The trap of knowing what you ‘should’ be doing
I wanted to share one of the main things that used to drive me mad when I was still drinking.
It was knowing exactly what I “should” be doing about drinking - and still not being able to do it.
I've been alcohol-free since 2017. I'd done tonnes of therapy, lots of learning about alcohol’s effect, I graduated from a psychology degree a month after getting sober - and yet I still spent years white-knuckling my way through moderation attempts that rarely lasted the weekend.
I knew the health stats. I knew the mental clarity I'd get without it. I knew I did not want to end up like other members of my family who drank too much. Especially that last one.
But none of that stopped me reaching for a drink (or three) most evenings, then waking up asking myself why I couldn't just stick to the plan I'd made twelve hours earlier.
If you've lived that particular loop, you already know it isn't for lack of information.
HOW WE GET STUCK:
For a long time I assumed that it was fundamentally a ‘me being flawed’ problem. That if I wanted it badly enough, or had more willpower, or found the right approach, it would finally click.
It never did, and it took me a long time (and a late ADHD diagnosis) to figure out why.
I see this regularly with many of my clients - particularly those who are very capable, bright and those who work in mental health who ‘know the information’ - but despite all that they can’t make it stick themselves. The shame is immense.
But - the information alone is just not enough. This is where we get stuck.
Almost everything out there, the apps, the plans for reducing drinking, the “just don't buy it” advice, most moderation coaching, is built for neurotypical brains.
It hands you a set of rules and asks you to think and force your way through them.
That works well enough (maybe) if your brain runs on rules and routine. I think it’s fairly safe to say ours most definitely does not! (although AuDHDers might disagree here!)
HERE’S WHAT’S ACTUALLY GOING ON:
In an ADHD brain, dopamine signalling doesn't work the way it does for everyone else.
Think of it like trying to hear an announcement in a noisy classroom. The message is there, it's just not getting through clearly.
Alcohol cuts through that noise fast. It quiets an overstimulated nervous system, or numbs the flatness of being understimulated, or gives you the social ease that masking all day has drained out of you.
That's why it becomes a tool. Not a moral failing, a tool. It's solving a real problem for a real nervous system.
The trouble is, for ADHD brains that slide from “useful tool” to “the only tool I've got” happens fast.
Once alcohol is the thing regulating your emotions, your sleep, your social anxiety, your boredom, all at once, of course a rule like “just have two” doesn't hold. You've stacked your entire regulation system onto one substance without knowing it.
So a plan that ignores how you're wired was never going to work, no matter how hard you tried to make it.
THE WORK I DO GOES THE OTHER WAY:
Instead of stacking more rules on top, we go underneath, to what's actually driving the drinking > the shame spiral after > the promises to yourself that don't stick - and we put in the work to start managing all of these differently.
Because when the thing underneath shifts, the drinking usually eases on its own, rather than you having to grip it in place every single day.
And on the other side isn't some gritted-teeth achievement. It's quieter than that.
It's in the not lying awake negotiating with yourself about tomorrow. It's being able to go to a dinner, a Friday night after a hard week, without alcohol being the thing you're managing around. So an ordinary Tuesday is just an ordinary Tuesday, and drinking isn't the loudest thing running in the background of your mind.
We find what's really driving it for you, specifically, and we start to loosen it, so your relationship with alcohol starts to shift once you’re working with your brain as it is.
Not another rule to follow and fall off. Something that actually holds this time.
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I wanted to share one of the main things that used to drive me mad when I was still drinking.
It was knowing exactly what I “should” be doing about drinking - and still not being able to do it.