Do you need a rock bottom to change your drinking?

At TEDxCrestmoorParkWomen in November 2017, the nutritionist and health coach Jolene Park told the audience about drinking that sat between two extremes. She was never the drinker who loses everything, and never the one who has a glass of champagne at a wedding and then nothing for weeks. Near the end of that talk, which has more than 460,000 views on ted.com, she said why she changed anyway:

"I didn't have a rock bottom moment that brought me to this point"

Jolene Park, TEDxCrestmoorParkWomen, 2017

The gray area, in her words

Park ate well, trained regularly and worked in corporate wellness. Her friends would have said she had no drinking problem. What they didn't see was how much she loved the "off" switch red wine gave her anxious brain, and how often one glass became a bottle. She stopped and started several times, once for seven months and once for 30 days, and each time she drifted back to an amount she regretted.

Her measure was regret, and she says the emails she gets from lawyers, nurses, managers and parents describe the same thing: no rock bottom, a wish to drink socially, and frequent regret about how much.

The second half of her talk is about food, movement and brain chemistry. We haven't checked those claims, and the program doesn't use them.

What the research says

Neither study measured rock bottoms. What they show is that most change happens in ordinary life, outside treatment, and not always by stopping. Waiting for a crisis isn't part of the picture.

Park chose to stop. If your body may have got used to alcohol, stopping or cutting down quickly can make you unwell, sometimes seriously. Don't stop suddenly: talk to a doctor or a local alcohol service first.

How this fits the Reduce your drinking program

The 1h Protocol to Reduce Your Drinking never labels you. It names a pattern for the obstacle, and Park's "off" switch is close to the Relief Drink, where the drink eases hard days and the plan starts by easing them another way. You choose the goal: drink less, take a break or stop, and you can change it at each review. If your answers suggest your body may have got used to alcohol, the program asks you to talk to a doctor first. The first chapter is free.

Source: TEDxCrestmoorParkWomen, Gray Area Drinking, Jolene Park, recorded 2 Nov 2017 Research: Sobell et al, 1996 · Tucker et al, 2020