Separating fact from fiction when it comes to drinking on your own terms
Prefer to listen? Find ep. 110 wherever you get your podcasts.
There’s a lot of armchair psychology and uninformed guesswork floating around the low/no space, and I want you to be armed with the truth.
And that truth is that moderation isn’t for everybody.
But nothing is for everybody.
But if you’re prepared to explore it, investigate it, and give it the time and attention it needs, you might—might—just find that mindful drinking is the path that works for you.
So here are the biggest myths I keep hearing about moderation and mindful drinking, and why I don’t want you to let them hold you back from drinking differently on your own terms.
Myth 1: Moderation Isn’t Real Change; It Has To Be All Or Nothing
Black-and-white thinking—that you either have to remove alcohol entirely from your life or you’re not making “real” change—does not help the vast majority of people who, shocker, do moderate on a day-to-day basis.
Every time you’ve turned down that next glass of wine, decided not to go on to the next venue, or chosen an early night instead of another beer, that’s moderating.
That’s you deciding this next drink isn’t going to serve you, and therefore you’re not going to serve it to yourself.
Yes, for some people, abstinence is a healthier choice than moderation. If you feel you have a life-damaging problem with alcohol, this path isn’t right for you, and you should absolutely seek professional help in removing booze from your life altogether.
If this is you, please reach out to qualified services like alcoholchange.org.uk in the UK, or Rethinking Drinking in the US, or speak to your GP.
But for the rest of us? Deciding to drink less, to be more mindful about when we do drink, is a valid way to recognise that you might not be ready to commit to lifelong abstinence, but you would like the way alcohol shows up to look different.
That’s all it is. Making different choices about when and how you allow alcohol to show up in your life. Being mindful of how that drink will impact you and deciding whether it’s worth the costs in return for the reward.
And only you can make that decision for yourself.
Myth 2: If Alcohol’s Still In Your Life, You’ll Always Fall Back Into Old Habits
I am living proof that this isn’t true.
As a midlife drinker, you’ve got decades of drinking patterns behind you. From watching your parents, to those first drinks down the park with cans of White Lightning cider (IYKYK), to every situation you’ve encountered since then. That’s a lot of history.
But just because you have nights where you drink more than you intended doesn’t mean you’re incapable of change. It means you’re human. You made a misjudgment. And now you have feedback you can use for next time.
The truth is, alcohol is everywhere. It’s on TV, it’s bulging in supermarket aisles, it’s at kids’ birthday parties, for goodness sake! If you tell yourself you can’t moderate because alcohol is still “in your life” in some way, you’re setting yourself up for failure before you’ve even started.
Mindful drinking is not about never drinking more than you planned. It’s about developing the skill to learn from each experience and make different choices next time.
Will you always get it right? No. But you’ll get it right more often than you did before. And that’s the growth you came to it for.
Myth 3: Moderation Is Only For People With a Drinking Problem
I call BS! Moderation is for anybody who wants to optimise their lifestyle, well-being, and health.
When did we decide that we have to wait until you hit rock bottom before it’s time to make a change?
What even is rock bottom anyway? It looks different for everyone.
Your rock bottom can simply be the point at which you’ve decided enough is enough, and you’re not prepared to go further down a path that’s no longer serving you.
You don’t have to identify yourself as an alcoholic before you decide you want a better relationship with alcohol.
- Maybe you’re a busy parent who needs better sleep and more energy.
- Maybe you’ve recognised you’re putting on weight around the middle (yay, midlife metabolism, not!).
- Maybe you want more morning clarity, fewer arguments with your partner, more patience with your kids, more efficiency at work…
These are all perfectly valid reasons to think, “Do you know what? I don’t want that drink tonight.”
How ridiculous is it to let yourself believe you have to have something really negative happen before you decide to do something positive for yourself?
Myth 4: This Is Just Another Trend (Like Kale Smoothies)
OK, I’m with you on the kale smoothies, but…
The low/no drinks industry has been around as we know it today for about 12 years. And a lot less if you add in mid-strength drinks; heck, they’re not even old enough to drink themselves.
But in the last four or five years, we’ve seen a massive explosion in both quantity and quality.
And it’s because savvy consumers like you and me (yes, we are wonderfully wise) have been banging on the doors of the drinks industry, saying, nay, demanding “bigger (selections), better (quality), faster (development)”
Unlike the alcohol industry, this change is drinker-led, and brands are scrambling to keep up.
So far, ‘big alcohol’ has owned Christmas (Baileys, anyone?), owned summer (rosé all day!), and owns every other bloody occasion through decades of advertising.
Alcohol-free drinks, in contrast, are now earning their own place in the way we live.
There are no multi-million-pound ad campaigns telling us when to drink them (yet). It’s just us wanting to incorporate them into a better way of living.
And it’s working. Since the pandemic, the way we look at physical and mental health has changed fundamentally. Not temporarily. Forever.
This isn’t some fad happening in one quiet corner of England—it’s a global culture shift.
In fact, no-alcohol beer is now estimated to be the world’s second-largest beer category by volume, behind only lager.
That’s one hell of a fad!
Myth 5: This Is Only for Young People; It’s All About Gen Z
According to KAM Insight, 74% of UK drinkers are actively moderating their alcohol intake in some way, shape or form. The number is similar in the US.
74%!
Now, I’m no statistician, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if that’s 74% of people, that’s not just ‘the youth’.
And I’ve got a perfect example for you. In the final issue of Low No Drinker Magazine, we interviewed a lovely gentleman called Eamon who lives in Tipperary, Ireland. He contacted me after discovering the platform because he wanted to share his story.
The previous year, at the wonderful age of 76, Eamon decided he was done with being what he called “a well-established drinker”, and it was time to remove alcohol from his life so he could live better – proving that you can indeed teach an old dog new tricks!
Eamon’s choices were based on money and health. He decided it was a waste of both to keep drinking as he had been, and so he chose to go completely teetotal.
Now, that might not be the goal for you—it has never been the goal for me either—but it just goes to show that age truly is nothing but a number.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re 21 or 81. You are never too old to decide to make a change to the way alcohol shows up in your life.
When he spoke to us at 77, Eamon was celebrating 19 months of putting his health and well-being first. To make sure that his remaining time with his family, his grandkids, and his friends was spent with clarity, presence and enthusiasm. So he could show up as the best version of himself and make the most out of his life.
And if he can do it at 76, then we can do it no matter what age we are.
Find Your Own Truth
Just because you hear people spouting myths and opinions about moderation doesn’t mean their opinions have to apply to your life. The path to a life less intoxicated is different for everyone.
This is your choice. These are your decisions. This is your life.
And you have every right to drink your own way.
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