What is a Gray Area Drinker?
I always thought that drinkers could only exist in two black and white categories:
Normal drinkers and alcoholics.
I also thought that people only ever got sober because they were alcoholics, extremely addicted to alcohol, drinking vodka in the morning, and living on the streets. I thought that if you were an alcoholic, you had to go to rehab and then go to Alcoholics Anonymous for the rest of your life.
The term “alcoholic” was always described to me as someone who had a physical dependence on alcohol. Over the past few years, as I struggled with my relationship with alcohol, I knew I wasn’t an alcoholic. However, I also knew that I wasn’t a normal drinker. I was somewhere in between.
I was, in fact, a gray area drinker.
Gray area drinking is described as “The space between the extremes of rock bottom and every-now-and-again drinking”, and that’s exactly where I was.
I first came across the term when I listened to a podcast with Jolene Park, the founder of Healthy Discoveries — a corporate wellness company that provides coaching and training programs for high achieving business professionals who struggle with anxiety, stress and gray area drinking.
In the podcast, I heard my own story for the first time. I was using alcohol to manage my stress, to fill the time when I was bored, and I was always drinking more than I had intended. I didn’t drink every day, and sometimes I took a week or two off, but when I did drink, I didn’t like who I was or how I felt the next day.
Within this gray area, lie a variety of different kinds of drinkers. There’s people who drink to relieve stress, people who binge drink on the weekends, people who drink to deal with tough emotional situations, and people who drink to manage anxiety. There’s mommy-wine culture, which — if you’ve never heard of it — tells moms that parenting is too difficult to do without the well earned treat of a glass (bottle) of wine at the end of the day.
The problem with being a gray area drinker, is that the way you’re drinking is completely socially acceptable. It’s socially acceptable to go out every Friday night and drink 10 pints of beer. It’s socially acceptable to drink a bottle of wine a night by yourself. It’s socially acceptable to drink in the morning- because it’s a mimosa at brunch.
If you’re waking up to go to your PT session and making it to work on time, it can’t be a problem, right?
We forget sometimes that alcohol is an insidious, addictive substance, and the more often you drink, the more your brain is going to want to drink. It’s easy for that glass of wine you drink to reward yourself at the end of a tough day to become a bottle… and then to become an every night routine.
People who are gray area drinkers often have trouble quitting, because there is a belief that in order to quit drinking, you need to have a “rock-bottom moment”, like driving drunk, losing your job, or getting arrested. They also have trouble quitting because… alcohol is an addictive drug. Alcohol is also legal and available everywhere.
Even if you’re not physically addicted to alcohol, quitting is tough.
In the past, I would quit for a few weeks and then I would be at a party with my friends and think “Well, I’m not an alcoholic, I can have a few drinks. I’ve not gotten arrested or anything.” As if the only reason I could choose to stop drinking was because it was court mandated.
I often wonder if I had known about gray area drinking earlier would I have been able to quit sooner.
That’s why I think it’s important to be aware of this kind of drinking. You don’t need to have a DUI to quit drinking. You don’t need to have the shakes in the morning to quit drinking. You don’t need to be arrested to quit drinking.
If alcohol makes you feel like shit, you’re allowed to quit.
I have listed some resources below that are way more helpful than this article you’re reading. I encourage you to check them out, because if you’re wondering if you’re a gray area drinker… you probably are AND THAT’S OKAY!
Hitting rock-bottom is not the only reason to stop drinking. For me, alcohol made me miss out on important moments by being blacked out, made me hungover, and made me anxious. Of course, I had my fair share of mini-rock-bottom moments, like embarrassing myself at a birthday party, but nothing “bad” had ever happened from me drinking.
I’ve been sober for 50 days now, and I am honestly so happy I stopped drinking. Compared to where I was four or five months ago, I am enjoying my life so much more.
The only thing that changed was I stopped drinking.
Melissober
Resources:
5 Signs You Might Be A Gray Area Drinker And What to Do About It
