I drink too much

What this looks like

You drink most nights. The amount has crept up. The wine bottle that used to last three nights now lasts one. You’ve started having a drink earlier in the day on weekends. You can’t picture a difficult conversation without a drink before it. You’ve considered cutting back. You’ve cut back briefly. The drinking returned to where it was.

Your “too much” is a moving target. As long as it keeps moving, you don’t have to answer the question.

What you’ve already tried

• Dry January (you got through it, then February looked the same)
• A specific limit you set and broke
• Telling yourself you only drink wine, only socially, only in the evening
• Drinking tracker apps
• Switching to lower-alcohol options
• Telling yourself you’re not as bad as someone else you know
• Pretending it’s not a problem

The drinking is back at the same level.

Is my drinking a problem?

Why “moderation” is hard

You very likely came up with drinking as a normal part of household culture. You may have grown up watching parents drink to take the edge off, and you absorbed the practice as the way adults handle stress. You may have absorbed cultural messages that frame drinking as the reward for getting through the day, and the reward has become the operating system of the evening. You may have lived through a stretch when the drinking was helping you get through something specific, and the helping never stopped being needed because you never addressed what was needing to be helped.

Moderation is hard because the drinking has been doing work. The work isn’t going away just because you’ve reduced the amount. The amount creeps back because the work is still required and the drinking is still the available tool.

For the related patterns, see I’m an alcoholic or I drink to fall asleep. For the broader framework, see I have an addiction .

Your drinking is one tool. It has been doing work other tools could do without the cost.

How we work with it

In strategic therapy we look at what your drinking has been quietly doing for you and at the small daily habits (the pour at six, the second glass with dinner, the nightcap) that keep the bottle within reach. You stop needing the wine to take the edge off because we change what’s been producing the edge.

You’ll drink less because the work the wine has been doing for you starts getting done by you.