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The Big Drink Rethink

The Big Drink Rethink

De : Anna Donaghey
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 The Big Drink Rethink is a podcast for anyone questioning their relationship with alcohol - whether you want to quit, drink less, take a break, or just explore the role alcohol plays in your life. Hosted by Alcohol Mindset Coach and Author, Anna Donaghey, each episode blends lived experience, psychological insight, and powerful tools to help you create change - gently, intelligently, without pressure, and in a way that opens up your life. Featuring expert guests, real stories, and practical strategies, this podcast offers a refreshingly smart, non-judgemental space to reflect, grow, and explore the life you want. Because rethinking your drinking isn’t about missing out. It’s about tuning in. It’s not about restriction - it’s about making space. To feel clearer, live more fully, and ask one honest question: What are you really thirsty for?Copyright 2026 Anna Donaghey Développement personnel Hygiène et vie saine Psychologie Psychologie et psychiatrie Réussite personnelle Sciences sociales
Épisodes
  • Ep 118: When Avoidance Stops Working with April Day Garcia | Rethinking Alcohol |

    Ep 118: When Avoidance Stops Working with April Day Garcia | Rethinking Alcohol |
    Apr 16 2026
    What happens when the strategies we rely on to avoid pain, achievement, busyness and constant momentum stop working?In this powerful conversation, Anna Donaghey is joined by April Day Garcia, author of The Room to Be Brave: Sometimes the way forward begins with going back, to explore how avoidance can hide in plain sight, especially for high-functioning people disguised as success.April shares how chasing achievement and belonging led her further from herself, with alcohol acting as a quiet form of escape. When a period of forced stillness changed everything, she began the deeper work of healing, returning to the “rooms” where old beliefs began.This episode offers a hopeful reframe: avoidance isn’t failure, it’s protection and real change starts not with becoming someone new, but with coming home to who you already are.Here are the Highlights:00:00 Intro: Rethinking avoidance with April Day Garcia00:45 The art of avoidance and the illusion of achievement02:27 April’s memoir mapping unravelling through literal rooms05:11 Running from the pain, and chasing achievement09:33 How avoidance can sometimes look like high performance11:31 No room for vulnerability, linking emotions to old, unsafe moments13:49 Alcohol’s role in numbing, postponing, and belonging16:50 Avoidance creates new problems, emotional costs rise20:35 The clear rupture: seeing darkness reflected in family23:07 Having a breakdown broke the cycle, and led to giving up alcohol38:09 The hardest rooms: confronting your own mistakes and shadow work41:55 Old beliefs aren’t yours and reclaiming your true self44:12 Redeveloping your rooms and rewriting your story52:36 Choose your hard, start with one room54:04 Healing isn’t failure, sometimes your truest self is waiting in the rooms you feared most.Anna’s book "What Are You Thirsty For? Rethinking Alcohol and The Life You Want", is now out in the world for you to buy!Order your copy, access her free tools and explore her coaching programmes at: https://thebigdrinkrethink.com/The Thirsty For More Mindset Lab is Anna’s ‘inner circle’ - a calm, thoughtful space where conversations continue, patterns are explored, and things begin to make sense. Find out more at: https://thirstyformore.substack.com/If you appreciate the podcast and would like to show a bit of love, you can donate the cost of a coffee here. It helps support the time and care that goes into making the show: https://buymeacoffee.com/bigdrinkrethinkAbout the host Anna:Anna is a certified Alcohol Mindset Coach, trained by Annie Grace of This Naked Mind. Drawing on her own journey out of alcohol addiction, she now helps others explore and control their drinking. With a career spanning 25 years as a Strategist in the Advertising industry, she combines her own lived experiences, with great insight into what makes us tick and what influences us to behave the way we do.Connect with Anna:Website: thebigdrinkrethink.comLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/annadonagheyInstagram: instagram.com/bigdrinkrethinkProduced by winteraudio.co.ukAbout April Day Garcia:April Day Garcia spent years in forward motion - busy, capable, and running without knowing it. As a Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant, Reiki practitioner, and self-described chronic over-doer, she was excellent at moving through life while avoiding the rooms that needed her most.Sober since August 2024, April has been doing the harder work: going back into the experiences that shaped her deepest beliefs about herself, sitting in those spaces long enough to heal them, and discovering that who she was on the other side had been there all along. Her debut memoir, The Room to Be Brave: Sometimes the way forward begins with going back, is the story of what it means to stop running - and be brave enough to go back.Connect with April:Book: https://a.co/d/01NvRuC9Instagram: @theroomtobebraveWebsite: https://www.aprildaygarcia.com/
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    56 min
  • Ep 117: The Art of Avoidance: Why Alcohol Works…Until it Doesn’t

    Ep 117: The Art of Avoidance: Why Alcohol Works…Until it Doesn’t
    Apr 9 2026
    What really drives us to reach for alcohol, and why is avoidance so quietly powerful in our habits? In this episode, Anna Donaghey unpacks the psychology behind using alcohol as a coping mechanism, revealing how it silences discomfort and acts as a fast-acting state change in our modern lives. Drawing from her own lived experience and insights from her Substack “The Thirsty For More Mindset Lab,” Anna explores how avoidance is not weakness, but a deeply human strategy rooted in our biology and history.She dives into the difference between signals (those uncomfortable feelings and nudges) and state changes, explaining how alcohol overrides what our mind is trying to tell us. With practical examples and gentle guidance, Anna encourages listeners to get curious about their own habits, question the signals they might be silencing, and imagine life with alternative strategies that don’t come at such a cost.Here are the Highlights:00:00 Welcome, this week we are exploring the theme of avoidance01:03 How alcohol is used to numb and silence discomfort02:20 The British Medical Council: alcohol as the nation’s favourite coping mechanism04:04 Avoidance as an intelligent survival strategy, not denial05:12 Our ancient brain responds to discomfort06:00 Alcohol as a fast-acting state changer, it quietens the alarm08:23 Alternative avoidance strategies: work, scrolling, food09:09 We have a regulation systems, relief can be instantly available10:01 Learning to listen to discomfort13:17 Anna’s Sunday “unease”, discovering the real signal beneath the habit14:04 Signals as information about our needs and alignment15:07 When avoidance no longer works, what comes next?16:04 Imagining alternative strategies without the cost of alcoholAnna’s book "What Are You Thirsty For? Rethinking Alcohol and The Life You Want", is now out in the world for you to buy!Order your copy, access her free tools and explore her coaching programmes at: https://thebigdrinkrethink.com/The Thirsty For More Mindset Lab is Anna’s ‘inner circle’ - a calm, thoughtful space where conversations continue, patterns are explored, and things begin to make sense. Find out more at: https://thirstyformore.substack.com/If you appreciate the podcast and would like to show a bit of love, you can donate the cost of a coffee here. It helps support the time and care that goes into making the show: https://buymeacoffee.com/bigdrinkrethinkAbout the host Anna:Anna is a certified Alcohol Mindset Coach, trained by Annie Grace of This Naked Mind. Drawing on her own journey out of alcohol addiction, she now helps others explore and control their drinking. With a career spanning 25 years as a Strategist in the Advertising industry, she combines her own lived experiences, with great insight into what makes us tick and what influences us to behave the way we do.Connect with Anna:Website: thebigdrinkrethink.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/annadonagheyInstagram: instagram.com/bigdrinkrethinkProduced by winteraudio.co.uk
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    18 min
  • Ep 116: Tiny Clarity Moments 2 | Alcohol Coaching |

    Ep 116: Tiny Clarity Moments 2 | Alcohol Coaching |
    Apr 2 2026
    Why do we agonise over disrupting the social flow by saying “no thanks” to a drink, even when alcohol is quietly disrupting so much more in our lives? In this thought-provoking solo episode, Anna Donaghey explores the micro-moments of clarity that often crop up when we consider changing our drinking habits. Drawing from a recent conversation with Ry Gavan, Anna explores how alcohol quietly sits behind so many social occasions, becoming a synchronised ritual, yet the real disruptions to our wellbeing are often overlooked, minimised, or accepted as “just life.” She examines the tension between the fear of social awkwardness and the reality of how quickly our circles adapt, and offers practical tools to handle that brief moment of discomfort. This episode is for anyone ready to question the script, trust those quiet nudges, and make choices around alcohol that genuinely align with who they are.Here are the Highlights:00:00 Welcome to “Tiny Clarity Moments 2”01:06 Wanting better sleep, energy, patience, but fearing social awkwardness03:20 The imagined disruption versus reality04:26 Ry’s true story: friends adjust, little actually changes05:01 The disruptions we tolerate: poor sleep, lost weekends, tension07:16 A question to ask: what disruptions am I already accepting?07:47 How do you make it easier to say no?09:41 Why you don’t owe an explanation10:44 Changing the subject and shifting the conversation11:04 The power of holding an alcohol-free drink in your hand11:33 Reframing: you’re just doing something different tonight13:31 Embracing quiet confidence, normalising intentional choices14:23 What disruption is really worth worrying about?15:22 Creating space for others by asking honest questionsThe first part of this mini-series on Tiny Clarity Moments can be found here on Apple or here on Spotify.Anna’s book "What Are You Thirsty For? Rethinking Alcohol and The Life You Want", is now out in the world for you to buy!Order your copy, access her free tools and explore her coaching programmes at: https://thebigdrinkrethink.com/The Thirsty For More Mindset Lab is Anna’s ‘inner circle’ - a calm, thoughtful space where conversations continue, patterns are explored, and things begin to make sense. Find out more at: https://thirstyformore.substack.com/If you appreciate the podcast and would like to show a bit of love, you can donate the cost of a coffee here. It helps support the time and care that goes into making the show: https://buymeacoffee.com/bigdrinkrethinkAbout the host Anna:Anna is a certified Alcohol Mindset Coach, trained by Annie Grace of This Naked Mind. Drawing on her own journey out of alcohol addiction, she now helps others explore and control their drinking. With a career spanning 25 years as a Strategist in the Advertising industry, she combines her own lived experiences, with great insight into what makes us tick and what influences us to behave the way we do.Connect with Anna:Website: thebigdrinkrethink.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/annadonagheyInstagram: instagram.com/bigdrinkrethinkProduced by winteraudio.co.uk
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    17 min
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