What if alcohol isn’t just a habit, but quietly shrinking the size of your world, dulling joy, and making ordinary pleasures feel like “not enough”? In this solo episode, Anna Donaghey shares honest insights from her own journey, exploring how drinking can subtly narrow both what you do and how much you feel.
She unpacks the concept of the “hedonic threshold,” showing why your favourite activities may start feeling flat, and how even small milestones (like a child’s birthday) come to feel incomplete without a drink. Anna also gets real about what happens when you start to cut down: why everything can feel dull at first, why that’s normal, and how given time, colour and excitement quietly returns to the things you love.
This episode is for anyone curious about changing the way they think about alcohol.
Here are the Highlights:
00:00 Intro: When the world starts to shrink
01:19 The subtle ways alcohol “shrinks” your world
04:44 When joy becomes muted and life feels flat
06:14 The hedonic threshold: Why dopamine matters
07:55 Why ordinary pleasures start feeling not enough
09:53 The key questions to ask yourself
10:15 How activities drop away when drinking more
11:46 When drinking becomes the point
12:35 A sharp illustration: Prosecco at a one-year-old’s birthday
16:27 Why giving up alcohol feels flat at first
17:59 How your world starts to expand again
19:32 A gentle prompt: Is your world quietly contracting?
20:03 How to connect, find resources, and support.
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!
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/bigdrinkrethink
About 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.
