Use Your Identity to Stop Overdrinking
Drinking is tricky. It’s easy to do and gives you quick pleasure, but over time it can ruin your life or even kill you. When drinking reaches the level of Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD), there’s little choice but to make some big changes.
Whether you want to drink less or stop drinking, the journey toward a healthier relationship with alcohol is daunting. AUD is complicated, so overcoming it requires a multifaceted approach, and many people don’t know where to begin.
At LifeBac, we believe that understanding and confronting the various elements of AUD are crucial for success, so we want to highlight one element that people often forget. One of the most overlooked facets of AUD is identity.
In this case, when we say identity, we mean the way one perceives and presents themselves. People who struggle with alcohol often have to struggle with their identity. If you’re one of those people, it’s important to spend time considering your identity and how it affects you. Doing so can be crucial for overcoming alcohol issues.
How Identity is Different for People with AUD
Identity is informed by two main things: 1) how you act and 2) how others respond to it. Typically, your behavior leads the way — because you act a certain way, you think of yourself as “being” that way.
When people see you acting a certain way, they think of you as “being” that way. They treat you like the person they think you are, you take in that feedback, and it affects how you act in the future.
Typically, the first interaction you have with someone is a conversation. You talk about how things are going, what’s going on in your life, and you ask questions about their life. It’s the easiest action to change, so it’s a good place to begin.
Now, when you change the way you talk about yourself, you can’t stray too far from the way you act. In other words, you can’t drink 10 beers every day but tell people you don’t drink — that won’t help you. The goal is to make small changes in the way you identify yourself that help you maintain and encourage the progress you are making.
By making those small changes in the way you identify yourself, you can make positive changes in the way you act. Additionally, changing the way you identify yourself can also change the way that other people act toward you.
Consider this example: If you ask someone if they drink, and they reply, “Yes, I drink,” it tells one story. If you ask someone the same question and they reply, “Yes, I’m a drinker,” it conveys another. With the latter response, they are likely to be perceived as someone who drinks more than the average person.
More importantly, how someone thinks and speaks about themselves affects the way they perceive themselves. This is a bigger issue because the way you think about yourself has a huge impact on how you act. If you say, “Yes, I’m a drinker,” you are expressing to yourself that drinking defines you. Conversely, if you say “Yes, I drink,” you express that drinking is part of you, but not a defining part.
External Pressure
In addition to the personal pressures that your identity generates, there are also external pressures. Advertisements and media often depict drinking in ways that make it seem appealing, and they often focus on children. Specifically, there are films and commercials that — whether unintentionally or intentionally — show binge drinking in a favorable light.
In movies like Project X, excessive drinking is made to look fun, cool, and typical. They depict a particular identity; the message they send is that the fun, cool, normal person is the one who drinks excessively. Such movies normalize a dangerous behavior that, in reality, can progress into AUD.
Social situations can also add external pressure. In certain situations like weddings or parties, drinking might be expected. As a result, you might feel pressured by the identity that you don’t want.
In some social situations, you might not want to be the one who toasts with water or declines every offered drink because you’re worried about being a wet blanket. Especially when you still have cravings and want to drink, this can be a tough pressure to deal with.
Perhaps the most common and difficult external pressure comes from the people you know. Almost everyone knows a “pusher” — someone who pushes drinks on everyone else. Their persistence can be hard to resist, particularly if you don’t want to share your situation with the pusher.
So what can be done about these external pressures? You can’t change these factors, so you have to look inward. Recognize these influences when they appear and come up with a plan — know your identity, and make it help you out.
Am I an Alcoholic?
At LifeBac, we try to avoid the term “alcoholic.” It’s been polluted by misconceptions that don’t apply to many people who struggle to control their drinking. Those misconceptions have stigmatized the word “alcoholic,” and for many people, stigmatization only hurts the effort to regain control.
Referring to yourself as an alcoholic might not feel accurate, even if you acknowledge that you struggle to control your drinking. Confronting that struggle is hard enough, and seeking help is even harder — adding self-stigmatization may be a breaking point for some people.
This isn’t to say programs that require or encourage their members to call themselves alcoholics are necessarily “bad” or ineffective — it’s a case-by-case issue. For some people, that tactic helps them remember that they don’t want to be the person they are when they drink. However, there are many people for whom it is not a useful technique.
LifeBac is the opposite side of the alcohol treatment coin. For anyone who doesn’t benefit from addressing themselves as an alcoholic, we are an alternative; to us, a drinking problem is just that — a problem. It doesn’t define you, and it can be overcome.
