Should You Take a Drink to Beat Approach Anxiety?

Not as a plan. One drink at a social event will not ruin your night, but using alcohol to get yourself to approach teaches your body the wrong lesson. You learn that you can only do it with a drink, you read the woman worse, and the anxiety is still there the next time you go out sober.

A drink does take the edge off. It lowers inhibition, and a man who was stuck at the edge of the room may find himself walking over after the second one.

That is why so many men try it, and why it spreads by word of mouth. The effect is real for a short time. The cost comes afterward, and it builds.

You never learn that you can do it without help. The point of approaching, over and over, is that your body learns the alarm was bigger than the event. If you approach with a drink in you, the lesson your body takes is that the drink made it safe. The anxiety gets nothing to unlearn.

You read her worse. An approach is a conversation, and the skill in it is noticing whether she is interested, when to keep going and when to leave. Alcohol dulls exactly that. Men who have been drinking tend to miss signals, push past a clear no, or get louder than the moment calls for.

She can tell. A woman who meets a man after a few drinks has seen the type before. Slurred or overconfident approaches rarely come across as relaxed, and many women simply leave.

You cannot take in coaching. If you are working on your approach, you need to remember what happened and what you were told. A man who is drinking loses much of it by morning.

It can become the routine. If you cannot walk up to anyone without a drink, the next step is needing one every time. That is a bad place to end up, and one worth catching early. If you notice you cannot go out without drinking, or you are drinking more to cope with nerves, talk to someone you trust or a doctor. Coaching helps with approaching, not with drinking.

The nerves can be trained directly, and it is faster than most men expect.

• Make the goal tiny. Say hello and ask a plain question. a dating coach's standard for a man with approach anxiety is deliberately low: walk up and make a noise. If that is the target, there is little to be afraid of.
• Move early. Do your first approach within minutes of arriving, not after an hour of building dread.
• Build exposure in steps. Eye contact, then a quick question like asking for directions, then a real conversation. Each is a small version of the next.
• Go out more often. The nerves get smaller with repetition. A man who goes out several days in a row finds the first approach is the hard one, and later ones are steadier.

There is a difference between having a drink because you are at a bar with friends and drinking to get up the nerve. The first is ordinary. The second is the one to avoid.

A simple test: if you would be fine ordering a soda and still approaching, you are not using it as a crutch. If the thought of approaching without a drink makes you want to skip the night, you are.

If you do have a drink, keep it to one, and do not time your approach around it.

At a Cold Approach Bootcamp the approach anxiety is handled directly, in the field, with the coach next to you. The first goal is small enough to do with your pulse high: walk up and say something. He tells you when to move before the thought wins, and talks through what happened right after each set.

Each training day is two four-hour blocks, with daygame and night game mixed to suit you. Because the coach corrects every approach live, you learn what actually works instead of what a drink made feel easier. Group is three consecutive days with three students per coach, in Miami or New York. Private is fully 1-on-1 for one, two or three days. No experience is required, and approach anxiety is what we specialize in.

If bars are where you struggle most, read How Do You Deal With Approach Anxiety at a Bar? and Overcoming Approach Anxiety.