You want to stop drinking, maybe not completely, just to cut down, to look, to feel and to act better.
And you know that do make the, oh so simple (cue hollow laughter), changes to your drinking, you will need to gather all your wits, your resources around you as you prepare to finally defeat your ‘not drinking’ nemesis, a mysterious murky figure who is determined to derail you.
This morning you made the decision again…..You are NOT drinking tonight! You feel empowered and in control. You know that today, ‘You Got This!’ It’s over, you’re back in control……
And your day wears on.
But as the hours slip by, a nagging feeling starts in the pit of our stomach…..somethings going down, somethings going wrong, an unwelcome visitor starts to tap at the door of your steadfast decision.
Who is it? What’s her name, and why won’t she just leave you alone?…….
Do you talk to your friends about this dreaded, destructive someone who comes zooming in on a broomstick enticing you back to the bottle?
Do they know her too, are they included in her daily visits?
Is this who you have labelled your WINE WITCH?
And what does your Wine Witch say to you? Maybe words of entrapment along the lines of;
- “Have just the one”
- “You deserve it”
- “You’ve had a long day, why not start tomorrow”
- “Don’t deprive yourself of something you love”
- “You’ll be ok this time, this time you can stop at one”
- “It’s not that bad”
And all the rest. Recognize her now?
And as she casts her alcohol spell, you give in. You drink, you feel rubbish, weak a failure, and blame your Wine Witch…..well you have to blame someone don’t you? I mean you don’t deliberately want to feel terrible, physically and emotionally, when you see the faces of shattered trust of your loved ones the next day.
And so you focus on getting rid of this mad, unkind, destructive demon who goads you into drinking, but here’s the truth.
Your Wine Witch is not your enemy, she is not outside you, she doesn’t come unbidden, out of nowhere or because of any clock time.
Instead, she comes when she is needed, when you are in need.
She comes to comfort you, to support you, to offer you the love and connection you are lacking in the moment, that you may have some sense that you are missing, but have lost the sight of how to deliver back what you need, and so you turn to alcohol. That is the truth.
You are not in ‘parts’, so there is no part of you that wants to hurt you.
There is confusion about how to offer and deliver you what you need, but no malignant part of you that wants you to fail, that wants to destroy your health, happiness, peace, calm or love of yourself or others.
Your are designed to live in awareness and connectedness of who you are, what you need and how to deliver it. That is called your instinct.
However, life situations and learning’s from others, in this instance around alcohol, have taught you to believe, that alcohol is the problem. That alcohol is a battle you can never win, that you have to abstain for ever. That changing the way you drink means giving up for life, that changing the way you drink will be hard and painful and worth it, but still a battle that will need constant supervision to stop you going back. And what you believe, you see, feel and you hear, all around you.
Here’s another truth. When you go into battle over alcohol, ‘To Drink, or Not To Drink’, you are going into conflict with yourself around your beliefs about alcohol, not with alcohol.
You are duking it out with your Conscious Mind, your learned ‘knowing’, pitted against your Unconscious Mind, you learned ‘feeling’.
Now you think your Conscious ‘knowing’ would win, but against your Unconscious ‘feeling’, (that has no language, just feels, so doesn’t even know what alcohol is), it never, ever stands a chance.
And the more you Conscious knowing berates you for drinking, the more your hurt Unconscious sends up alcohol as the method of comfort and support.
The worse you think, the worse you feel, the more you drink, to comfort yourself.
Your Conscious Mind is the voice that tells you “DON’T!”. “Don’t be so weak, what’s wrong with you, you’re useless, you know this will end badly” and that voice is stern, unkind, lecturing and makes you feel bad – and this is often referred to as the Angel…..strangely, as this Angel can be pretty dammed abusive.
And in response to the hurt your Conscious Mind inflicts on you, to comfort and support you, Unconscious Mind, your ‘Wine Witch’ kicks in.
Softer and kinder in tone, having no idea what alcohol is, or what it does to you, she is determined to hold you, to protect you. and in her lack of knowing what alcohol is and does to you, she feels you are trying to deny yourself comfort when you need it most.
Your Unconscious Mind is your super loving, super confused, super power, who will do anything and everything in her power to offer you love, and that is who your Wine Witch is.
Your Wine Witch is, (in intention), your deaf, mute, unknowing, only ‘feeling’, Guardian Angel, who exists only in response to your needing comfort from ‘bad’ feelings. But because the reality (so very different from her intention behind it), is that her method of comfort harms you more, you have grown to fear and hate her arrival.
Imagine now if instead of criticizing yourself when your alcohol thoughts drift in, you were to pause, take a couple of long, slow deep breathes, and to ask yourself with gentle love, “What am I looking for right now?” “What do I need to do for me?” and then waited and listened.
The true answer of what you are looking for, would appear from within you, your need for rest, comfort, communication, quiet, nourishment, physically, emotionally or both. Whatever it is you are lacking in that moment when your old alcohol thinking came up, which you then delivered.
What do you think would happen then? Well, you reconnect with YOU.
You re-connect with who you are and what you need, and in that place of self-awareness, self-compassion, self-care your step back in to self, yourself.
You step back into trust and communication with you. That is ‘the you’ that has no ‘need’, no cravings, no feelings of anxiety or deprivation around alcohol, because alcohol was never what you were looking for. You were looking for what you were lacking, and you were lacking the love and understanding of YOU.
When you have that re-connection, you have the peace, balance and harmony in life you were designed to live in, to be, and in that place, all your alcohol confusion and your loving Wine Witch simply drifts away, allowing your drinking to change naturally and effortlessly.
Be kind and gentle with yourself
Sonia