The Gray Area: When Does Drinking Become More Than Social?

In this deeply honest episode of The Pink Cloud Frequency, we explore the “gray area” of alcohol use, which is the space between occasional drinking and full physical dependence where many women quietly struggle.

This episode challenges the binary thinking that tells women their drinking is either “fine” or they must be an “alcoholic.” Instead, we look at alcohol use on a spectrum, and unpack the emotional, psychological, and behavioral patterns that can signal a problematic relationship with alcohol long before physical addiction appears. You’ll learn why so many women remain stuck in the “gray area”, and what questions to ask yourself the to help build awareness of your own relationship.

If you’ve ever questioned your drinking but convinced yourself it “isn’t that bad,” this episode offers a compassionate and eye-opening look at the gray area so many women quietly live in — and the freedom that becomes possible when you stop waiting for things to get worse before you change.

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Transcript

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Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Pink Cloud Frequency. I am your host, Brianna Wynne. And today's episode is all about the spectrum of alcohol use in women because we have rare occasional drinking on one side, and then we have physical dependence on the other side. But in the middle, we have this gray area. And the gray area encompasses women who identify as social drinkers, as moderate drinkers, and as high-functioning drinkers, yet increasingly rely on alcohol emotionally, psychologically, and socially. So the goal of this episode is to identify what that really looks like and how that shows up in your life, and to challenge that binary thinking around alcoholism and help women recognize that alcohol problems are not defined solely by quantity. Alcohol problems are not defined by how often or how rarely you drink, but more so by your relationship with drinking. So historically, right, we have been taught that there's only two categories of drinkers. We have people who drink alcohol, and then we have alcoholics. And alcoholics are, of course, physically dependent on alcohol. But usually when we are talking about alcoholism as a whole, we're really not talking about physical dependency, are we? No. When we think of alcoholic, we think of people who have lost their functioning, let's say, as a result of alcohol. So maybe someone has gone through a divorce. Maybe they've lost their house. Maybe they've lost a job. Maybe they've lost custody of their children. Maybe they have gotten into an accident. It can be so many different things, right? It can be homelessness. That's also what we see alcoholism as. We see it as homelessness, people with no jobs at all. But we tend to group drinking into that extreme category. And then everything else follows below that category. If we're not an alcoholic, then our drinking is fine. And all of our drinking behaviors are going to fall under that umbrella of being fine. But the reality is far more complex, right? Because there's a spectrum that drinking exists on. You can be an occasional drinker, you can be a social drinker, a moderate drinker, you can be a habitual drinker, you can drink to cope with your emotions. And eventually that starts to get into the other side of the spectrum of problematic drinking, of alcohol dependence, of severe physical addiction, right? That would be all the way at the end of the spectrum. But most women who struggle with alcohol, they don't identify as alcoholics, and their drinking doesn't fall all the way to the right of the spectrum. And in fact, more than half of US adults drink alcohol, but roughly only 17% report binge drinking behaviors. So that means that millions of people are drinking in ways that are going to increase their health risks, but their lives still appear stable from the outside. And that's again because problematic drinking doesn't always look dramatic. It's not always the homeless person on the side of the street or the person that lost everything due to alcoholism. And because we assume that alcohol misuse has to look that extreme that it has to involve chaos or some rock bottom moments or physical dependence. What we do is we overlook our own relationship with alcohol. And that's in fact the place that most women live. Alcohol-related harm happens among people who appear highly functional. And the CDC has also stated that most excessive drinkers are not alcohol dependent. So you are likely still successful functioning professionally, raising a family or caretaking or maintaining relationships. Your drinking is probably socially accepted, and your drinking is probably within culturally normalized amounts. And because your life is still working on the outset, it becomes easy to dismiss those warning signs, even though alcohol may be taking up more space in your life than you want it to. So sure, you're not waking up and needing alcohol to function. You're not grabbing a beer at 9 or 10 a.m. You are not drinking from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. You do not experience withdrawal symptoms when you take a couple days off. You don't need detox, you don't need rehab or medical supervision. You're not physically dependent on alcohol. So you keep dismissing the fact that your alcohol usage has become a problem for you. Because you are past the point of having just a glass of champagne at weddings once every year. You're past the point of celebratory drinking where, you know, maybe you just drink once a month at a birthday or a graduation and you wake up, you feel fine, you don't have shame. You're past the point of that infrequent alcohol use that's not run by your emotions. You are at the point where you probably drink every weekend. You are drinking too unwind. You rely on wine after a stressful day at work. You look forward to a glass of wine when your baby's crying in your arms. You can't wait to get home after a long day of sports games for your children and sit down, watch a TV show, and have your glass of wine. You swear you're only going to have one or two, but then next thing you know, you're a bottle in. You might be at a point where you obsess about moderating and you tell yourself all these rules that you're going to follow when it comes to your drinking behaviors. You are probably at the point where you feel guilt or shame after you drink. And you keep justifying it because you're getting that external validation. Because you don't see yourself as an alcoholic, and nobody else sees you as an alcoholic, and because your life isn't in shambles. So you are able to keep going against what your internal self is telling you because the external hasn't met up yet. You haven't gone through the ringer, your life isn't in shambles. So no one is telling you, hey, you should take a look at your drinking, or maybe you should quit, or, you know, have you ever considered this instead? No one's really telling you that. So even though you might have that internal awareness, you keep pushing that off and pushing that off. And that's where most women who are drinkers live. Quantity alone is not telling the full story. Two women can drink the same exact amount of alcohol, but have a completely different relationship with alcohol. One woman is waking up with the guilt and the shame, and the other isn't. So questions that would help you better explore what your relationship with alcohol is would be why are you drinking in the first place? What emotional state triggers your drinking? Are you using alcohol to cope? Do you feel anxious without alcohol? Do you lose control once you start drinking? Do you think about alcohol excessively? Do you need alcohol to relax? Are you using alcohol to escape yourself or your negative emotions? Research shows that alcohol use and misuse among women have been increasing over time because women are dealing with adverse emotions and emotional labor of the household with caregiving, with burnout, with perfectionism, with identity pressure. And these are the women who are not drinking for pleasure anymore. They're overwhelmed. And this is probably where you fall, where you're drinking to reduce your anxiety and numb your stress and escape that overwhelmed feeling. Because the quickest in the fastest, the quickest and the fastest, the fastest and most effective way to do that is through alcohol. While it does not work long term, of course, it temporarily removes that discomfort. So now, because women are dealing with caregiving and everything else and have this pressure to hold everything together and make it look good on the outside, alcohol is positioned as that sort of relief and reward and self-care and escape. So while you may be saying that you only drink socially or moderately, the reality is alcohol feels necessary in order for you to feel relaxed, connected, confident, celebrated. It feels necessary to endure any level of discomfort. And when that is true, what is also true is that alcohol already holds psychological power over you. When alcohol becomes your primary emotional regulation tool, that relationship you have with it is now precarious. Because now you are inching closer to that right side of the spectrum where physical dependence lives. So while you may not currently be physically dependent on alcohol, alcohol is progressive. And if you continue drinking in this manner and on a regular basis, then you may very well be physically dependent on alcohol in the near future. But perhaps more importantly is social drinking is still a form of dependency, right? The psychological dependency. Because if you can't socialize comfortably without alcohol, if you don't feel confident without alcohol, if you feel like you need a beverage before you can dance or before you can give a speech, or if you can't relax without it or celebrate without it or tolerate any level of discomfort without it, then you're already dependent. When you're using alcohol as a social lubricant and as your soul coping mechanism, your brain has already learned that conditioned association. And now your brain is linking alcohol to connection, confidence, fun, belonging, relief, all those things. And eventually socializing itself and needing relief, that's going to trigger those cravings for alcohol. So even if you're telling yourself, oh, you only drink at dinner, you only drink on vacation, you only drink at this party or at this girl's night, yet you're unable to enjoy those situations with alcohol, that still reflects psychological dependence, right? Social dependence. And the unique thing is that if you're, if you let's say you are physically dependent on alcohol, right? You know you have a problem. Let's say you have gone through rock bottoms, you know you have a problem. And what is the first step in changing your behavior is awareness. If you're physically dependent on alcohol, if your life is in shambles, if you've got shit going on, you know, every day or every week or every month due to your alcohol misuse, you there's no denying it. You have to come to terms with changing your behavior. Maybe you don't change your behavior, but you cannot deny the fact that it's a problem. And so when you are not physically dependent, and when you haven't had all of these major life-altering events due to your drinking behavior, you keep giving yourself that pass. You keep telling yourself that your drinking is okay. Even though deep down somewhere, you know that's not really true. But again, you're still getting that external validation. So you're not willing to confront it head on and just say, hey, this might actually be a problem, and I might want to make some changes in my life. So that's that's you know, the whole thing with the psychological dependency is that it really is subtle and it shows up subtly. It's not like, you know, you're hanging out with a group of women and everyone at the table is drinking as a form of relief. So you're not questioning it. But if one of those women at the table was, you know, putting back drink after drink after drink after drink, and then and then some tumultuous situation happened afterwards, of course, you would be like, oh my gosh, like she needs help. She's probably an alcoholic, right? But that so often isn't the case. And problems with drinking gray area drinking specifically show up more quietly. And I actually, I remember there was a period, this is before I had quit drinking completely, but there was a period where I had stopped drinking for almost a month. And I've had several of these throughout the years, right? I've drank for a long time. And um there was a period where I stopped drinking for almost a month. I went out with some people, and there was a group of us, and one of the people in the group asked if I wanted a drink. And I said no, thank you. They asked me again if I wanted a drink. I repeated myself, no, thank you. And again, at that point, I wasn't fully committed to an alcohol-free lifestyle. I was in the gray area. I was taking a break. And at that point, I hadn't identified alcohol as the common denominator in that limited feeling and that depleted feeling. So I would say in the moment, I was a little bit susceptible. But long story short, I had said no two times. I don't want to drink, and that person ordered me a drink, gave me the drink, and what did I do? I drank the drink. And I don't, of course, that person wasn't trying to harm me. Because when you don't drink, it makes other people feel uncomfortable. And your decision not to drink can force people to look at their own drinking, even unconsciously. And a lot of people want you to participate with them because it validates what they're doing. Again, external validation. And this is another example of why moderation can feel so difficult for people, because it's not always just your own cravings or impulses that you're fighting. Sometimes it's just social pressure, sometimes it's the conditioning, sometimes it's the subtle expectation that everyone should drink together. But after that had happened, I remember feeling regret. And no, not because something terrible happened, but simply because I knew wholeheartedly that that drink added nothing to the experience. It didn't make me feel better. I didn't feel more connected. And I just felt disappointed in myself because deep down I had known I wanted to keep pushing further without alcohol. While again, I wasn't fully committed to quitting, but I knew I wanted to take a break and I wanted to see how long I could push it. And instead of me making that decision, someone else, in a way, was making it for me. Ultimately, the final choice is on me. I could have just been like, I told you twice I didn't want to drink. Please drink this yourself. But no, I drank it. But that's an example of not being physically dependent on alcohol, yet still being psychologically vulnerable, still being in that gray area. If someone came up to me right now and said, Do you want a cigarette? I mean, I don't smoke cigarettes. And then they asked me two times, Do you want a cigarette? No, no. And then they came and brought me a cigarette. Do you think I'd smoke it? Of course not. I don't eat pork. If someone came up to me, and it's a it's a dietary preference, it's not a religious thing or anything like that, but if someone came up to me and said, Here, eat this, eat this ham, eat this ham, do you think I'm just gonna say yes just to say it? No, of course not. And for the person who bought me the drink, right? What do you think it says about them? Because that person is unable to conceptualize that alcohol isn't everything to everyone as it is to them. Alcohol isn't a requirement for socializing. If I gave that person who bought me the drink and gave them something that they told me they didn't want two times, and I gave it to them, would that person react, you know, comfortably? No, probably not. But this is what people do with alcohol. And only with alcohol, with nothing else would that be acceptable, where you tell someone you don't want something more than one time and they give it to you anyway. That would not be accepted. But again, we're living in this facade where everyone, not everyone, but most people view alcohol as the social lubricant, the need for, you know, socializing and all of these things that we've already talked about. So it wasn't just me who was in a gray area. If I tell someone no, I don't want to drink and they buy it for me anyway, what what where on the spectrum do you think that person falls? Absolutely in this whole gray area that we're talking about. Alcohol use escalates gradually, and in that process, it's being validated in our environment, and it allows for that gradual progression to be unchecked. So alcohol dependency, physical dependency isn't something that happens overnight, it escalates slowly. One glass of wine becomes two, two glasses of wine becomes one bottle. Weekend drinking becomes weekday drinking. Social drinking becomes solitary drinking. Drinking for fun now becomes drinking for relief. And over time, your tolerance changes, your brain adapts in what once felt like occasional drinking can slowly turn into habitual drinking. And there's no place left to go but to physical dependence. And women experience alcohol-related harm faster than men because we have a lower body water percentage. We have hormonal differences, so we metabolize alcohol differently. And women are at a higher risk for alcohol-related problems, even with lower levels of drinking. So, more oftentimes than not, it's women who are going to experience those consequences of alcohol sooner, physically, emotionally, and neurologically. So that's why it's so important to develop that awareness and to stop approaching drinking with that binary mindset. It's either this or it's this. Because what it is, is it's everything in between. Most people you know are not alcoholics. You're probably not an alcoholic. And again, if you were, that would whip you into change probably a lot faster. But looking at drinking with this perspective of it can only be this or this, that's that's what's gonna keep you stuck. Telling yourself that you're not an alcoholic, so you don't have that label, that's what keeps you stuck. That's what keeps you in the gray area. Because you keep comparing yourself to people that you are not, to people who drink worse than you. So you're not that bad. And society normalizes that for you. But the question isn't whether or not you're an alcoholic. It's is alcohol taking more from you than it's giving. Can you see other possibilities for your life that are being limited by alcohol? Can you see an identity for yourself beyond alcohol? You don't need to have this big rock bottom or physical dependence before you see that this substance is not adding significant value to your life. And you are allowed to change your relationship with alcohol before it gets any worse. So if you are at the point where you're drinking because you're anxious or stressed or exhausted, or you're drinking because you can't see yourself socializing without it, or if you're obsessing about it, if you're always thinking about moderation, then I encourage you to, you know, explore this a bit further within yourself and really start asking yourself those other questions and stop, you know, perpetuating this behavior through non-labels. Because again, problems with alcohol are not defined by the quantity that you drink, it's defined by the psychological dependence, the emotional reliance in those behavioral patterns around drinking. So, for your reflection, ask yourself what would happen if you stop waiting for things to get worse before you made a change in your life? So, thank you so much for joining me today. If you haven't already subscribed to the channel, please do so. I will talk to you guys next Wednesday. Bye bye.