He ordered two beers and one shot just to reach the click faster.

TL;DR - Dustin Ingram spent years chasing what Tennessee Williams called the click, the moment a drink finally shuts the noise off, and he built a bar order designed to get there as fast as possible. Sixteen years sober, he reaches the same click the slow way, and the slow way is the only version that holds.

Hi everyone,

In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee Williams gives his alcoholic character Brick a name for the moment the drink finally lands: the click. The noise stops. Reality gets quiet enough to stand. Dustin Ingram, sixteen years sober, told Mike and me during this conversation that it's still the most accurate description of alcoholism he's ever heard, because for him the click was the whole point.

His bar order was built around it. Two beers and one shot. He'd take the shot and chug the first beer, then sit back and relax with the second. Call it the two-beer shortcut, the quickest route he knew from feeling everything to feeling nothing. Every night for months started that way, and from the outside nothing looked wrong. At 22 he was managing a telemarketing office of 20 people. The bar across the street poured his first drink and shot on the house. He still came home to visit his family all the time. That's what high functioning looks like, a shortcut that works well enough that nobody asks where it leads.

Then grief showed up with nowhere to go. Dustin lost his dad in November 2006 and his little brother in April 2008, his brother to an accidental overdose. There were tears. But the click kept arriving right on schedule, so nothing underneath it ever got dealt with. It took getting sober for him to spend weeks crying over what had been pushed down for so long.

What I want every clinician and every person in early recovery to hear is that the click is real, and you're allowed to want it. Alcohol just sells it at a price that comes due later. Dustin's first taste of the sober version came at a college reunion he'd organized, surrounded by the same friends he'd started partying with, when he noticed a day and a half in that he'd barely had a drink. What he'd been chasing all along was connection, and alcohol was the fastest counterfeit of it he could buy.

The honest version takes longer. Early sobriety felt like a seventh grade dance to him, standing among people who loved him and thought he was hilarious, with no idea how to be himself without assistance. Years later, at a bar in New York holding a cranberry juice, he got curious about the actors around him. He walked out knowing what lit each of them up. Same click, earned the slow way, and this one stuck.

He handles grief the same way now. A random Tuesday hits and he sits in it, asking himself why he's sad and letting himself miss the bear hugs and the big laugh. Then a funny memory surfaces, and within about ten minutes the sadness has turned into something warm. No shortcut. Just the long way, and the long way gets shorter with practice.

Where are you still ordering two beers and one shot, and what would it take to wait for the slow click instead?

Hear the rest, from the pros and cons list with a single pro to the day 90 toast, in the full conversation with Dustin. New episodes drop every week.

My Reads of the Week

Guilt is the part of losing a sibling that pushes people toward using

A Bar Ilan University study in the Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma, published online in September 2025, compared 260 young adults who had lost a sibling with 230 who hadn't. Among the bereaved, guilt, working through anxiety and depression, raised the risk of substance use disorder, while better communication with parents was linked to lower risk across the sample. Dustin lost his little brother to an overdose within 18 months of losing his dad, and in his first 90 days sober he carried guilt over what he'd put his mom through after she had already buried one son. The protective side of the finding shows up in his story too, on the morning his soft-spoken mom finally said the hard thing out loud.

Feeling supported is what steadies you in the first month without the click

A team including Yale Stress Center researchers tested 58 people in inpatient treatment for alcohol dependence after four weeks of abstinence, exposing them to personalized stress and alcohol cue scenarios. People with lower perceived social support reported more negative mood under stress, while those with higher support did better on a cognitive control test across every condition. Published in Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science in 2026, it's the lab version of what Dustin felt at that college reunion, and again on day 90, when his cousin quieted a bar full of friends to toast his sobriety.

People who picture good things vividly have an easier time with hard feelings

A Medical University of Warsaw study published in Frontiers in Psychiatry in April 2025 compared 136 people with alcohol use disorder to 80 healthy controls and found that positive mental imagery was less vivid in the AUD group. More vivid imagery tracked with less emotional dysregulation and fewer depressive symptoms, and the researchers suggest building that skill could become part of treatment. Dustin's version runs on memory rather than imagination, pulling up a funny moment on a hard day until the sadness turns warm, which is proof the slow click can be practiced like anything else.

Wisdom Nugget

The click always has a rebound built in. Alcohol boosts the brain's calming chemistry on the way in, then the nervous system overcorrects on the way out, and the anxiety that shows up a few hours later is louder than the one you started with. That rebound is what makes the next drink feel like a necessity rather than a choice, and it's how the loop tightens over time. Early sobriety often turns the anxiety up for a while as the nervous system recalibrates, and that spike is part of the repair. Read more

Hot Takes

The alcoholism "click" (YouTube)

Don't do recovery alone! (YouTube)

Addiction and Recovery looks different for everyone! (YouTube)

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Thanks for reading,

Rachel

p.s. If this is our first introduction, hi, I’m Rachel, founder and CEO of Atomic Souls Counseling. I’m a Licensed Professional Counselor Supervisor (LPC-S) and a Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor (LCDC). After years in the trenches as a clinician, I discovered that my real passion isn’t just helping clients heal; it’s helping therapists thrive.

I’ve built Atomic Souls into more than a counseling practice; it’s a place where healing and business intelligence meet. I work with therapists, counselors, and practice owners to help them build sustainable, ethical, and profitable practices. Together, we focus on strategy, systems, and the economics of growth the behind-the-scenes work that allows you to keep showing up fully for your clients without burning out.

My approach blends clinical wisdom with business strategy. I coach on everything from pricing models and team structure to marketing, leadership, and scaling, all while maintaining your integrity and purpose. I believe you can be both a gifted clinician and a confident entrepreneur; those two identities don’t have to compete.

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If you’re a therapist ready to step into the next chapter of your career with clarity and confidence, let’s connect.

I write about the business of healing: strategy, systems, and soul for therapists who want to build thriving, values-driven practices on my blog.

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