What is grey area drinking?
It's someone who:
💡drinks somewhere between 'now and again' and 'rock bottom'
💡when they do drink often drink more than they would like or had planned to
💡can take breaks from alcohol but it never lasts
💡it doesn't appear to others that drinking is problematic
💡silently worries, regrets, and frets about drinking
Gray area drinking is extremely common, and that’s precisely what makes it so hard to identify.
Our society has normalised problematic drinking, so you first have to recognize that just because everybody is doing it, doesn’t mean you have to.
The ‘grey area’ in the context of alcohol is a term introduced to the public by Joelene Park - who I trained under - a functional nutritionist who works with executives in corporate welleness. It’s a term that indicates that there is a large spectrum of alcohol use between ‘rock bottom’ and ‘take it or leave it’.
Grey area drinkers are often high functioning drinkers. Alcohol is taking up way too much of their head space, as they negotiate with themselves constantly around their drinking.
She found the same patterns with alcohol time and time again with her own clients, who were drinking more than they’d like but not enough to qualify for ‘risky’ drinking. Despite this, they really struggled to stop.
She started to look into the research and the role of neurotransmitters (brain body chemical messengers) and the key ingredients to being able to regulate the nervous system so that removing the alcohol was much more sustainable because clients had the tools to self regulate which meant the need to self-medicate had been significantly reduced and cravings were easier to manage.
Ironically, Jolene even found the pattern in her own life, too as she explains:
“Here are five signs that you might be a gray area drinker:
1. You silently worry, regret, and fret about your drinking.
You wake up in the early morning hours feeling remorseful recounting the night before, but you get up and function well during the day. You get your workout in, eat a balanced diet, or exhibit other “healthy” lifestyle choices. Other days, however, you experience wasted mornings and weekends, feeling hungover and angry over little things. Other people don’t often know about these days—they don’t see your sleepless nights, your self-loathing, your racing, anxious mind. What goes on internally regarding your drinking is different from what you present externally.
2. You drink between two extremes.
You’re not an end-stage, lose-everything kind of drinker—you’re a long way from rock bottom. But you aren’t an every-now-and-again drinker, either, where you have one glass of champagne at a wedding a couple times a year. Most people don’t fall into either of those black-and-white drinking extremes; many people land somewhere between these extremes: in the gray area.
3. You can stop drinking and you have stopped drinking for periods of time—even weeks or months—but it’s hard to stay stopped.
You’ve taken a break from drinking at different times in your life for various reasons—maybe you were doing a nutrition or fitness challenge or you swore off alcohol as one of your New Year’s resolutions. But then something comes up—a holiday, work event, or a stressful time—and it’s just too hard to keep turning down the drink forever. So back on the drinking carousel you go, and you quickly end up regretting how much you’re drinking.
4. Your drinking often doesn’t look problematic to those around you.
You drink like most people in your social and business circles—neighborhood block parties, book clubs, girls night out, and work events. You probably know people who drink much more than you do. If you talk about it with others, they might say, “You don’t have a problem, why are you worrying so much about this?” So you tell yourself you’re not that bad.
5. You ricochet between ignoring that still small voice inside of you telling you to stop drinking and deciding that you’re overthinking and you need to just “live a little.”
Alcohol is your reward at the end of the day. It’s how you have fun, relax, unwind, connect, have sex, and fall asleep at night. Everything in moderation, right? Yet, you’ve lost count of how many times you’ve woken up the day after “living a little” and said, “Never again. I can’t keep drinking like this.”
Gray area drinking can be a slippery slope, and the societal pull to keep drinking is strong. Friends and family would often say to me, “Can’t you just have one drink with us?” The answer was no, but they couldn’t see what was silently happening in my mind, body, and life as a result of my drinking—they only saw my life from the outside, which looked ‘fine.’
When I decided to stop for good, on December 14, 2014, I knew I was done forever. I knew I was done because I had so many stops and starts, and this time, I knew not to dwell in the gray. I told myself that no matter what happened in the future, good or bad, there would be no more silent debates, bargaining, justifying, or wondering if “I could have one” because one always turned into more, and I was ready for a full stop. I haven’t had a drink, sip, or drop of alcohol since.
Gray area drinking is real—a lot of people identify with this drinking paradigm. You are not alone, and you’re also in good company when you decide to end this pattern and forge a new one that’s more in line with the life you want to be living.
It’s time we drop the rock-bottom-required-to-stop-drinking paradigm. We don’t need to run our lives completely off the rails to prove, justify, defend, or explain why we are choosing to stop drinking. We simply need to know that there’s a better version of ourselves that is waiting for us.”
This mirrors my experience very closely and that of many of my clients. It makes it incredibly hard to make changes when you’re considering whether you have an 'issue' because your benchmark is the 'rock bottom' drinker.
You find yourself asking more than you’d like: Am I am alcoholic? - (I talk more about that in this article)
But you keep coming back to; ‘I don’t fit that mould’. The mould of rehabs and AA and recovery groups, that is.
And perhaps you don’t, but then where do you fit? It feels like there’s not a space that fits your particular type of drinking, this grey area.
You can see the conundrum. You might be living it. It makes staying stuck in this liminial space for longer a likelihood. It keeps us in denial that, for whatever reason, drinking is no longer serving us.
We continue to gaslight ourselves, because it’s hard not to. Though there’s usually that little inner voice that knows.
You may feel like you’re obligated to drink because of your work or family culture. That inner voice might get drowned out by others telling you you’re ‘fine’ and just ‘being dramatic’ or ‘overthinking it’. And I mean it’s Friday and everyone does it on the weekend right?
And so that inner voice will get drowned out, probably. Until the next hangover.
Want to hop off this merry-go-round? I’ve been there.
As an accredited grey area drinking coach, I can help.
About Faye
I help high-performing neurodivergent folk who are feeling stuck in patterns with alcohol, food, relationships, or work stress — especially the kind that leads to burnout and overwhelm. Together, we work toward balance, confidence, and a life that actually feels good to live.
I'm a therapist, ADHD coach, and grey area drinking coach with lived experience of both ADHD and alcohol dependence. I’ve been alcohol-free since 2017, was late-diagnosed with ADHD in 2022, and I’m a mum to neurodivergent young adults. Before this work, I spent years in executive leadership — so I understand the pressure to keep it all together while quietly unravelling inside.
I take a strengths-based, neurodiversity-affirming, and trauma-informed approach to help you make changes that stick — on your terms. I hold degrees in psychology and counselling, and I’m a member of the Australian Counselling Association (ACA) and Australian ADHD Professionals Association (AADPA).
