Why Your Goals Keep Slipping Through the Cracks

When we think of someone with a drinking problem, we picture the extreme — a person living on the street. But once you cut alcohol out of your life completely, you start to see things much more clearly. You realise alcohol isn’t just wrecking lives in dramatic, visible ways — it’s quietly dulling the edge of almost everyone around you.

We tend to blame the economy, our parents, politicians, partners, or just bad luck. But how often do we stop and ask — what if the problem starts with me? What if it’s not the outside world that’s holding me back but my own choices?

The Stoics were clear: focus on what you can control — your thoughts, your actions, your values. But alcohol quietly chips away at that control. The more you drink, the more you live at the mercy of moods and impulses. You don’t feel in charge of your life — and worse, you stop trusting yourself to follow through.

You say you’ll start something. Change something. Build something. But you wake up foggy, unmotivated, or full of self-doubt — again. And it doesn’t just take a day to bounce back. Especially as you get older, it can take days to feel like yourself again.

Here’s the truth: alcohol doesn’t take everything from you at once. It’s more cunning than that. It takes one dream at a time.

You might’ve once wanted to build a business, write a book, or switch careers. But the fog of drinking makes it easy to let things slide. You slowly scale your dreams down — from bold to modest to forgotten. The confidence fades. You stop trusting your word. You go from I'll do it to I'll do it later to what’s the point?

It’s death by a thousand cuts.

Even when you do take action, it often comes from a scattered place — half-hearted, inconsistent, unclear.

So here’s the question: if you’re not living the life you want — how hard have you really tried? How many ideas have you truly tested? How many times have you given something your full, clear, undistracted effort?

Robert Greene said boldness is magnetic — that fortune favours the brave, but only if you move with intent. Alcohol drains that boldness. It whispers hesitation into your best ideas. It convinces you to delay, to doubt, to negotiate with your dreams.

Seneca put it even more simply: “We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” And nothing feeds that imagined suffering like alcohol — it amplifies doubt, while dressing itself up as relief.

Living a meaningful life — one where your actions match your values — takes clarity. Presence. Control. You can’t fake that. And you won’t get it while dragging the weight of alcohol behind you.