CwC - The Perils of Drinking to Forget

There’s a particular lie alcohol tells very well: just have a drink and you won’t feel this anymore. One glass to soften the edges. Two to quiet the noise. Three to blur the memory you don’t want to carry tonight. Drinking to forget is sold as relief—temporary anesthesia for emotional pain. And for a moment, it can feel like it works.
But forgetting was never really the goal. Escaping was.

Forgetting Isn’t Healing—It’s Delaying
Alcohol doesn’t erase memories. It only postpones the moment you have to face them. What you’re actually doing when you drink to forget is borrowing peace from tomorrow. You feel lighter for a few hours, and then the interest comes due—often with anxiety, shame, regret, or a deeper sadness than the one you tried to drown. What you avoid doesn’t disappear. It waits. And it usually gets louder.

Alcohol Shrinks the Window of Tolerance
One of the quiet dangers of drinking to forget is how it slowly narrows your ability to cope. Emotions you once managed—grief, stress, loneliness, disappointment—start to feel unbearable without a drink. Alcohol trains your nervous system to believe that discomfort is intolerable unless chemically numbed. The irony? The very thing you’re using to 'relax' makes anxiety worse over time. Sleep becomes fragmented. Moods swing harder. The lows feel lower. The world feels sharper without a buffer. You don’t become weaker—you become dependent on escape.

Memory Loss Isn’t the Same as Relief
Blackouts and fuzzy nights are often joked about, but there’s something deeply unsettling about losing time to avoid pain. When drinking to forget becomes habitual, it doesn’t just blur bad memories—it steals good ones too. Conversations vanish. Moments dissolve. Pieces of your life go missing. And you’re left trying to rebuild trust with yourself, wondering what version of you showed up when you weren’t fully there. Forgetting shouldn’t cost you your presence.

Drinking to Forget Turns Pain Inward
Unprocessed pain doesn’t evaporate. It settles into the body. It leaks out sideways—in irritability, exhaustion, isolation, and self-sabotage. Alcohol can mute emotional pain, but it amplifies self-criticism. The morning after often brings a cruel inner voice: Why did I do that again? What’s wrong with me? The answer is rarely what we think. Nothing is wrong with you. Something happened to you. And numbing it didn’t heal it—it just delayed your compassion for yourself.

The Slippery Shift from Choice to Habit
Most people don’t plan to drink to forget forever. It starts situationally: a breakup, a loss, a stressful season, a world that feels too loud. But when alcohol becomes the primary coping tool, it quietly shifts from something you choose to something you rely on. That shift is subtle. You don’t notice it until the idea of feeling everything sober feels terrifying. That’s the peril—when forgetting feels safer than remembering, even briefly.

Sobriety Isn’t About White-Knuckling Pain
Choosing not to drink to forget doesn’t mean choosing to suffer. It means choosing to feel with support instead of sedation. It means learning how to sit with discomfort long enough to understand what it’s asking for—rest, boundaries, grief, honesty, change. Sobriety doesn’t demand perfection. It invites presence. And presence, while uncomfortable at first, is where healing actually happens.

You Don’t Need to Forget to Move Forward
Some things will always be part of your story. Forgetting them isn’t the goal—integrating them is. When you stop drinking to forget, you give yourself the chance to remember something far more important than the pain: Your resilience. Your clarity. Your ability to face hard moments and survive them.

Alcohol promises relief .But remembering who you are brings freedom.
And freedom lasts longer than any buzz ever could. 

love, kate

P.S. Drinking to forget offers temporary escape but ultimately deepens pain, anxiety, and disconnection. Alcohol delays healing, erodes coping skills, and steals presence—arguing that true relief comes not from forgetting, but from facing emotions with clarity, compassion, and support. Head over to the Booze & You and the Mental Health pages for more information and help (if needed).💕

A little bit of humor: Drinking to forget is just emotional procrastination with calories. Drinking to forget only works until your emotions wake up early and bring receipts. Alcohol promised amnesia—delivered anxiety and a headache.