Can You Meditate After Drinking Alcohol?

On one occasion, we’ve talked about how you should stay away from meditation after eating, but can the same be said for drinking? More specifically, drinking alcohol? It’s no secret that being obsessed with alcohol is a bad habit. 

Meditation can help us in many ways, among those is detaching from habits that don’t serve any useful purpose in your life but rather, can bring harm. 

Change from meditation doesn’t happen from one day to another, if that were to be the case, more than a billion people would’ve already tried mindfulness meditation, and by now, it would’ve become even more mainstream than it is to this day, even if the interest in meditation continues to rise day by day. 

Meditation is a process, a journey that’s supposed to be pleasant once you’ve gained the momentum from starting. But does it go hand in hand with drinking alcohol?

For the most part, meditation isn’t recommended after drinking alcohol, especially if you’re drunk, but there are some exceptions where it can work even if it’s never recommended. 

Alcohol Is An Escape, Meditation Isn’t

When you are immersing yourself into a deep mindful meditation, you’re not escaping reality. Instead, you’re learning to live with this reality and make the best out of it. That’s the way I see it. 

So if you’re drunk and trying to meditate, it’s like there’s two forces fighting against each other. Alcohol makes you unconscious while meditation makes you deeply conscious and aware of your thoughts. 

Meditation requires your deliberate attention, whereas alcohol lets your mind wander to a bunch of different directions, losing track of the meditation and in the worst cases, making you fall asleep when the idea is to give your mind a break. 

Falling asleep is already something our mind is used to, so no useful change is going to come without meditation. 

But some alcohol while meditating is okay, so long as you’re not drunk and so long as you’re not negatively affected by the impact alcohol has on your mind. 

Alcohol is a cheap fake escape that only “works” in the short term, whereas meditation legitimately takes you to newer realities by expanding your consciousness, and the effects of meditation are lasting. Alcohol is meant to be a quick fix for many, but over the long haul, it doesn’t even achieve that purpose. 

You can simply put it like this, alcohol brings misery while meditation brings peace, clarity, focus and fulfillment among other things. You’ve probably never heard anyone say drinking alcohol has changed them for the better. 

And while there isn’t as strict of a recommendation to stay away from deep meditation after drinking alcohol as with deep meditating after eating, it’s still something better waiting with. 

Unless you’re able to keep your focus and immerse yourself in meditation, even after drinking alcohol. 

It’s the immersion in a mindful meditation that gives notable changes where you can see your progress be it day by day, week by week or month by month. There’s really no black and white as to how compatible or incompatible meditation and alcohol are, since quantity plays a role. 

I did say that every once in a while, in small quantities it can work with meditation, but it’s nonetheless something to stay away from if you want to experience the full benefits of meditation without risking your focus going south. 

We tend to get so many thoughts during the day, and alcohol makes it worse. Not all these thoughts are your own thoughts, but meditation helps you detach from yourself and thus, you’re not affected as much. 

Now, while I always recommend keeping mindful meditation and alcohol mutually exclusive, there are some cases where the two can go hand in hand, because of the nature of meditation. 

Breaking Free of Alcohol Through Meditation

Considering that meditation helps you detach from what doesn’t serve any purpose to you, with alcohol it’s no exception. Some individuals resort to meditation as the way to get rid of their alcohol habits. 

Some are able to use meditation to stop drinking cold turkey, while for others, it takes them longer to be alcohol-free. Everyone’s on their own journey as far as that. But habits can go as deep as the subconscious, so at times, the mere willpower to get rid of a bad habit isn’t gonna be enough to break free. 

Meditation lets you take a step back, letting your thoughts flow, even if you happen to be under the effects of alcohol, so long as you’re not drunk and able to keep your attention on those thoughts without attaching any labels to those thoughts. 

Of course, sometimes meditation simply isn’t enough and this article isn’t to say that meditation is the way to go to stop drinking, but it certainly can be a major assistance, and for some, the single handed practice to push through despite the subconscious persuasion to retain an ugly routine like drinking is in this case. 

But in no way am I saying that it substitutes any professional help you could get by a qualified expert. There are so many variables that it’s impossible to say meditation will work for everyone when it comes to stopping a self-destructive routine. 

Prolonged periods of meditation is what helps you adjust subconscious beliefs you have, because these subconscious beliefs are ingrained deeply in you, and an immersive mindfulness meditation is supposed to be a deep experience, so in that sense, you’d be speaking the same language as your subconscious. 

Internal vs. External Experiences

The big advantage of meditation is that it comes from yourself, and it’s an experience you can produce at any moment, even if it’s the most basic form of meditation, consisting of placing your focus on the present moment. 

Deep meditation sessions don’t require any external substance to feel like you’re moving into a more pleasant place, without the bad side effects you would get from drinking something like alcohol. You can achieve a greater sense of peace, purpose and fulfillment that lasts longer and take your mind to a pleasant place where you don’t need to escape reality, but instead, make your present reality comfortable enough for your mind to learn to inhabit it, as it did right from the start. 

Meditation is a way to gain back sovereignty over yourself, as well as merging your mind and body. 

In that sense, there’s a lot of truth to the saying that you can find what you’re seeking for within, without having to go out and hunt for it, as in the case of drinking, when you’re looking for external experiences, when the internal experience you attain from meditating long-term significantly victors the shorts fix that doesn’t take you where you want to go. 

The best part? It’s completely natural and dependent on yourself. So in that sense, you can be your own savior.  There are, however, very specific circumstances where people feel like drinking puts them in the present moment, and they find it easier to focus, but nonetheless, it’s not a good way to become present. 

However, some individuals may be able to use these same temporal emotions to induce the feeling of being present while learning to become independent from drinking. Now, this isn’t gonna be the case for most people, and getting into meditation to begin with is hard for some. Alcohol only makes it worse in the sense that it makes it harder to get into. 

There’s of course a clear distinction between drinking alcohol and being drunk, so as long as you’re able to stay present and focused on your thoughts while meditating, meditation is gonna work out for you, but your goal should be to achieve that same state on your own without having a single drop of alcohol.