110: 7 Myths About Moderation That Stop You Drinking Mindfully

In this episode of the Mindful Drinking & Moderation in Midlife Podcast, I’m busting seven of the biggest myths about moderation and mindful drinking. From the nonsense that drinking has to be “all or nothing,” to the idea that you have to count every single drink forever, or that moderation won’t do anything for your health — I’m setting the record straight. 

I’ll share why drinking ‘less’ is still real change, how we can reshape decades of midlife habits, and why moderation isn’t just for the young or for people or those with “a problem.” 

If you’re exploring low, no or light alcohol options, curious about mindful drinking, or just want to build a healthier relationship with alcohol, this one’s for you — packed with truths to help you live a life less intoxicated, on your own terms.

0:00 Busting Moderation Myths Wide Open

2:14 Myth 1: Moderation Isn't Real Change

4:30 Myth 2: Counting Every Drink Forever

7:57 Myth 3: Always Falling Back to Old Habits

15:02 Myth 4: You Won't Improve Your Health Unless You're Sober

18:57 Myth 5: Only For Problem Drinkers

22:18 Myth 6: Just Another Trend

25:44 Myth 7: Only For Young People

Find me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/denisehamiltonmace/

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Chapters

• 0:00 Busting Moderation Myths Wide Open
• 2:14 Myth 1: Moderation Isn't Real Change
• 4:30 Myth 2: Counting Every Drink Forever
• 7:57 Myth 3: Always Falling Back to Old Habits
• 15:02 Myth 4: You Won't Improve Your Health Unless You're Sober
• 18:57 Myth 5: Only For Problem Drinkers
• 22:18 Myth 6: Just Another Trend
• 25:44 Myth 7: Only For Young People

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:42

Let's bust some myths wide open today, because there is too much hearsay, too much armchair psychology and too much uninformed guesswork in the low, no and light space around moderation and mindful drinking. And I want you to be armed with the truth because, truth be told, moderation isn't for everybody, but nothing is for everybody. But if you are prepared to explore it, investigate it and to give it the time and attention and care that it needs, then you might, might just find that moderation, mindful drinking, is the path that works best for you. Welcome to the show you are listening to, the Mindful Drinking and Moderation in Midlife podcast with me, denise Hamilton-Mace. I am your mindful drinking mentor and I am here to help you build, design and create a life less intoxicated, on your own terms, without judgment or expectation. Okay, we're going to dive in with some quick fire myth busting. Today I've got seven for you. I don't know why I always do seven of things. It must be my lucky number, and do excuse me for that little clearing of the throat if I sound a little bit croaky today. I am a tad bit under the weather, but I'm going to soldier on because I really want to get this episode done for you, because I think it's really important that you get the truth behind some of these fallacies that are out there. All right, ready, let's go. Myth number one moderation isn't real change. If you want to make change, it's either all or nothing. Okay, right, I am not down with this whatsoever. Moderation is absolutely real change. Now, I've already said that it's not for everybody, so let's put that caveat aside.

Speaker 1: 2:36

Black and white thinking that you either have to remove alcohol entirely from your life or you're not making a significant change does not help the vast majority of people who, shocker do moderate on a day-to-day basis. Okay, we all do. Whenever you've been out for a drink with friends, you've been out for dinner, whenever you've turned down that next glass of wine, whenever you've decided not to go on to the next club, whenever you've decided that you're actually going to get an early night and not have another beer, that is moderating. That is, you deciding that this next drink isn't going to serve me and therefore I'm not going to have it. Moderation is harder than abstinence, absolutely. As I always say, if you feel that you have a life damaging problem with alcohol, then this sort of path isn't right for you and you should definitely seek professional help from those qualified clinicians who are there to help people who have those needs. 100%.

Speaker 1: 3:33

For the rest of us, deciding to drink less, deciding to be more mindful about the times when we do drink, is a very valid way to recognize that. Do you know what I enjoy a drink? I like having alcohol in my life. I'm not ready yet to remove it entirely, but I would like the way that it shows up in my life to look different, and that's all it is. It's about making different choices, about the way that you allow alcohol to show up in your life, being mindful of how that drink is going to impact you and deciding whether or not you think it's worth the costs because it does come with costs in return for the reward that you get of drinking it, and only you can make that decision for yourself. I can't make it for you, no one else can make it for you. But the fact that you decide to moderate instead of removing alcohol entirely is not a failure. It is not all or nothing. It's about finding the right path for the right person.

Speaker 1: 4:30

Okay, myth number two you have to count every single drink for the rest of your life. That sounds tedious, doesn't it? It really does, and I've got to be honest with you, if that was what moderation and mindful drinking entailed in its entirety, then I likely wouldn't have chosen it as a path for myself. Now, I've spoken many times about the difference between active moderation and passive moderation, active moderation being those times like a dry January or a sober October, or perhaps whenever you set yourself other strict rules. Some that I've heard some people do are things like only after 6pm, only on the weekends, never more than one drink an hour, only with food, whatever it might be. That's your active moderation. Passive moderation is when you've moved from thinking about every drink that you're having and making a conscious decision every time, to your drinking patterns and changes in behavior becoming a greater part of who you are as a person. It's when you have changed your belief system around alcohol and where it fits in your life to the point that you no longer need to make an in-depth, detailed pros and cons decision about every drink that you have, because it's become an intrinsic part of who you are to recognize when, if and how alcohol serves you in your life.

Speaker 1: 5:56

There are a lot of people out there who count their sober days, for example, whether they're going completely teetotal or whether they're taking a break. And one of the things that has taken me away from Instagram. It's not my space anymore. Sorry, if you've ever tried to reach out to me on there. I'm kind of there, but I'm mostly on LinkedIn. But one of the reasons why I've moved away from it is because there would be so many posts on a daily basis of people sharing their sober days count and other people celebrating it as well. They should, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying we shouldn't celebrate that, but what happens is it makes other people people like me, for instance, who don't have a sober days count wonder if their journey is just as valid because they're not counting every single drinking decision or non-drinking decision that they are making. I don't know when the last time was that I had an alcohol full drink because I didn't make a conscious decision one morning after waking up going. This is the changing point for the rest of my life. I'm never touching a drop, ever again, and a lot of people are like that.

Speaker 1: 7:03

A lot of people haven't made a huge declaration that this is going to be the day that changes the rest of their lives. A lot of people are like me, and quite possibly you, who have just decided that they want to drink a little less alcohol, a little more often, so that they can see if they can have an improvement on their quality of life in the areas that matter most to them on their quality of life in the areas that matter most to them, and that is absolutely fine. To do that, you don't need to have to count every single drink to, like I said, make a big pros and cons list for every occasion. You don't need to have a sober days count. What you need to do is to start to recognize the impact alcohol is having on your life and make a decision about how you want that to change. Follow through on those decisions until you've reached a point where you started to internalize the change that you want to make, and then you'll find those decisions come naturally a lot easier anyway.

Speaker 1: 7:57

Myth number three is that if you are moderating and alcohol is still present in your life, that you will always fall back into old habits in your life. That you will always fall back into old habits. I am living proof that that isn't true. But let's unpack it a little bit more, because I appreciate this isn't about my journey, this is about your journey and find out why that myth might or might not be true to you. So, first of all, if you are a midlife drinker, the likelihood is that you have several decades of habit behind the way that you are drinking now, from your early days as a kid and seeing how your parents and the other adults in your life interacted with alcohol, to those first drinks down the park with cans of white lightning or special case cider other awful ciders are available a packet of 20 B&H or silk cut, trying to be cool, staying out late, feeling like you're all grown up. To moving on to your youth, where you were out in the pub as your rite of passage, when you had your first pint at maybe 16, when it should have been 18, to all the other things that are built up over the last couple of decades, to the drinking formation that you are in now.

Speaker 1: 9:10

The hardest part about making a change and I know this because you've told me from one of the surveys that I have out on my sub stack where I asked what one of the biggest challenges about mindful drinking in midlife and so far, 50% of people who've responded have said changing decades of habit. So that is a real big challenge and it is a real big hurdle you have to get over. Now I do have planned an episode for you on habit formation and habit stacking and habit breaking, but, in brief, the reason why it's so hard as you get older is that you have so much history about creating these habits. You have a trigger that causes your action, which leads to a reward that you are trying to receive. The trigger may be a stressful day at work. It might be the kids driving you crazy, it might be your other half just being a pain in the ass. The reward is the feeling that you get afterwards. It is that feeling of relaxation. It is the removal of stress. It is maybe falling asleep quicker.

Speaker 1: 10:15

The trigger and the reward are the two things in habit formation that are very difficult to change, because the thing that stresses you is always going to be a thing that stresses you and the reward that you want to receive afterwards is always going to be you wanted to feel better in some way. The thing that stresses you is always going to be a thing that stresses you, and the reward that you want to receive afterwards is always going to be you wanted to feel better in some way, the thing that you have control over is the thing in the middle, and that is the action. The action is taking that drink, it's having a cigarette, it's eating that extra bit of cake, whatever that habit is in the middle, and what we need to do is to train our minds to recognize that, whilst the triggers still exist and the reward is still desired, we have the ability to change the habit, the action in the middle, so that we have different outcomes. That isn't easy. Okay, I'm not here to pretend that any of this is easy, but it is doable and it is possible. And it's about you learning what your triggers are. It's about learning what rewards you want to receive and it's about you learning how you can give yourself those different rewards when those triggers hit, so that you can take different actions and not slide back into old habits that you might not want to be repeating Now.

Speaker 1: 12:58

As you can tell, this is a huge subject. That's why I said I'm going to do another episode on it for you. But know that it takes time to change habits. It takes time to recognize what your triggers are, to understand what rewards you want to achieve and to learn new behaviors, to change those actions. And just because on your mindful drinking or moderation journey, you might have nights where you go out and you drink more than you intended to, more than you would have liked to, it doesn't mean that you are incapable of making these changes. What it means is that you are human and that you made an error or a mistake or a misjudgment based on what you were trying to achieve. But now what you have is you have knowledge, you have feedback and you have the ability to internalize that, to use it to iterate on your actions for the next time that you are out and make the changes that are going to affect the positive results that you're trying to achieve in your life.

Speaker 1: 14:03

So, absolutely, for some people, alcohol being around is going to be more of a trigger than for others, but the truth is that we live in a world where alcohol is prevalent. It is advertised on our TVs, it is filling our supermarket aisles, it is at our kids' birthday parties, it is everywhere you go, whether it's to the pub or to the restaurant. If you go out for a picnic, there are people drinking alcohol. So, assuming that you can't moderate, because there might be times when you'd be triggered to drink more than you wanted is basically setting yourself up for failure, because the alcohol is going to be around all the time. But you have the power to take back control of choice from alcohol, and that is what a mindful drinking or moderating lifestyle gives you gives you the ability to take back the power of choice from alcohol.

Speaker 1: 14:55

Okay, moving on now to myth number four, and that is that moderation won't help to improve your health. The only way to improve your health is through complete and total abstinence. Now let me start this one off by, uh, stating that I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice. Uh, you should always speak to your gp if you do have medical concerns about how healthy your habits are.

Speaker 1: 15:19

The World Health Organization, the WHO, advises that no amount of alcohol is considered safe for human consumption. Here in the UK, the medical advice is that adults should have up to 14, or could have up to 14 units of alcohol per week. For your reference here, just so you know, the average pint or large glass of wine contains around about three units, depending on how strong it is. So if you have five glasses of wine or five pints of beer in a week, you're likely going slightly over the recommended government advice as to what's a safe amount to drink here in the UK. Now what I can say is that mindful drinking or moderating your alcohol intake reduces the amount of alcohol you consume on a weekly basis, and that that reduction of alcohol is healthier than drinking the amount that you would have been drinking before you made the reduction. Okay, reducing your alcohol intake is healthier for your body. Alcohol is a toxin and your liver has to work extremely hard, so does your kidney, so does your heart, to remove that toxin from your body, from your bloodstream, from your organs, from your brain. Now, this isn't about fear-mongering. You know that's not my bag. This is about giving you facts so that you can make informed choices.

Speaker 1: 16:45

Reducing your alcohol intake is better for your liver, your kidneys, your heart, your brain. It helps you get clearer skin. It helps you get better sleep. It helps your cognition. It helps improve your brain. It helps you get clearer skin. It helps you get better sleep. It helps your cognition. It helps improve your memory. It helps clear brain fog. It helps you have a better night's sleep. It helps you with your willpower, which means that later on in the day, when you're about to go out and you want to drink less, but you're not sure that you can. You have more willpower to be able to make healthier choices. To drink less, which therefore means you'll have better sleep, better cognition, better memory, so on and so forth.

Speaker 1: 17:19

Okay, reducing your alcohol intake by any amount is a healthier choice than not reducing it. So if you're not ready to remove alcohol from your life entirely yet, if you're not the kind of person who wants to go completely sober, then by drinking mindfully, by zebra striping when you're out, or bookending or coasting through mid-strength drinks, you're reducing the amount of alcohol you're consuming. You're making a healthier choice for your body. Now, in the long term, it's entirely, of course, up to you how far down that path of reduction that you want to go. Entirely of course, up to you how far down that path of reduction that you want to go. But what I would say to anyone who pooh-poohs the moderation path is that anytime somebody can reduce the amount of alcohol that they are consuming, they are making positive choices for their life, for their physical health, for their mental health, for their emotional well-being, for their family, for their careers, for getting up in the morning to take the kids to school without screaming at them for being able to have a good weekend and enjoy the days rather than lying in bed hanging out your ass because you overdid it again. So whilst moderation and mindful drinking might not be the healthiest way you can incorporate a relationship with alcohol in your life, being that it is still some alcohol and not none at all, it's most certainly healthier than continuing to drink in a way that you've already recognised isn't serving you otherwise you wouldn't be here today.

Speaker 1: 18:50

Myth number five is that moderation is only for people who have a drinking problem. Okay, I've got to call bullshit on this one. Moderation is for anybody who wants to optimize their lifestyle, their well-being, their health. It is not about waiting until you hit a proverbial rock bottom to decide that it's time for you to make a change for the better. What even is rock bottom anyway? It looks so different for so many people. Rock bottom is simply the point at which you've decided that enough is enough and you're not prepared to go any further down what you perceive to be a negative track for yourself.

Speaker 1: 19:32

But why do you have to wait until you get to that point before you make a change? If you've heard me on other shows, I've explained that. The reason why I have my platform, the reason why the Lono Drinker platform exists, the reason why I make the podcast, the reason why I was producing the magazine, is because I want to help people before they get to the point where they have to make life-altering, mega decisions, such as swearing off alcohol for the rest of their lives. Now I'm all for people deciding that they want to go completely alcohol-free. More power to you. You have my full support. But how about we help people before they get to that point, so that they can recognize that they do have choices, they do have options, that you can still go out and have a great time and have adult drinks that taste amazing and enjoy adult company and adult circumstances without too many adult consequences?

Speaker 1: 20:27

You don't have to have identified yourself as having alcohol use disorder, which is the term that we are now using instead of alcoholism, but you don't. Whatever term you want to use, you don't have to label yourself with that condition before you decide that you want to have a better, more positive relationship with alcohol in your life. Maybe you're a busy parent and you need better sleep and more energy. Maybe you've recognized that you're putting on a little bit of weight around the middle, which happens in midlife. Our hormones change, our metabolism changes. That's for men and for women, by the way, that hormone change and you spend more time sitting down in a chair doing your important, busy office work. It takes you longer to get back up out of the chair. You make those old person noises when you're trying to get up and move around, and you've recognized that alcohol plays a role in all of this.

Speaker 1: 21:29

You know you want a better quality of life. You want more clarity. You want less arguments with your other half, you want more patience with your kids. You want more efficiency when you work. These are all perfectly valid reasons to go. Do you know what? I don't want that drink tonight. Let me save it for the weekend, or let me wait until there's a special occasion, or I'm only going to have it when there's something I know that I really, really enjoy. Whatever the reasons are, whatever the way that you want to manifest it, you don't need to have a rock bottom justification to decide that you're ready to make a positive choice for your life. I mean, how ridiculous is it to think that you have to have something really negative happen before you decide to do something positive.

Speaker 1: 22:11

Myth number six. Myth number six is that this is just another trend. It's just like kale smoothies and veganism it's not going to last. Well, I'm here to tell you that that is not the case. It is not the low-no-drinks industry we'll start. There has been around as we know it for around about 10 years or so. It's not even old enough to drink itself, but it's only in the last four or five years that we've seen a massive explosion in the quantity and quality of drinks that are available to us to us.

Speaker 1: 22:48

And the reason why we've seen this explosion in the last few years is because consumers, drinkers, moderators like me and like you have said to the drinks industry we need better choices, we want better quality, we want more options and we want them now, unlike the alcohol industry. Unlike the alcohol industry, which is a self-sufficient industry which is promoting its wares to you or adverts on TV, the way that you see drinks absolutely everywhere, the way that alcohol products and styles have owned certain times of the day or certain times of the year I mean, have you ever had a Bailey's outside of December? No, that brand has owned that time of year. So they've not needed to perpetuate their drinks in the way that alcohol-free is trying to do now. What's different for the alcohol-free drinks movement is that it is led by the consumer, and it is fascinating watching how brands are being forced to react and respond to the demands of people like you and me who have said we want to drink less alcohol but we want to drink better drinks.

Speaker 1: 24:08

This is not a fad, this is not a phase. This is an entire culture shift which is perpetuating an industry which is growing so that it can bring more people into it, who are then demanding better drinks and making the industry get better to bring more people into it. But you see how this cycle is just moving upwards in a way that is serving us all. The other points to recognize is that, since the life-changing anomaly that was the pandemic several years ago, so many people have now recognized that they want to take better care of their physical and mental health. Particularly the way that we are looking at how we treat ourselves, how we treat the people that we love, how we look after ourselves, is changed fundamentally and it has changed forever. When we look at the way that people are drinking now, we can see that this is a global shift. This isn't just a little fad that's taking place in one small, quiet corner of England. This is happening worldwide, so much so, in fact, that low and no beer for 2025 is set to overtake ale as the second largest category of beer globally, after lager, by the end of the year. Now, if that doesn't tell you that this isn't a fad, then I don't know what else will.

Speaker 1: 25:38

And finally, myth number seven is that this is only for the young people, for the Gen Zers, for the younger generation, it's for the kids. Okay, I've just given you some really significant numbers about the way that people are drinking, and let me give you another one. According to cam insight, 74 percent of UK Brits are actively moderating their alcohol intake in some way, shape or form. This year 74 percent. Now, I am not a statistician, but I am going to go out on a limb and say that if that's 74% of people, that's not just young people, okay, that is people of all ages, of all generations. And I've got a perfect example of this for you inside the last issue of Lono Drinker magazine. And I say last not just because it's the most recent, but it is the last. If you weren't aware, I am sunsetting the magazine.

Speaker 1: 26:33

Inside that last issue, we have an interview with a lovely gentleman called Eamon. Eamon lives in Ireland and he contacted me a while ago after discovering the Lono Drinker platform to say that he wanted to share his story Because, at years old, eamon had decided that he was done with drinking and that it was his time to remove alcohol from his life. Now, whilst Eamon decided that he was going completely teetotal and that is not necessarily the goal of everyone who is listening to this show what it does is it exemplifies the fact that it doesn't matter how old you are. It doesn't matter whether you're 20 or 70. You are never too old to decide to make a change to the way that alcohol shows up in your life.

Speaker 1: 27:23

At 76 years old, eamon decided that he wanted to put his health and well-being first and make sure that with his remaining time with his family, with his grandkids, with his friends, was spent with clarity and presence and enthusiasm, so that he could show up and be at the best version of himself and make the most out of his life. And if he can do it at 76 years old, then we can do it no matter what age we are. Okay, that is it from me for this week. I am going to go and make myself a Lemsip and I hope that you are going to go forth and take some of this information and recognize that just because you hear people spouting myths and their opinions about moderation, about mindful drinking, it doesn't mean that their opinions have to apply to your life. This is your choice, these are your decisions, this is your life, and you have every right to drink your own way. All right, thank you for listening. I will catch you next time and cheers to a life less intoxicated.