Alcohol is the pattern. What happens when we disrupt it? This series explores what happens when we peel back the layers and reveal what’s been hiding underneath—your potential. It may be that your creativity feels blocked, leading to postponed projects. You push past your limits, leaving you drained. Or you stay small instead of taking a risk and trusting yourself. Each episode breaks down a specific moment where drinking becomes the escape and shows you what becomes possible when you choose presence over numbing.
The Moment
There’s a moment in social settings when it hits quietly.
Everyone’s holding a drink. Laughing easily. Bonding.
As you look around the room, a thought slips in:
“I’m on the outside.”
“I don’t belong here like this.”
“I need something to loosen me up.”
The room feels effortless for everyone else. You feel the awkwardness building in your chest. Your thoughts start racing—what to say, how to stand, whether you’re doing this right.
Alcohol starts to look like the entry ticket. The thing that will finally let you relax and just be here.
But what if that’s an illusion?
Why This Keeps You Stuck
Social settings trigger a specific kind of anxiety: the fear that without something to help you perform, you won’t measure up. Everyone else seems naturally comfortable. You feel like you’re working overtime just to appear relaxed.
When you reach for the drink, you’re not actually connecting—you’re performing a version of yourself that you think others will accept.
The drink doesn’t create belonging. It doesn’t make you more yourself. It doesn’t build real connection.
What it does is remove your access to the one thing that actually creates connection: presence. The ability to be exactly who you are, uncomfortable as that might feel at first, and trust that it’s enough.
What’s Actually Happening
This is a learned pattern:
The Setup → You enter a social space and immediately scan for belonging cues
You notice who’s drinking, who’s laughing, who seems comfortable. The mental calculation starts: I need to match this energy.
The Performance → Drinking becomes the tool to bridge the gap
It’s not about connection as much as it is about who you think you need to be. How relaxed you think you should look. How easily the conversation should flow.
The False Relief → You feel temporarily at ease
The edges soften. The self-consciousness fades. For a moment, you feel like you’re finally inside the circle instead of outside it.
The Disconnect → But you’ve traded presence for performance
You’re not actually more connected. You’re just less aware of your disconnection. And the next morning, you realize you weren’t fully there at all.
Every time you repeat this pattern, you’re reinforcing the belief that the real you isn’t enough—that belonging requires something outside of yourself to make it work.
But here’s what’s true: We’re taught that alcohol creates connection with others. But it actually removes connection with yourself.
Disrupting the Pattern
Here’s what changes when you stop using alcohol as the entry ticket:
Notice the illusion. When “I don’t belong here” surfaces, pause. That thought isn’t truth—it’s your nervous system trying to protect you from the vulnerability of being seen as you are.
Stay with the recalibration. When you remove alcohol, what’s left is presence. Awkward at first. Honest. Real. The discomfort you feel isn’t a problem to solve. It’s information. You’re already enough. You’re already here.
Trust what’s solid. Five years ago, I couldn’t imagine being in a room like that without a drink in my hand. Or two. Now? I show up exactly as I am. Nothing to add. Nothing to fix. Feet on the ground. Breath moving naturally. And I’ve discovered that this is what real connection feels like.
Not the performance. The presence.
What’s Next
The pattern “I don’t belong here” keeps you performing instead of creating. It keeps you managing perception instead of trusting presence. And it keeps your best work hidden behind a version of yourself that isn’t actually you.
This is the cost: when you’re busy performing belonging, you can’t access the clarity that creates real work.
The Sober Creative Method™ works in three phases:
Release what’s been numbing your access to yourself
Create from presence instead of performance
Become the version of you that no longer needs the illusion
Book an exploration call to see if this is right for where you are.
