Why Do People Drink Too Much?

What might cause people to drink too much? One of the foremost reasons for this is overanalyzing. Overanalyzing is when you spend too much time in your head trying to figure things out. When I first started to try to get sober unsuccessfully, I asked all kinds of questions. “What is wrong with me? Why can’t I stop drinking? Am I weak-willed?” All of these questions and more rolled around in my head, and I over-analyzed everything. When you ask questions like those, your brain is going to try to figure out an answer. It’s going to say, “Well, here’s the nine things that are wrong with you.” It will come up with similar answers to the other questions instead of actually figuring out a solution.

In Western culture and psychology, we like to overthink things. This started with Freud and all the people that started way before him. They were the ones that popularized the studies of the subconscious and the conscious mind, as well as this idea of exploring why we are doing things that we don’t want to do.

Instead of trying to get to what’s going on in our brains that is causing us to do these things, why don’t we focus on simple action? Because if you ask what’s wrong with you, you are going to focus on the wrong thing. You might get answers, such as reasons why you can’t stop drinking. (There are a lot of psychological factors, physical factors, and brain factors that might make you not able to stop drinking.)

Now, does figuring out that information end up leading anywhere? There’s an old adage that says, “knowledge gives options.” The knowledge you gain about your condition is going to give you options. I might know that I’m weak-willed. Once I take the first drink, my willpower goes down drastically. All the brain parts light up and make me want to drink more, which makes me even more weak-willed. I know that, but now that I know that, it’s going to give me options, like whether to drink or not drink, but what you do keeps you sober. Overanalyzing just a glorified version of self-worship.

So, what we want to do is, we want to get enough knowledge to have the options that we need to take the necessary action to stay sober, because life’s going to come at you a thousand miles a minute. Things are going to come at you, they’re going to make you feel down, they’re going to make you feel bad, they’re going to make you feel good, they’re going to make you feel up, they’re going to make you feel nervous, anxious. All these things are depressing, whatever it is that life inadvertently makes you feel, we’re going to go through and we’re going to say well, what are my options here and the options here is where the knowledge is.

But what you do is going to keep you sober so I could say well what’s wrong with me, how am I feeling what’s going on, I can’t take this, why can’t I stop drinking, what’s on this is all internalizing everything. Now the reason you are drunk in the first place is probably because you’re internalizing everything, you don’t know how to deal with life as it comes your way, so what we need to do is we need to learn a new way, that’s the knowledge but first, what we need to do is, we need to take the actions that are going to keep a sober actions, that are going to keep us sober. Don’t go to the bar, don’t hang out places where there’s going to be alcohol. Train yourself to not need it, train yourself that you’re going to be okay without it, train yourself to go through feelings without having the alcohol and these actions over time will show you a new way life.

So, I hope you enjoyed this little short article, that is number one for me is don’t psychoanalyze this thing, don’t try to figure it out because you’re trying to figure it out with the brain that got you there in the first place. So, what we need to do is, we need to get the knowledge that gives us options right, we need to get a new way of thinking then we need to take actions to keep ourselves sober. So, ask yourself the question, what action can I do right now to not take that first drink then, if you feel that come on again in 15 minutes ask yourself the same question.

Keep asking it, keep staying sober, keep getting the knowledge so that you can have a sober life and stop drinking too much. Feel free to check out why people smoke.