Get Real With Your Why: What Leaders Need to Know About Rethinking Their Relationship With Alcohol

In this episode of Headspace for the Workplace, I sat down with psychologist, author, and organizational consultant Dr. Abby Medcalf who spent years working with executives in mergers and acquisitions to address substance use at the leadership level. The conversation centers on one of the most common and least-discussed dynamics in high-performance workplaces: leaders who are quietly reconsidering their relationship with alcohol and don't know why their efforts to change keep failing.Dr. Abby's own story adds weight to the conversation. She came into this work through recovery from heroin addiction in her early years, which led her from a planned legal career into counseling psychology, and ultimately into a PhD in organizational psychology. That combination of lived experience with addiction plus deep expertise in how organizations and leaders function, gives her a uniquely practical and compassionate lens on the culture of high-performance drinking and why it so often goes unaddressed.The centerpiece of the episode is the Motivational Wheel - a research-backed framework developed by Prochaska and DiClemente that maps how humans actually move through habit change. Dr. Abby walks through each phase (pre-contemplation, contemplation, determination, action, maintenance, and relapse) and identifies the single most common mistake leaders make when they slip back: jumping straight back to the action phase instead of returning to their why. The episode closes with a reframe that is both simple and profound: take action from inspiration, not from negative motivation. for more information on this episdoe go to https://www.sallyspencerthomas.com/headspace/98