Sober Sis Blog

Written By Jenn Kautsch

Can I Just Have One?

When moderation starts feeling like a full-time job, it might be worth asking whether all that control is actually giving you freedom.

Have you ever made rules around your drinking? Oh, I did. I had LOTS of rules. Only on weekends. Never two nights in a row. Only two glasses. Only socially. No wine at home. Don’t drink when you’re sad, only when you’re happy. White wine instead of red because red gave me the kind of headache that made my head pulsate. I had rules for my rules. And here’s the funny thing about rules: they worked beautifully when absolutely nothing happened. When life behaved itself, nobody stressed me out, there wasn’t a celebration on a Wednesday, we didn’t go out to dinner, my feelings weren’t hurt, and nobody suggested another glass, I could follow my rules just fine. You know... real life.

Then came the exceptions. Well, yes, I said only weekends, but it’s our anniversary and our anniversary happens to be on a Wednesday. Exception! Or, I said two glasses, but we had two at dinner and now we’re going somewhere else for dessert, and honestly I’d rather drink my calories than eat the chocolate cake. Exception! Or my personal favorite: Well, I already broke the rule, so I might as well start again Monday. And there went the goalpost, rolling right on down the field. I could always find a loophole if I looked hard enough. And believe me, when I wanted one, I could look pretty hard.

When Moderation Becomes Management

I think this is why I’ve started thinking of moderation by another name: management. Because that’s what I was doing. Managing the drinks. Managing the days. Managing the rules. Managing the exceptions to the rules. Managing when I could drink, how much I could drink, whether tonight counted, whether yesterday’s drink meant I shouldn’t have one today, and whether whatever was happening in my life qualified as a good enough reason to make an exception. Good grief. Some of us are already managing businesses, households, aging parents, calendars, husbands, kids, grandkids, work, church, appointments and approximately 14 passwords we can never remember. Do we really need another management position? And this one doesn’t even come with a paycheck. In fact, we’re paying for it. 😂

That became a really important question for me, and it’s one I want to hand to you without telling you what your answer should be: How much energy is moderation requiring from you? Not, Is moderation good or bad? I don’t think that question helps very much. It’s too black and white. Instead, get curious. Is moderating giving you more peace or less peace? Is drinking less allowing alcohol to take up less space in your life, or is it actually keeping alcohol front and center because you’re constantly thinking about it? When can I have it? How many can I have? Did I have too much yesterday? Am I drinking tonight? Should I wait until Friday? I realized there was a season when alcohol could control an enormous amount of my mental energy even when there wasn’t a drop of alcohol in my body.

“If drinking less requires you to think about drinking all the time, that’s worth getting curious about.”

That was the part I didn’t understand for a long time. I thought success meant controlling alcohol. If I could just get good enough at the rules, disciplined enough with the amount, strong enough with my willpower, then I would finally feel free. But eventually I discovered something that turned the whole thing upside down for me: control and freedom are not the same thing.

I Quit Drinking for a Year... Then Celebrated With a Drink

I know this because I got REALLY good at control once. In my late 30s, I decided I wanted to show up at 40 feeling strong, healthy and, yes, rocking the bikini. Priorities, people. 😂 So I stopped drinking for an entire year. My husband joined me, and we did it. A whole year. No alcohol. You would think this would be the part of the story where I tell you I had some grand awakening and learned everything there was to learn about myself and alcohol.

Nope.

I learned almost nothing.

I spent that year using willpower to deny something I still believed I wanted. I didn’t have the tools I have today. I didn’t have this Sober Sis tribe around me. I didn’t understand how much value and meaning I had assigned to alcohol. I simply proved to myself that I could control it, and because I could control it, I assumed I was free.

And do you know what I did when I completed my year without drinking?

I celebrated by drinking.

I know. I KNOW. 😂 I had gone a whole year without alcohol, lost weight, felt great, accomplished the goal, and then rewarded myself for not drinking by... drinking. Looking back, I can see it so clearly. I had changed the behavior for a year, but I hadn’t really changed the belief underneath the behavior. Alcohol was still the prize. It was still the reward. It was still something I believed I was missing out on. So once the rule expired, guess what happened? I went right back. And it didn’t take years or even months for me to drift back toward my old patterns. It took weeks.

“I proved I could control alcohol. What I hadn’t learned was how to stop wanting alcohol to matter so much.”

Life also got lifey, as it tends to do. We were transitioning our kids from homeschooling back into school. My daughter turned 13, and can we just pause and acknowledge the hormonal situation happening in the Kautsch house with a 40-year-old mother and a 13-year-old daughter at the same time? Bless us all. 😂 She was doing the very normal teenage work of separating from Mom, but I wasn’t prepared for how that would feel. I had wrapped so much of my identity around being needed, and suddenly I was interpreting her growing independence as rejection. Add stress, anxiety, transition, a move, changing family dynamics, and there I was again reaching for the thing I had taught myself would take the edge off. Cue up the drinking.

And through all of it, I was still trying to moderate. That’s the interesting thing. I wasn’t going into a weekend thinking, How drunk can I possibly get? Let’s really make some terrible decisions! Of course not. I was always trying to keep it under control. Most women I know who have wrestled with this aren’t trying to lose control. They’re trying desperately to maintain it.

Control Is a Tightrope. Freedom Gets You Off It.

That’s what moderation eventually felt like to me: a tightrope. I’m up there with my little balancing pole trying to keep everything perfectly even. Count the drinks. Watch the clock. Plan the drinking days. Save a drink for later. Check myself. Recalculate. It’s only 3:30. I’m not drinking until 5:00. Okay, it’s 4:00. Okay, 4:30 is practically 5:00. 😂 It was so much work. And yes, sometimes I could do it. I could moderate until I couldn’t. I could keep the rule until an exception showed up. I could balance on the tightrope until life bumped the rope.

For me, getting off that tightrope was when I finally started experiencing something different. I discovered that it was actually easier for me to drink none than to drink one. Now, that’s my experience, and I’m not here to tell you what your experience has to be. Your goal might still be moderation. You might simply be sober curious. You might be reading this while drinking a glass of wine. You’re welcome here. We’re not interested in piling more rules on top of you. We’re interested in getting curious about what’s working and what isn’t. But I do think there is a question worth asking: Do I want to get better at managing alcohol, or do I want alcohol to matter less?

“What if the goal isn’t getting better at controlling alcohol? What if the goal is alcohol becoming less important?”

That question changed things for me because I realized I didn’t actually want to become an expert moderator. I wanted to not want it. I wanted alcohol to become smaller in my life. I wanted its value to decrease while the value of my presence increased. I wanted my present mind. My clear mind. My sober mind. I wanted to be awake, alert, alive and available to my actual life instead of using so much of my energy managing a substance that could take my presence away.

But What About Forever?

And this is usually where someone’s brain jumps approximately 4,000 miles into the future. Okay, Jenn, but does this mean I can NEVER drink again? What about Christmas? What about my daughter’s wedding? What if I go to Tuscany? What about Napa? What about the champagne toast at an event five years from now where apparently I’ve somehow been appointed the official toaster? 😂 I know because I did this too. When I first considered an alcohol-free life, I could invent future scenarios faster than you could say Pinot Grigio. I worried about trips I hadn’t booked, weddings that weren’t happening and places I hadn’t even been invited to yet.

But here’s what I’ve learned: You don’t have to solve forever today.

Forever can create fear because our brains immediately start future tripping. Suddenly we’re five years ahead trying to figure out whether we’re going to have champagne at an imaginary wedding instead of paying attention to the choice that’s sitting right in front of us today. And from my Christian worldview, this has become deeply spiritual for me too. I believe God gives me what I need for today. His mercies are new every morning. I don’t need five-years-from-now strength today because I’m not living five years from now. I’m living September 2026. I’m living this morning. This afternoon. This dinner. This Friday night. That’s where my life actually is.

“Don’t let the future stop you from choosing what’s best for you today.”

That’s why I love the idea of a Reset. It’s not some dramatic declaration about what you’re going to do for the rest of your natural life. It’s an experiment. It’s saying, I’m going to set this aside long enough to learn something. Instead of white-knuckling your way through 21 days while chanting, I can’t drink, I can’t drink, I can’t drink, you can start asking questions. When do I think about drinking? What happened right before the craving? Was I hungry? Lonely? Tired? Overstimulated? Did I have decision fatigue? Did something hurt my feelings? Was I simply following a familiar pattern? What happens to my sleep? My energy? My anxiety? My confidence? What happens when I stop managing alcohol long enough to observe what life feels like without all the management?

That’s data. Or data. Tomato, tomahto. Apparently I say both. 😂 The point is, you’re doing your own reconnaissance mission. You’re gathering information about YOU.

I Still Choose This One Day at a Time

After all these years alcohol-free, it would actually take more energy for me to drink today than it does for me not to drink. That’s how much things have changed. I know too much now. I’ve experienced too much now. I’ve built a life where alcohol simply doesn’t hold the value it once did. But I still don’t spend a lot of time thinking about forever. I know what is best for me today, and today I choose my sober mind.

There have been plenty of days when I’ve put my head on the pillow and thought, Well, that day really hit the fan. I’ve had difficult conversations. I’ve gotten my feelings hurt. I’ve been stressed, disappointed, angry, overwhelmed and exhausted. Life did not magically become perfect when I stopped drinking. Wouldn’t that be nice? But even on those days, I can lay my little head on that pillow and think, Thank God I still have my sober mind. That’s something I guard now. I protect it. I nurture it. I tend to it, like soil I’m cultivating because I know what I want to grow there.

“I don’t want to spend my energy managing alcohol. I want to spend my energy living my life.”

Maybe moderation works beautifully for you. If it does, this article doesn’t need to convince you otherwise. But if you’re exhausted from making rules, breaking rules, renegotiating rules, moving the goalposts and starting again Monday, I want you to get curious about that exhaustion. Don’t shame it. Don’t turn it into another reason you’re doing something wrong. Just pay attention to it. Ask yourself whether all this management is giving you the freedom you thought it would.

Maybe you don’t need a better rule.

Maybe you don’t need more willpower.

Maybe you don’t need to solve forever.

Maybe you simply need enough space to discover what happens when alcohol gets smaller and your life gets bigger.

You don’t have to decide forever to decide what’s best for you today. And today, Sis, is plenty. 💛