{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Alcohol Minimalist: Mindful Drinking & Behavior Change","title":"When Drinking Less Feels Hard: Alcohol is Fun & Everyone is Drinking!","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1601,"description":"In this episode of the Alcohol Minimalist Podcast, Molly continues the series “When Drinking Less Feels Hard” by looking at one of the most common places drinking less can feel difficult: social situations where alcohol feels like part of the fun and everyone else is drinking.This episode explores two powerful Alcohol Core Beliefs: alcohol makes things more fun and alcohol creates connection. These beliefs often show up around dinners out, parties, weekends, vacations, celebrations, and those moments when you had a plan—until you were surrounded by other people drinking.Molly explains why the challenge is not simply being in a bar, at a restaurant, at a party, or on vacation. The deeper issue is that your brain may have learned to associate alcohol with belonging, ease, confidence, playfulness, and connection. When that belief is running in the background, choosing to drink less can feel like choosing a lesser version of the experience.But alcohol is not the source of your humor, warmth, courage, or ability to connect. Those parts of you already exist.In this science-forward episode, Molly breaks down how alcohol expectancies, social cues, dopamine, reward prediction, and alcohol myopia can make drinking feel automatic in social settings. She also shares how to challenge the thoughts that make alcohol feel necessary and how to build new evidence that fun, connection, and belonging are still fully available when you drink less.You’ll learn how to use the 4S process—See, Soothe, Separate, and Shift—to question the belief that alcohol makes everything better. Instead of relying on willpower in the moment, Molly encourages you to create a doable drink plan ahead of time, protect your awareness before alcohol narrows it, and practice proving to your brain that you can enjoy social situations without giving alcohol all the credit.In This Episode, You’ll Learn:Why social situations can make drinking less feel harder than drinking less at homeHow the beliefs “alcohol...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/zu3PtA3XzNKb2qSH95OKvfAaoixqds182Hao41kpkws/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8wZjY5/NjVmY2Y2MGQ0NmMx/NGNiMzdiZGY0OTMz/OWQzMy5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}