Removing Alcohol Isn't the Hard Part. Learning How to Regulate Yourself Again Is.
Most people think stopping drinking is about discipline.
It isn’t.
If willpower were the issue, the people struggling most wouldn’t be intelligent, high-functioning, driven women. They already know how to push themselves. They know how to perform, deliver, cope, and keep going long past their limits.
What they were never taught is how to feel safe in their own nervous system without numbing.
Alcohol fills that gap. Not because people are weak but because it works. At least at first.
Alcohol changes brain chemistry quickly. It increases GABA, the brain’s primary inhibitory neurotransmitter, which quiets neural activity and creates a sense of calm. At the same time, it stimulates dopamine release in the brain’s reward system, reinforcing the behaviour. This is well documented in addiction neuroscience, and it explains why alcohol can feel like instant relief for people who live with anxiety, chronic stress, overthinking, emotional intensity, or ADHD-style nervous systems.
For someone who is mentally busy, emotionally overloaded, or constantly “on,” alcohol can feel like the first real exhale of the day.
The problem isn’t that alcohol creates calm.
The problem is that the brain adapts.
With repeated use, the nervous system starts outsourcing regulation. Natural calming mechanisms become less responsive. Dopamine sensitivity drops. Baseline anxiety increases. Emotional tolerance narrows. Sleep becomes lighter and more fragmented as alcohol disrupts REM and deep sleep cycles. Over time, people aren’t drinking to feel good they’re drinking to feel normal.
This is where the conversation around sobriety usually goes wrong.
When alcohol is removed without rebuilding regulation, the nervous system is left exposed. Anxiety spikes. Emotions feel louder. Social situations feel harder. The mind doesn’t quiet, it speeds up. Research consistently shows that relapse risk is highest when stress and emotional dysregulation aren’t addressed alongside abstinence.
This isn’t weakness. It’s physiology.
Rachel Hechtman’s work begins here not with willpower, and not with labels, but with capacity.
At Sober in Central Park, sobriety isn’t treated as an identity or a moral achievement. It’s treated as a physiological and psychological transition. The core question isn’t “How do we make you stop drinking?” It’s “What role has alcohol been playing and how do we rebuild that internally?”
Early work focuses on understanding patterns rather than pathologising behaviour. Clients explore emotional triggers, stress responses, social conditioning, and learned coping strategies. This mirrors modern evidence-based addiction psychology, which emphasises functional understanding over shame-based models. When people understand what alcohol has been doing for them calming anxiety, softening emotional edges, reducing sensory overload, boosting confidence, the behaviour stops feeling mysterious or moral. It starts making sense.
And when something makes sense, people stop fighting themselves.
A major pillar of this work is emotional regulation. Most adults were never taught how to regulate emotions only how to suppress them, intellectualise them, distract from them, or numb them. From a neurological perspective, regulation is the ability to move through emotional activation and return to baseline. It’s governed by the interaction between the autonomic nervous system and the prefrontal cortex, and it’s a skill that can be trained.
Rachel helps clients build this capacity gradually. Not by forcing calm, but by increasing tolerance for discomfort, teaching the nervous system that emotions can rise and fall without catastrophe. Repeated exposure to manageable discomfort with support, rewires threat responses and reduces the brain’s need for escape. This is how new neural pathways form. The brain learns safety through experience, not reassurance.
This approach is particularly powerful for women with ADHD or ADHD-adjacent nervous systems. These brains are fast, creative, and sensitive, but often dysregulated. Dopamine is inconsistent. Stimulation is both sought and overwhelming. Alcohol becomes appealing because it temporarily smooths dopamine signalling and quiets mental noise, a classic form of self-medication.
Rather than framing this as a lack of discipline, Rachel works with how these nervous systems actually function. Dopamine is rebuilt through movement, novelty that doesn’t destabilise, achievable goals, and routines that support regulation rather than productivity culture. When dopamine is supported consistently, impulsive coping behaviours lose their pull. Not because they’re forbidden, but because they’re no longer needed.
One of the most overlooked parts of sobriety is identity. Removing alcohol changes how people socialise, relax, celebrate, cope, and see themselves. Without support, this identity gap can feel destabilising. Research shows that long-term change is far more likely when people actively reconstruct identity rather than simply remove behaviour.
This is why Rachel’s work explicitly focuses on building a life that fits without alcohol. Clients don’t just stop drinking, they learn how to rest without sedation, connect without numbing, and experience joy without escape. Sobriety becomes additive rather than restrictive.
Change doesn’t happen in insight alone. Neuroplasticity requires repetition, reinforcement, and relational safety. That’s why the work includes weekly private coaching, structured journaling, weekly action exercises, and ongoing support between sessions. Studies consistently show that consistent relational support dramatically improves outcomes during early sobriety, when the nervous system is recalibrating.
Clients aren’t left to “be strong.”
They’re supported while their system learns something new.
This work resonates deeply with high-functioning women, especially those who are capable but exhausted, successful but disconnected, sober-curious but afraid of losing themselves. They don’t need motivation. They need safety, structure, and an approach that respects their intelligence.
On the other side, people don’t describe becoming rigid or deprived. They describe feeling calmer without being numb. Thinking more clearly. Sleeping more deeply. Trusting themselves again. Alcohol stops being a negotiation because its role has been replaced.
Alcohol isn’t the enemy.
Dysregulation is.
When people learn how to regulate their nervous system, feel safe internally, and trust their capacity to experience life fully, alcohol naturally loses relevance. Not through force. Through understanding.
That isn’t willpower.
That’s the brain doing what it’s designed to do.
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