How to End Problem Drinking: The First Steps

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.” ~Marcus Aurelius

It’s 3:00 a.m. I lie awake knowing I have a busy day ahead of me, but my mind is racing. I had a few drinks last night, and I know that this is why I am awake at this ungodly hour. “Why did I drink when I knew I had to work today? You are a fool. You are weak. You are useless.”

This is how I used to talk to myself most mornings, perhaps with riper language, and the process would repeat itself when I had to get up and face the day.

I wasn’t anything like a bottle-of-spirits-a-day drinker, but I knew that even a couple of beers and a glass of wine with dinner would ruin my sleep and leave me feeling well below par. And it all added up over the week to a level of consumption that I knew had long-term health implications.

Then six o’clock would roll around, and I would talk myself into having a drink again—I was stressed and needed to relax. Heck, I deserved it, didn’t I, after such a busy day?

This is the cycle that keeps so many of us trapped in a drinking habit. That negative self-talk is a manifestation of the internal conflict that is going on inside our heads, which psychologists call cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance arises when we encounter a situation where we have conflicting beliefs and attitudes or exhibit behavior that contradicts those beliefs and attitudes.

When we experience cognitive dissonance, we feel discomfort or stress and will try to find a way to reduce that. Our choices are to change our behavior, change our beliefs and attitudes, or come up with a story that papers over the cracks and hides the disagreement in our minds.

As someone who had been drinking all my adult life, I was terrified of changing my behavior. I was caught in the bind that most regular drinkers face—the barrier to change seemed very high because of how many times I had tried and failed to moderate, but worse, I didn’t even want to become a non-drinker! I thought life would be boring, socialization would be impossible, and I would be miserable.

As I write this, six years after my last alcoholic drink, this mindset seems bizarre, baffling, and illogical. As L. P. Hartley wrote: “The past is another country; they do things differently there.” My life is now infinitely more rewarding and less stressful, and I don’t miss alcohol in the slightest, but my past self would never have believed it!

Habitual drinkers know that changing their behavior is hard, but most of them don’t know why or are in denial about it. The reason why moderation is difficult is simply because alcohol is an addictive substance, and if we have been drinking for long enough, the reward pathways in our brain are exerting pressure on us to get the stimulus the brain has learned to crave.

So not only do we suffer from cravings, but when we drink, the alcohol passes through the blood-brain barrier and suppresses the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that cares about the long-term—our health, our relationships, and that good night’s sleep we need before we go to work the next day. So the effect of alcohol on our brain makes the single drink we have promised ourselves turn into a few.

For this reason, problem drinkers find it difficult to change their behavior and must find another way to resolve the cognitive dissonance by telling themselves stories.

I used to downplay the health risks because I had read an article that said a glass of wine a day is good for you (conveniently ignoring the fact that I had a lot more than a glass of wine a day) and downplay the risk to my relationships caused by drunken arguments. After all, alcohol helps us bond, doesn’t it?

Another story I would tell myself was that drinking was the lesser of two evils; life without alcohol would be boring and stressful, so it is better to put up with all the downsides of being a booze hound.

The problem is that, on some level, we know this is BS, so we constantly feel the stress of cognitive dissonance. Of course, there is a quick fix for this, which is to have a drink. That immediately scratches the itch of the craving, and soon the alcohol will have a sedative effect and subdue the conflict in our minds. And so on to rinse and repeat the following day.

The other thing I found was that not only was this negative self-talk keeping me drinking, but it was also seriously damaging my self-esteem.

Shortly after I became alcohol-free, I went on a yoga and fitness retreat. There were some great workshops, which I enjoyed, but I started to feel uncomfortable whenever someone would mention “self-love.”

Not only did I not love myself, but I also didn’t even particularly like myself. Years of calling myself every name under the sun and beating myself up every day had left me believing my inner voice—I was worthless, weak, and pathetic.

If this sounds familiar to you—and it might be for some other habit than drinking—then you might benefit from what I have learned about fixing how we talk to ourselves.

The first step is to put down the weapons of blame and shame we have been using against ourselves. They haven’t worked in the past and won’t work in the future. You know this because if they worked, you would have this under control by now.

The first step is to treat ourselves with compassion and understanding. We have a problem. We might wish that we didn’t, but that is not the world we are living in. We’ve fallen prey to an addictive substance, just like millions of other people in every culture and from every possible walk of life. We are taking responsibility for solving this problem, but we are not going to keep blaming ourselves for being in this predicament.

Just take a moment to think about how you talk to yourself. If your best friend spoke to you like that, would you stay friends with them? Would you talk to your friends like that? I hope not!

Once you have noticed how you talk to yourself, try to catch yourself when you are being unkind and replace what you said with a more positive frame. For example, if you drank last night and you want to beat yourself up for it, try something like, “OK, I drank last night and I said I wasn’t going to, but that’s OK. I recognize that I have a problem, and I am doing something about it. There are bound to be some bumps in the road.”

As you notice the way you talk to yourself, also become aware of the stories you are making up, like the ones I mentioned earlier, that alcohol wasn’t bad for my health or my relationship with my wife. When we do this, we realize that we have been lying to ourselves.

Deep down, we know these stories we have created to justify our drinking are complete BS, so we may as well admit it to ourselves openly. By doing this, we start to untie the knot of cognitive dissonance we have tied ourselves up in, and our stress starts to unwind.

One of the most powerful things I did when I was deciding whether I wanted to quit drinking was to make two lists: all the benefits of drinking versus all the downsides. I can tell you that the first list was much shorter than the second.

I also challenged the listed benefits to see if I was 100% sure they were true. For example, I had put down that I needed alcohol to socialize. While it was true that I had often used it for that purpose, I thought about the times that I had enjoyed the company of others without alcohol. Also, it was undeniable that some people have relationships and social lives without drinking.

I found that nearly all the benefits could be challenged, or at least qualified. For example, I noted that I liked the buzz I got from drinking, but when I paid attention to that the next time I had a few drinks, I noticed that I enjoyed the buzz for the first half an hour or so, but then I would be chasing that high with more alcohol that just made me fuzzy and distant from the world.

Once I had seen through my own stories and understood the harm that I was doing to myself, I found that the answer was obvious—I needed to quit. However, even though I could see that this was the only way forward, it still seemed daunting to face forever without a drink.

My experience was that I would quit for a few weeks, and then I would have a wobbly moment, like going to a gig and trying to do it sober, and I would go back to drinking. I did this three times over a period of a few months until the last time when it stuck.

Here’s where I would recommend doing things a little differently than I did, which is to get some support. That will look different depending on how much you drink, how long you’ve been drinking, and what works for you. If you’ve been a heavy drinker for a long time, you need to take medical advice, as withdrawal from alcohol can be very dangerous.

As well as getting support, I recommend giving yourself a defined period without alcohol rather than saying it’s forever, which feels scary. Try taking a month or two and see how you feel, but be aware that the full benefits of going alcohol-free may take several months to become apparent.

For example, I found I had so much extra time once I had stopped drinking, and it took me a few months to find ways to fill that time. Now, I am incredibly fulfilled by my hobbies in fitness and music production and am rarely bored, but that was not the case in the first few months.

Becoming aware of how I talk to myself has been seriously life-changing for me. I now have much better self-esteem, and the relief from getting rid of all that cognitive dissonance about drinking has been immense. So be nice to yourself—it might well change your life.

Paul Buxton is a certified This Naked Mind Coach who works with clients wishing to change habits, particularly around alcohol, through his business, The Stoic Scientist. Formerly a management coach working with some of the world’s biggest companies, he now uses his experience, coupled with insights from neuroscience and Stoicism, to help people transform their lives.

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