When is the "right" time to quit drinking?

These are the signs it might be time to quit.

But let's be real, there’s no perfect time to quit drinking -and you don’t have to wait for rock bottom to make a change. In this episode, I’m breaking down the signs that alcohol may no longer be working for you, from constantly thinking about drinking to feeling regret, using alcohol to cope, or simply realizing the pros no longer outweigh the cons. If you’ve been wondering whether it might be time to quit, this episode is for you.

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How to know when it's time to quit drinking? It's a hard question because for so many people, it's a blurred line. There's not like that one situation that happens where you're like, I gotta quit drinking. For a lot of people, it's just this ongoing situation. It's time after time that you don't feel good about yourself or your health. It's making drunken mistakes, it's uh making you perform worse, it's making your relationships worse. You're constantly negotiating with yourself, making deals with yourself, you're starting to lie or hide your alcohol. It's like a slow, slow process that kind of leads us to sobriety. And so for so many of us, myself included, when you're going down that path, it's like, when do you know, like, okay, now's the time to get sober? Like, when do we know it's bad enough to quit drinking? It's it's hard to choose. And I think a lot of people recognize that maybe they're heading down the path, like a bad path, but they don't really know when is the time to pull the trigger and just get sober once and for all. We don't want to just kick alcohol out of our lives because it's been so central to our existence so far. If you're drinking a lot, if alcohol is a big part of your life, you don't want to get rid of it a hundred percent. And I think we tell ourselves too, it must be easier to drink less than to drink nothing at all. Right? But as somebody who's been two years sober, I can say that quitting drinking was way easier than any moderating strategy I ever tried. And so many people unfortunately wait for some rock bottom moment to like force them to get sober, basically. But there are signs along the way that we should get sober. And I think that if I could advise one thing, it would be to run with those signs that occur. And in today's episode, I'm gonna run through a bunch of the signs, a bunch of the situations that can start to happen as you're drinking that could lead you to sobriety and be that thing you need to get sober without it having to be a catastrophic rock bottom that forces you into sobriety. It's hard to know exactly when to get sober without a catastrophic, horrible event. So I hope that these instances that occur can serve as our as our rock bottoms or like the sign we need. We don't need something horrible to happen to get sober. We can just do it on our own accord, and essentially, once we realize that alcohol is doing more harm than good, that is the through line throughout this episode in every one of these situations. Any joy that alcohol brought us is being out is being outweighed by all the negatives that come with it. So let's get into today's episode. And as a little PSA before we jump in, I just want to say that you can get sober at any time you want. It doesn't have to be the perfect time, the perfect situation to get sober. You can do it at any time. And with that said, let's jump right in. Alright, hello, welcome to the sober scoop. My name is India Gance. I'm your host. As far as resources, I leave everything in the description. We have a sobriety support group on Facebook. I release episodes here every Tuesday. I have a sobriety TikTok page as well as my main Instagram and everything where I talk about my sober journey. So all of that info and where to contact me is in the description. So I will see you there. And without further ado, let's get into the topic of the day. So, like I said, the through line is that the pros are being outweighed by the cons. Because I think there is well, okay. I you guys know that I'm on the team of like any amount of alcohol is bad, like, because now that I've overcome my drinking problem, I stay sober largely because of the health reasons. And so for me, like I don't think there's a normal way to drink, you know, like, oh, I have a normal relationship with alcohol. What even is a normal relationship to poison? It's weird. So I'm kind of in the camp of like no alcohol. But um, I obviously don't judge people, and I I I know the joy that comes from alcohol better than anyone else. I used to absolutely love it, and I had a quote-unquote normal relationship with alcohol for a pretty long time before it went south. So I know that there are certain situations like on a a date night, it can like loosen you up and make you feel romantic. There's going out and dancing that would be harder to do without alcohol. Um, it can relieve some stress if you have a really high stress job. I get the I get the benefits, if that's what you want to call them. And I used to drink for all those reasons and more. So I get it. But eventually, alcohol can rob you of any of those joys, and you're so focused on monitoring your drinking and hiding it and worrying about the fact that you're hiding it and you might be having a problem and all this stuff. It starts to take a turn from being a positive experience and like something that brings you joy and connection to something that brings you just like stress and turmoil in life. So one of those things is that you think about drinking a lot. The alcohol noise. People talk about food noise a lot of times, and this is something that I struggle to understand because I don't have a problem with food, but I definitely had a problem with alcohol, so I get the alcohol noise. But I've heard from people who struggle with food that food noise is basically like food is constantly on your mind. You're always thinking about food, when you can have your next meal, what you should make. Like you ate too much last night, you woke up and you're excited to eat right away. Like, food is just always at the center of your thoughts. And that happens a lot with people who have eating disorders and things like that. So food noise is a very common thing, but there's also alcohol noise, and I had that for sure, where just every thought that crossed my mind, it's hard to even explain to somebody what alcohol noise is like because even the most random thoughts that you would think have nothing to do with alcohol, I think about alcohol. Like, oh, I have to shower. It's like, should I grab a beer to bring in? Um, it's just like any chore, oh, I gotta do laundry, that'd be more fun with a beer. Um you're gonna go meet somebody for coffee. Oh, I'm nervous to meet them. I better, I better bring two beers to chug before I go in. Alcohol is just always on the mind. And then, like, beyond that, you're thinking about when's the next time you can drink, how many drinks did you have yesterday? You wake up and the your first thought before your significant other or your kids or food or anything is booze. You're feeling yeah, it's just like this overwhelming noise about alcohol. So if you start finding that you're thinking about alcohol a lot, if you're spending this much mental energy thinking about alcohol, is the enjoyment actually worth the mental space it takes up? That's kind of I mean, I probably experienced every single thing that's gonna be on this list, but that's one of the things that was the biggest relief when I quit was just like the alcohol noise was gone because I knew that it was a no to alcohol no matter what, 100% of the time. So I didn't even have to think about it or consider it. I didn't have to wake up and feel guilt for my behaviors the the previous day and count how many drinks I had. That was my morning routine. I wake up in the morning and I would count how many drinks I had the day before, and then I'd wake up and feel so bad about myself and so embarrassed and so frustrated. Why did I do this to myself again? And then I'd usually crack open a drink to get through uh the guilt that I felt about the previous day. So yeah, if you find that you're thinking about alcohol a lot, then alcohol is not just a part of your life for when you're actively drinking alcohol. It's a part of your life all day, and that is taking away from your relationships, your work, your full potential. Um, so you might want to consider sobriety if you're thinking about alcohol all the time. That might be a good time to just get it out of your life. And I know that sounds extreme, right? But it's like now being sober, I wish I would have kicked it way sooner than I did. A lot of people wait for something catastrophic. My catastrophic thing was that I started having liver pain. Like I needed something to tell me that I needed to get sober, but I'm advising that you don't wait till it gets to liver failure or hospitalization or jail or crashing your car or sleeping with your friend's boyfriend or something just awful. You know, we don't need something awful to happen to get sober. Don't let those things happen. Let's do it before that happens. Okay, another reason you regularly drink more than you intended. Like, if the fun of drinking keeps turning into consequences you didn't want, the pros may not be outweighing the cons. So you think you're going out to have a good time or whatever, and maybe you do for a bit, but then you're posting drunk Instagram stories and you're really embarrassed and your boss sees them and you get backlash from that. And the next day you're totally hungover and have to call out sick out of work and you're out of sick days, and that's a tough conversation to have. You wake up the next day and you have to go on an apology tour because you said things to people that you didn't mean. You have to Venmo people money because they bought you drinks and you didn't pay them back, or like you lost your wallet. You have to go drive to the bar to pick up your wallet from the bartender at 8 a.m. the next day. You had to leave your car somewhere, and so now the next day you're having an Uber to go get your car, and you're just like, oh my gosh. The the fun is no longer worth all the bad that happens. I think a lot of people, for a lot of people, this comes out in hangovers, and they're like, I just am so sick of feeling less than 100% every day. I mean, that was me. I woke up feeling a little bit ill every single day. And that's why I started drinking in the morning, is because that kind of cured uh not feeling great. I did the hair of the dog, I felt better after three beers, and the cycle just started over again. But this point was also about drinking more than you intended. So you say you're only gonna have two drinks and you end up having, you know, six, seven. And that's like not only are you unable to do what you said you were gonna do and limit your drinking, you also are like repeatedly disappointing yourself and failing yourself, and that's just not a good feeling to live with. All right, another thing. You're constantly negotiating with yourself about drinking. If you're sober, I can guarantee that this was a part of your drinking journey where you try so hard to negotiate. You know, you say, I'm only drinking on the weekends, okay? I'm not gonna drink during the week. Um, but Sarah has a birthday party on Tuesday, so I'm gonna drink from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Tuesday, so I'll just take five hours off on Saturday and make up for drinking on a weekday. Um, what? What is what is this deal making, negotiating, counting the hours and eliminating them from your Saturday? That that is that is not the vibe. That is not the reason like that people drink, right? Is to be living like that. If we're drinking alcohol how it was intended, you know, whatever that means, um, it's like it should be to enjoy it, to socialize, to have a laugh, to dance, whatever. And now we're like making deals with ourselves, and it's this horrible thing that we like have to have in our lives, and we're we're counting and strategizing and scheduling it in, and it's just you know, we don't need that energy. If you're spending more energy trying to control alcohol, then you're getting enjoyment from it, uh, that's worth paying attention to. I kind of accidentally dabbled into this point in the previous point, but if you don't like how you feel on alcohol, why are we continuing to drink it? Like you repeatedly are hungover, your digestion's out of whack, your skin's reacting, you're you can't sleep, you wake up in the middle of the night every single night, you get up at five and you can't get back to sleep. Like, if alcohol is not making you feel good at all, but you still continue to consume it, that should maybe be a little bit of a red flag. And the next thing your life r revolves around alcohol. If you are literally planning what you're gonna do on vacation or at your wedding, or okay, maybe your wedding's an anomaly, um, but I'm just thinking like how we plan these events, but they're always based around alcohol. You think about the wedding and it's like about the cocktail hour, it's about what drinks you're gonna serve, it's should we have cocktail waiters, it's should we do a cash bar or have it be all included? Um, like when alcohol is literally the center of all your life and planning and events and things like that, that could be the sign that you need. I mean, I if you listen to my last episode about my Poland trip or like my episode about Vietnam, I talk about how I used to travel a lot by myself and like the whole trip would revolve around alcohol. Every ounce of the trip was about the booze. And so when I'm sober, I actually get to experience the country and the people and all these amazing activities. Like it's crazy what I can fit in a day. I feel so much more grateful to be there than just spending my time abroad in the bars and like trying to get alcohol the whole time. When you find that your friend hangouts are always revolving around booze, or like the only reason you go out golfing is so that you can drink. There are so many different signs for different people, but like if alcohol is the center of your life, basically, and everything that you do and plan, even if it doesn't really have to do with alcohol, you're still thinking about alcohol. I mean, I think about when I used to plan a trip to the pumpkin patch, I would like research whether they had a bar or if we need to bring shooters in our purses. You know? Um, maybe you don't need to be drinking booze at the pumpkin patch for once. You can just go to the pumpkin patch because that's what you originally wanted to do. But for me it was never about the pumpkin patch, it was about the booze and a fun venue to do it at. You know what I mean? Okay, next thing. You hide or minimize your drinking. This was a big sign for me, I would say. When I started to feel so ashamed of how I was drinking and that I was drinking alone and in such high amounts, that's a sign. Like if you're embarrassed of your drinking, you know that there's something wrong. Deep in your heart, you know that you need to get sober when you're having to hide your drinking from other people. You know that you drink too much, or you you're feeling ashamed of how much you drink. That is a sign that you need to just stop because you yourself already know that it's a problem. You're like, okay, other people in my life would view this as really bad. Uh they I would be very embarrassed if they ever saw the way that I drink. So you know that it's bad already. So just kick it. Kick alcohol. Next thing it's affecting your relationships. Yeah. Alcohol sometimes can like cause play as the social lubricant we need to be romantic or to be flirty or whatever. But then alcohol can like kick us in the booty and actually make it worse. I mean, I think about the number of like cute date nights I would plan with my boyfriend, and it would start with like a wine tasting, and that's really cute and everything, and it's like romantic, and we're excited for the evening. It's just like been a wonderful time, so lovey and amazing. And then it's like I have to go to a bar afterwards because I can't stop the buzz, or like I continue to drink at home because I don't want the fun to end, and then all of a sudden the night goes from like a fun romantic evening to like I'm throwing up and we both just pass out on the couch, and maybe the night ended in a fight, and then we wake up in the morning and we're arguing about something, or we have to make up and spend our whole morning just making up because we're we said bad things to each other, or we got a little too sauced at the bar and did something embarrassing or disrespectful to the other person. Or in a more extreme case, when you are prioritizing alcohol over your partner, which is the point that I got to, where, like I said, the first thing that I think of in the morning, even if he's laying right next to me, is my first thought is alcohol. It's not him. It's not like I love him so much, it's like it's booze, is the first thing on my mind. Um I would pick alcohol over hanging out with him sometimes. I would make sure that I got to drink, you know, if that instead of pregaming together before we went to the baseball game or something, if I felt that I wasn't going to be able to drink enough in his presence, I would prefer to just drink by myself and meet him at the game or something like that. You know what I mean? It's like when alcohol becomes the priority over your partner, or when alcohol is making the relationship with your partner not great, that could be a sign that you need to get sober. Because think about when you're on your deathbed or something and you're looking back at your life. We want, I mean, the most important thing in life is our relationships. The relationships with our family, our parents, our siblings, our kids, our significant others. Like, that is what life is all about, if you ask me. Or even somebody like me who loves to be alone, and I I love my family and stuff too, but like I love to travel alone and I think about the people that I meet on my travels, and just that's half the joy of it is just connecting with the locals and seeing how they live and being brought in for a some local cuisine by somebody living there who's gonna cook for me and just those like personal experiences. It's the relationships. Life is about the relationships you have. And do you want to be on your deathbed thinking that you prioritized alcohol over those relationships? I mean, thank God I didn't have kids when I was going through my drinking problem, but you think about like prioritizing alcohol over your children or something, they should be your first priority. And a lot of people who are struggling with drinking prioritize alcohol over their kids. So you're ruining your relationship with your family, your friends, whoever, because of alcohol. That is not a good sign. And when you start noticing that, it might be a good time to get sober and before an intervention has to happen from those people who love you. Another thing, and like I said, literally all of these things apply to me. It's crazy, and I'm sure you guys who are listening to are like, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. All these things. Um, another thing is it's affecting your health and well-being. And this was a major one for me, not just because of the liver pain, which was a part of it, and that is ultimately the thing that got me sober, um, but also like my my physical appearance. I mean, I was kind of pudgy and like inflamed and red and cellulitey and just overweight for what I usually naturally am personally. I I didn't look great, in my opinion. And I I had just given up on myself. I was somebody who was a fashion model from 15 years old onward. I still model to this day, but there was a good chunk in there where I was like, I didn't feel beautiful at all. I looked at my body and I saw disgust. And I know that sounds horrible. And if if you have a similar body type to how I did, like I'm not saying you're not pretty or whatever. Like this was just how I personally felt. And this body was very unusual for me as somebody who's always been like pretty slender and in shape. And I would say naturally, I have a slim frame. And when I was going through this time, I just literally looked like a stranger in the mirror. I didn't recognize myself. I had completely let myself go. I went up four pant sizes. Um, I just didn't I didn't recognize myself. And to think That I completely gave up my health and well-being because of alcohol is crazy. And I think I did have a moment. I took a before video, which I use in my content all the time on social media. I took a before video when I was feeling at my lowest of low because I was just like it's gonna get better. I knew that it had to go up from that point because I was feeling so bad about myself. So I wanted some evidence of like the lowest I had ever felt. And I just hated how I looked. And that is literally because of alcohol. In every way it's because of alcohol, both directly and indirectly, because alcohol did make me chubby. Okay. Like it's calories, it slows your metabolism, all that stuff. But then also, like, I'm not going to be going to the gym when I'm hungover. If I did go to the gym, my workout is basically negated because I would drink within a couple hours of working out, which makes your body stop burning fat, it doesn't make your body build muscle. Like alcohol made me look like this stranger. And if you are feeling like you're heading down that path before it gets too far, nip it in the bud. Like I could have put on another hundred pounds and drank over the next five years, and it would have been at such a worse place. So when you start to notice that your health and well-being are going by the wayside because of your drinking, you may as well nip it in the bud before it gets too bad. It's going to be way easier now than it is after a year or two years or 10 years more of drinking. And the last sign, I guess, is that uh you've tried to cut back and keep ending up in the same place. Like if you are failing yourself time and time again, and you've tried to loosely quit or limit your drinking or try a dry January and failed and all this stuff, it might just be the time to quit 100%. And this was like such a liberating feeling for me. It was just so much more cut and dry, black and white, to be like, I don't drink alcohol. Instead of I'm only drinking on the weekends, I'm only drinking past 5 p.m., I'm taking one month off, and then I'm getting back to it. All those things are like an emotional roller coaster. You're toying with yourself and it's just truly exhausting. And when I finally quit and I basically was like, no takebacks, like I'm doing this, then everything became so much easier. Like moderation requires constant effort. And it you're like trying to do this good thing for yourself, but it's making you more exhausted and more guilt guilty and like just frustrated with yourself. You're trying to do this good thing and it keeps failing you. You may as well just cut it out completely because quitting 100% is going to be less exhausting than all these uh moderation strategies that we try over the years. I think the overarching message that I want to say here is that you don't have to prove that alcohol is bad enough to quit, or that your drinking problem is bad enough to quit. I think we have these benchmarks in our mind. For some people, it's like once you start drinking in the morning, that means you have a drinking problem, or once you reach rock bottom, or once you get the liver failure, or once you go to the hospital, or once you go to jail, or once you get a DUI. Like people set these things and they're like, it's not bad enough until one of those things has happened. You don't have to wait for one of those things to happen. You can decide at any time that the pros no longer outweigh the cons. The cons are taking over your life, and any good that comes from drinking is just being completely muddied by all the bad that it causes. It comes to a point where it's simply not worth it anymore. And when it comes to like picking your sober date, this was a whole other battle I had because for a year and a half I knew that I needed to get sober. I remember it was a year and a half. And the first thing that got the idea in my head was I saw a video of this girl who like was in my network. I wasn't really friends with her, but like we saw each other around and like we knew each other through our work and everything. She was a model in Los Angeles as well. I'd worked with her a couple times, and I saw that she posted a little cake video of her one-year sobriety, and I was like, oh my god, you got sober? Like a young, pretty model girl my same age, got sober? It was just like it was eye-opening to me. So I saw that video, and it still took me a year and a half from that moment to actually get sober, but I knew from that video that I that sobriety was gonna be where I ended up. I just, of course, wanted to like not get sober. That would have been ideal in my mind. But all roads led to sobriety, and picking the actual date was something that I I stressed about so much. I mean, I I didn't relapse ever. I didn't like say that I was quitting, and then I started to drink again, but I kind of relapsed in the sense of like telling myself that I would get sober on this date, and then I just didn't. So that was my kind of form of relapsing, I guess, is I kept saying that I was gonna get sober after Halloween, okay? November 1st, because I got a big party on Halloween, and then it's like, well, after Thanksgiving, because we're gonna be drinking at Thanksgiving, but then it's so short until Christmas, I may as well just do it after Christmas. But then it's New Year's, but then there's dry January, but I already have a party on January 1st, so can't do dry January. And it's like we're going out for Valentine's Day, so I'm just gonna wait till maybe March 1st, but then there's that St. Patrick's Day party, so I'll just wait till April, but then that's when the the weather starts to get better, and we're leading into summer, and then it's my birthday, and I'll just wait till September. You know what I mean? It's like I was toying with myself so much. There was always some reason to not quit. It was somebody's random birthday party coming up, it was some random event. I wanted to quit on a Monday, you know, so that I could have Friday, Saturday, Sunday to still drink. And if I failed on the Monday, then oh, wait till next week. Like it was just so much negotiating with myself for when I was gonna quit. And the moment I released that need for a perfect date is when I was finally able to get sober. I woke up on a Thursday, June 20th, absolutely no significance. It happens to be 10 days after my birthday, but it wasn't like I had a crazy birthday and I'm like, I need to quit. You know, I'm I'm 28 years old. I turned 28, you know, it's so random. But anyway, um, it was a Thursday leading into the weekend. Uh one week later, I had my family uh reunion, I guess you could call it, or family vacation that we go on every year. Lots of drinking involved. One week after that, I had a 4th of July celebration that we were flying to Michigan or wherever it was, Minnesota, for my boyfriend's family's Fourth of July party. It would be the first time I'm meeting all of his extended family, and I decide to quit drinking right before the family vacation, right before meeting all of his family, and then just a couple weeks later was my high school reunion. Literally couldn't have drawn up a worse time to get sober in my mind. Like, it didn't go to plan, but I told myself that like eventually you just have to start living like a sober person. Life is going to continue on unless you go to rehab, which is why rehab's always a good option, because your life does pause for a second. But like, if you're just getting sober on your own, your life is gonna continue. You're not gonna be able to avoid all the Christmases, Thanksgivings, high school reunions, family vacations, nerve-wracking experiences. You're not gonna be able to avoid those eventually. You're just have gonna have to start living life sober. And that's the point that I got to. I was like, someday has to be one day. And I just woke up on that day and I was like, today's the day. I'm stopping today. And when I felt it, I just did it. And the moment I committed to sobriety, I could start learning to navigate my life as a sober person instead of like trying to fit my sobriety date perfectly into my life so that it didn't inconvenience me in the slightest. Instead, I picked sobriety. That's what I went ahead and decided on, and then I planned everything else around that. It's like, okay, maybe I'm gonna bring some diet cokes for the family vacation, have a line prepared to tell my boyfriend's family that I don't drink anymore, um, for the high school reunion, see where it's at, see if that they have any options. And I just started to plan around my sobriety instead of trying to plan my sobriety around my life, if that makes sense. And that is the key. When you feel it, that's your time. Don't wait to schedule it perfectly into your life. Don't wait till after this, after that, before this, before that. Like, there's never gonna be a perfect time to get sober. Life is always gonna be there. Stuff is always gonna happen, there's always stuff on the calendar. It's impossible to find the perfect start date. It's kind of like when you're planning pregnancy or something. It's like, oh, well, I don't want to be pregnant for this, that, the other, um, and I don't want to be pregnant during summer because it's gonna be hot and weird. So we'll wait to like conceive at this date so that I'm pregnant here and that I give birth here. It's like, you know, you can plan all you want, but eventually a baby just has to become part of your life. You're gonna live 18 years with them under your roof, just living regular life. So you may as well just do it when the time feels right. I think it's kind of similar to sobriety. It's like you can't plan it to be perfect. You just gotta do it and then fit your life around your sobriety. So those are the signs that maybe it's time to get sober. And if you're asking yourself, should I get sober or am I fine just living how I am, consider whether the pros still outweigh the cons. Because drinking should be a fun thing if it's something that's gonna be part of your life. It should only add to your life. If you start noticing that it is really taking away, that might be the sign to quit drinking. Thank you for listening to today's episode. Please do rate the show or leave a comment or review. Um, it means the world to me. And you can contact me or connect or join our Facebook support group all in the description of this episode. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next Tuesday. Bye!