thanks, and that’s it.

No internal crisis, no elaborate explanation, no concern about whether everybody is gonna think they’re weird. They don’t want to drink, so they don’t have one.

Angela (11:55.894)

They go camping to actually camp and enjoy their friends and family, not as an excuse to sit and drink in a different location. Alcohol has no gravitational pull for them. It doesn’t require management because it simply isn’t that important.

Angela (12:56.854)

Angela (13:07.98)

faster than feeling like somebody’s telling me what to do.

So if your spouse gives you a little shit about how much you drink, it doesn’t surprise me at all that you would go, okay, bitch, watch this, and quit for months, even. Because we are defiant and rebellious and we’re control freaks. So if you tell me in some way that you’re paying attention to my drinking, which means you’re trying to control how I’m drinking, of course I’m gonna do something major to prove you wrong. Honestly.

A decent amount of my resolve in sobriety came from spite because it was me against alcohol and I wasn’t fucking losing. Period.

Angela (14:24.586)

So, yes, you may absolutely be able to decide not to pick up the first drink for thirty days or sixty days or however many days, but that’s not the only kind of control.

Angela (15:11.17)

Angela (15:21.868)

But when you put that first drink to your lips, do you know with certainty how the night’s gonna end? Or are you just crossing your fingers? Because those are two very different things. Are you having one drink? Or are you having a drink and hoping everything goes okay? Because hope is not control. Maybe tonight you have two and go home. Maybe tonight you have six.

Maybe you’re home by 10, maybe it’s two in the morning. Maybe you remember everything, maybe there are fuzzy parts. Maybe you’re perfectly pleasant all night long. Maybe you get a little too loud and develop a little attitude with somebody you secretly don’t like. Maybe you get home, wash your makeup off, get everything ready for tomorrow, get to bed, and make your workout in the morning. Or maybe

You wake up with a headache, cancel everything you planned, and spend half the day trying to piece together the night before while guilt and anxiety eat you alive. The question isn’t whether the worst case scenario happens every time. The question is whether you know which version you’re getting before you take that first drink.

Angela (17:18.786)

I only drink a couple times a month. Okay. What happens those couple times a month? You could drink once a year. And if every time you take that first drink, you have no idea whether you’re gonna have two or 12, whether you’re home at 10 or 2, whether you remember the whole night or wake up wondering what the fuck happened, that’s worth paying attention to. Not quantity, predictability. And while you’re looking at that.

Stop using other people’s drinking to answer questions about yours. I hear this stuff all the time. My husband drinks way more than I do. My sister drinks every night. My friend gets way drunker than me. At least I’ve never blacked out. Okay. I was a raging alcoholic. I didn’t black out either. You can count on one hand the number of times I blacked out in 15 years of daily drinking.

I didn’t drink alone. I didn’t drink in the morning. And it took me 14 years to get a DUI. If I had picked any one of those arbitrary behaviors as the offensive

Angela (19:03.798)

It’s really none of your business. Your business is your drinking problem.

My mom doesn’t drink at all. Oddly, that had no impact on how much I drank, right? So stop looking sideways and just look at yourself.

Angela (20:04.856)

You don’t like? Do you stop or do you keep searching? Because last week we talked about resistance.

Angela (20:52.908)

looks like problem solving, but it’s really procrastination dressed up as problem solving. Because think about it, if somebody finally looked at you and said, with everything you’ve told me,

If somebody finally looked at everything you’ve told them and said, nope, you’re fine. You absolutely do not have a drinking problem, would you believe them? I don’t think you would. Because somewhere underneath all the noise, you already know the truth. Even if you’re a master of denial, you know when something isn’t right. That’s why you’re Googling it in the first place.

Angela (22:09.304)

Angela (22:40.588)

Angela (23:09.41)

You’re already exhausted. You’re working and parenting and running a household and trying to exercise and pay bills and managing relationships. You’re taking care of everybody. You already need an extra three hours in every day. And now the thing you’ve been using because you’re overwhelmed is apparently another fucking problem you have to solve. Of course, your brain wants to keep researching. Your brain is like, well, maybe.

We should make absolutely certain first. Let’s take another quiz. But there’s also a problem with the belief that recovery is.

Angela (24:30.484)

We talk about recovery like it’s this enormous additional expense, another thing requiring time and money and energy and attention and inconvenience. But we’re making a huge error in that calculation. We’re treating drinking like it’s free. It’s not. Think about what you’re already spending to maintain your relationship with alcohol, not just money, although God knows we’re spending that.

But think about your time. The evenings that disappear, the mornings you lose because you don’t feel good, the workouts you skip, the hours of anxiety replaying what you said.

The emotional energy it takes to negotiate with yourself about whether or not you’re drinking tonight, or how much you’re gonna have, or whether you’ve been drinking too much, or whether you need to take a break, whether you have a problem, whether you need to quit. Think about how much of your life is already being consumed by this thing you’re telling yourself you don’t have time to address. You’re already paying.

Angela (26:06.518)

I did my recovery when I was tired because I drank when I was tired. I did my recovery when I had a bad day because I drank when I had a bad day. I drank when I didn’t feel good. I went to the liquor store or the bar when the weather was bad. So when it was time to recover, I couldn’t suddenly decide that being tired or having a bad day or the weather being shitty meant I couldn’t show up.

Angela (26:53.814)

We’ll be hungover. We’ll miss the workout. We’ll be impatient with our kids. We’ll lose an entire day. We’ll tolerate anxiety and guilt and embarrassment and making apologies. Then recovery asks us to be inconvenienced. And suddenly we’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s not get crazy. I don’t have time for all that. But here’s what I need you to understand: doing nothing isn’t the free option.

Angela (27:54.142)

So let’s go back to the question we started with because I don’t want you to get to the end of this episode and think I never actually answered it. How do I know if I actually have a drinking problem? I’m not gonna tell you it’s because you drink four nights a week instead of three. I’m not gonna give you a number of drinks or tell you which consequences officially qualify you. I’m gonna tell you to look at the relationship.

First, how much mental real estate is alcohol taking up? How often are you thinking about it, planning it, negotiating with yourself about it, doing it, or recovering from it? If alcohol requires that much management, if you are constantly creating rules around it, worrying about it, thinking about whether there’s enough, promising yourself you’ll do something different next time, that’s a clue.

Second, what happens to your control after the first drink? Not whether you can quit for a week or do dry January, but when you have that first drink, can you reliably predict what’s going to happen? Do you know you’re having two and going home at 10? Or are you hoping you’ll have two and go home at 10? Because hope is not control.

Angela (29:39.064)

If you’re working that hard to prove alcohol isn’t a problem, I want you to ask yourself why you need such a strong defense for it in the first place.

And fourth, what is alcohol costing you? Not just catastrophes. I don’t care whether you’ve lost your house, your marriage, or your job. What is it costing you today? Your mornings, your energy, your workouts, your patience, your presence in your family, your confidence in yourself, your emotional growth, hours of your life spent recovering, days spent feeling anxious and guilty about the things you said or did. You don’t need a catastrophic rock bottom.

before the cost counts.

Angela (30:54.01)

People who have an uncomplicated relationship with alcohol don’t spend this much time trying to figure out whether their relationship with alcohol is complicated.

Angela (31:47.138)

You have enough information to stop dismissing what you’re seeing.

Angela (32:24.022)

Start listening to people. And I mean actually listen. Don’t walk into the room and immediately start scanning for all the reasons you’re different. Don’t look at what they’re wearing, what they do for a living, whether they drank more than you or less than you, or whether their story looks exactly like yours. Listen to how people think. Listen to the rules they made, the negotiations they had with themselves. Listen to the guilt.

Listen to how much space alcohol took up in their lives. Listen to what happened inside their brain after that first drink. Because that’s where you’re going to hear someone who is successful and accomplished and married and raising kids and running a company and doing all the things. And suddenly you’re going to think, fuck, she thinks exactly like I do. That’s what you need. Perspective.

Angela (33:49.824)

with real people having real conversations about sobriety and life, the feelings, relationships, triggers, growth, all that shit that happens when you stop using alcohol as the answer to everything. Just get out of isolation and start hearing from people who understand the conversation happening in your head. And if you want to join me, you can find sober society, addictionunlimited dot com forward slash membership.

That link is also in the show notes, addictionunlimited.com forward slash membership. And whether you join us or you find another sober community that feels right for you, I want to leave you with this.

Angela (35:05.184)

Angela (35:33.12)

Angela (35:58.243)

You can desperately want things to change and still have a long list of things you don’t want to do.

In this episode, we’re talking about the moment you stop letting fear, discomfort, and resistance make your decisions—and become willing to learn from people who have already gotten where you’re trying to go.

Whether you’re trying to quit drinking or you’ve been living sober for years and feel like your growth has stalled, this is a conversation about becoming teachable, seeing what you can’t see on your own, and discovering what becomes possible when you stop requiring recovery to happen according to your rules.

You quit drinking—but what are you using to escape now? When normal things like shopping, dating, food, or work get hard to put down, it may be time to look at what’s really going on.

You stopped drinking. Now you have to learn all the things drinking allowed you not to learn.

In this episode, we’re talking about the life skills alcohol can keep you from practicing— Because sobriety isn’t just learning how not to drink.

It’s learning how to handle your life without needing alcohol to manage it.

People-pleasing can look like kindness while quietly creating exhaustion, resentment, dishonesty, and isolation. Learn what drives the automatic yes, why other people’s feelings aren’t yours to manage, and how to start saying no without making it weird.

You stopped drinking. You’ve changed. So why do you still lie awake thinking about the things you did?

Self-forgiveness in recovery isn’t pretending the damage didn’t happen—and it doesn’t require everyone you hurt to forgive you, either. In this episode, we’re talking about guilt, damaged relationships, rebuilding trust, and the uncomfortable reality of becoming someone different when other people may still remember the old you.

We’ll also dig into the difference between sobriety and recovery, why quitting drinking doesn’t automatically fix every destructive behavior, and a powerful way of making amends that has very little to do with another apology.

If you’re tired of letting the worst things you did while drinking define who you are today, this conversation is for you.

When alcohol has shaped your friendships, routines, personality, and idea of fun for years, quitting can leave you wondering who you are without it. This episode is about rediscovering your real identity and building a life you don’t need alcohol to tolerate.

Have you ever spent an entire shower, your commute, a dog walk, or a sleepless night having a conversation that will likely never actually happen? Welcome to the club.

We have these imaginary conversations in our heads ALL the time.

We rehearse what we’re going to say, what the other person is going to say back, what we’re going to say next—and before we know it, we’ve written the entire scene and assigned everybody their lines.

But here’s what I want you to notice:

How often are YOU the center of the story?

They’re upset … you must have done something.

They’re being distant… they don’t like you anymore.

They didn’t text back… you must have said something wrong.

Their energy changed… something changed how they feel about you.

And suddenly you’re anxious, overthinking, analyzing every interaction, and trying to figure out what the hell happened.

Except…

You don’t actually know that anything happened.

This is personalization—and it’s one of those sneaky thought patterns that can create a ridiculous amount of emotional chaos over things that may have absolutely nothing to do with us.

And for those of us in recovery, there’s an even bigger pattern underneath it that I think is really important to understand.

In this episode, we’re digging into why we personalize, what it’s actually doing to us, and how to start catching yourself before your brain takes one tiny piece of information and turns it into an entire story all about YOU.

And if you recognize yourself in this?

Good.

Because this might be one of those things you need to work on next in your recovery.

Links mentioned in this episode: 

Book A Call With Angela : addictionunlimited.com/call

Related Episode:  What’s Inside Your Hula Hoop?

Follow me on Instagram: @addictionunlimited

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/addictionunlimited

If you had to start sobriety over, would you know what to do? I'm sharing five principles that changed my life and help my clients build lasting recovery today.