The #1 Reason to Quit Drinking Today: Why Moderation Doesn't Work and Sobriety Gets Better

This episode is a REPLAY!

If you've been telling yourself, "Next time will be different," or "Maybe I can learn to drink in moderation," this episode is your reality check.

In this episode of the Sober Vibes Podcast, Courtney explains why alcohol problems rarely get better with time, why moderation keeps so many people stuck, and how quitting drinking opens the door to clarity, self-trust, and lasting freedom.

If you're tired of negotiating with alcohol, this conversation will help you stop bargaining and start moving forward.

In This Episode, You'll Learn

•  why moderation often fails once alcohol has become a problem 
•  the hard truth about why alcohol doesn't get better with time 
•  how sobriety helps rebuild self-trust and confidence 
•  why your brain bargains at 60 days, 90 days, one year, and beyond 
•  how alcohol intensifies stress, grief, and heartbreak instead of relieving them 
•  why protecting your sobriety should come before trying to change everything else 

Sobriety isn't about giving something up.

It's about getting your life back.

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Transcript

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Welcome And The Big Question

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hey, welcome to the Sober Vibes Podcast. I am your host and sober pal, Courtney Anderson. We just really keep on trucking through this podcast, don't we? I still to this day feel like this is the little podcast that could. So I hope wherever you are at, you are having a kick-ass day. And if not, that's okay too. As always, tomorrow is a new day. Today is going to be a little bit of a shorter podcast. It's just me today. So today, you're probably looking at the title and being like, What is she talking about?

Why Drinking Never Gets Better

SPEAKER_00 0:44

What is the number one reason why you should quit drinking today? I did do just a little pause so you can think about that. And the number one reason you should quit drinking today because it's never gonna get fucking better. It will not. I shake my head like my one-year-old is starting to shake his head. Like, nope, it's never gonna get better. You are living in a unrealistic state of mind if you think that your drinking is ever going to get better from this day on. Truly. Truly, truly, truly. Once drinking takes over, it's very hard to go back to the, you know, control moderation, whatever else you want to put, title you want to put on it, but you can't control it. At some point, it becomes uncontrollable. I know that's really hard for people to hear that they don't want to have to quote unquote surrender to something, but the only really way you can control it is if you stop using it and you make that choice because you can make that choice, and it's a choice that is worth making because your life can only get better. Seriously. If you've listened to this show, if you're new here, welcome. But if you've listened to this show and for uh all of 106 episodes, there's a common theme that I say, and it's once you decide to quit drinking and you do it, your life does become better. And each year it's something new that comes about where you're like, oh man, this is getting better. And as I talked about on the 10, my 10-year sober anniversary episode, that there's many gifts of sobriety

Sobriety Gifts And Self Respect

SPEAKER_00 2:33

and they always deliver, they always deliver, and they deliver big and small, you know. It's just sometimes you wake up simply being like, Oh man, I'm just so happy that I like myself today. Or you wake up and be like, How did I get to the point of liking myself? Where, you know, a couple months ago or a year ago or five years ago, I was in a cycle of self-hatred. I didn't like myself in my act of addiction at all. I didn't know how to be comfortable in my own skin because I was in such a toxic mess cycle of the drinking cycle. So if you currently, right now, are in this thought process or listening to it, listening to the show because you are struggling, or you're even too listening because you're trying to support a family member or a friend who is in re, you know, going through addiction, on and off of sobriety and in recovery, just know that their relationship, and you might be thinking it of yourself if you're in that side of like, will this ever get better? Is this person able to just have one drink and it's it's okay? And most likely, if a person already has a problematic relationship with alcohol, it's not going to get better. It's not as much as you try to moderate and control, it will overtake you and it will win every time. 100%. I tried that cycle for four years, it didn't work. I tried fitting something into my life that was no longer it couldn't fit anymore. So at the end of the day, I had to give it up for good. And even in my worst days of sobriety, I rather faced those days than my best days in active addiction because that was all bullshit. And when I say bullshit, it was all bullshit in the sense of it was a distorted reality that I was living in, you know, where you think that you're having all of this fun, your mindset, you think that you know it all. I mean, a lot of ego comes up in this too. There's there's a lot of layers in the sobriety and recovery process, but you're you think that you know it all, you think that you figured it out, you know, you think that maybe you have the best relationship. And then when you actually wake up sober, you're like, this is not a good relationship, or this isn't the life that I've been wanting to live, which I will do a podcast about this this topic, and it's called The Great Awakening, which is amazing. So you wake up and you're just like, or you wake up thinking that you have this like amazing family dynamic. And when you wake up and you get sober and you're like, Oh, because it's all about the clarity, you're like, Oh, this actually is not this is not all that great. And I laugh because it's like, because that's how ridiculous that the delusion that you live in in your active relationship with alcohol and your active addiction, there's a delusion there, you know. So when you're out of that and you see the bigger picture and you see real what's really going on, you're like, oh, okay. And then when you look back to see how much time and energy and effort you put into the cycle of drinking, that's exhausting itself too. So today, really, really think about it.

The Moderation Trap After Time

SPEAKER_00 6:07

If you are struggling with this, even if you are sober right now, but you're thinking like, I if you're in if you're in that time, I remember there's a couple big like 90 days, you 60 days is a good one, you know, a year after a year, three years, even five. Okay. Well, there's periods of time that when you have sober, your mind goes back to thinking, could I go back and just drink normally? Seriously, have you has your mind thought of this? Are you shaking your head yes in your car? Or are you shaking your head no, like like little CJ, where you have thought of this, where you have actually gone a year sober, and now you're thinking to yourself, like, well, yeah, I'm sure I could go back and have one. And then you want to try to get back on the moderation track, and then it ends up spiraling, and you pick up where you last left off when your drinking was at its highest. That's what ends up happening, and it's so very easy for your mind to play tricks and with the whole you know, periods of time of even though, and I talked about this in the 10 years one, it's it's very the time thing with sobriety is very, very, it's an interesting thing because even though 10 years, that's a long time without a drop of alcohol, but it feels like it's yesterday. And I remember that last day, you know. So if you are listening to this and you are thinking to yourself today, like, oh, I could go back and have a couple. I'm here to poke at you and say, No, it's not going to end well, it won't end well, especially if you have had that problematic relationship with alcohol. So the number one reason why you shouldn't drink today is because it's never going to get better. It won't. Alcohol will not fix anything, it just makes your problems 50 times worse. It makes your thinking 50 times worse. You know, it it hurts people. Your drinking affects a lot of people that maybe you don't think that it does. If you are a person who is very career oriented, you're not going to be showing up 100% in your career. You're not going to be showing up 100% in your parenting, in your relationships, all of that. Drinking doesn't make anything better. Sobriety makes everything better. And you being a sober person and what you can control. And what you can control is not picking up that drink and not going back to that. Or if you're starting and you are brand new, keep this episode in your back pocket to come back and

Grief Coping And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 9:06

listen to. That it's never going to make it better. You know, if you had somebody who passed away, I can't tell you how to process through that pain, but I know, I know, as somebody who had somebody very close to her, my grandma who passed away when I was about eight weeks into my sobriety. No. No, no, no, no, no. Like a month, a month she had passed away. But I had to go, I didn't turn to drugs and alcohol to cope that pain. I did smoke a lot of cigarettes. I did. Okay. I'm gonna admit that. However, when I flew home from from Florida, that's when I quit because I promised Jerry that I would quit smoking when I came home, and I did. But like during her funeral and stuff, definitely was smoking some cigarettes. And I do recommend to people, I you know, it's this is getting off subject real quick, but it's very hard to quit all vices at once. I'm just saying that. You know, what I'm talking to you about is alcohol, because that was very hard quitting drinking and then quitting cigarettes so soon, you know, just stating for the facts. So that going through the process of losing a loved one, alcohol is not gonna make it better. It's just going to intensify it and intensify it and intensify it, you know. Same thing if you're breaking up with somebody or whatever bad comes to you because everybody has their own version of what you know bad things look like and feel like. So I'm just here to state that it's never gonna get better. It won't. It won't. I hope this episode helped you today. And you know, I'm always here for you. Make sure that you reach out on Instagram at sober vibes. You can check out all my links below. You can get your 30-day sober not boring calendar for free. My new workshops are down in the links, they are free workshops. Also, too, if you're looking for help in your sobriety and recovery journey with coaching, you can apply to work with me for my eight-week coaching program next level sober support. The link is in the show notes. And if you haven't already, please rate, review, and subscribe to the show. All right, you take care, keep on trucking and stay healthy.