How To Change Your Relationship with Alcohol
If you are someone that enjoys an occasional drink (e.g. one or two per week) and can genuinely do moderation, then good for you.
That was not the case for me…so this post may not apply to you…if so, please continue with what works for you.
I’m all in favour of having fun.
I’m well aware of the social benefits of alcohol (both perceived and real). Few people have explored the fun times of alcohol quite as…ahem…diligently as me.
But cutting out alcohol was the single most transformative thing I could do for my health. And if you care about your health - but are a long term drinker - the same is probably true for you.
There are 2 great traps of health, fitness and wellness.
I call these the twin temptations as they are related:
to add rather than subtract; and
majoring in the minor (aka over-thinking the small stuff)
The temptation is to try to fix your health by adding new things…new supplements, new equipment, new exercise protocols, new pills and potions. But these are small things that probably won’t move the needle.
What you probably need to do is to subtract: to cut the bad stuff out of your life.
The System is set up to sell you more new stuff and offer you easy choices.
With health, there is a big difference between what works and what sells.
What works are the basics:
removing poisons (e.g. alcohol, tobacco, sugar, weed etc).
improving your sleep (and fixing your circadian rhythm)
cleaning up your diet
doing some exercise
The order matters A LOT and will be different for every person.
We are only as strong as our weakest link. If you have a serious alcohol habit, that is your weakest link.
With alcohol, your sleep will be disrupted, you are going to comfort eat when hungover and exercise gets much harder.
Alcohol abuse is common amongst winners
If I asked you to imagine a heroin user you might imagine a scene of poverty, failure and despair – think of a 1980s Glasgow council estate in the film Trainspotting.
The sneaky thing about using alcohol is that it is associated with wealth, success and celebration (think of the marketing of champagne and the association with Formula 1 Grand Prix winners).
This has long been encouraged in many industries as part of a “word-hard, play hard” culture. Alcohol is everywhere and its normal. Alcohol is the only intoxicating drug where people think you have a problem if you don’t take it.
My point is that alcohol is often attractive to people who are ambitious, hard-working and determined. In other words, its a drug for winners as well as for losers.
We are taught that the norm is drinking in moderation.
But, for many people, moderation is harder than abstinence. I found it much easier to drink nothing than I did to have 1 or 2 drinks and then stop. If you are naturally a bit of an “all-or-nothing” person, you will probably bring this approach to alcohol.
It is ironic that, in many ways, drinking requires grit, determination and resilience. To get up and go to work on a hangover is no mean feat. Thus it is often strong people who experience problems with alcohol rather than weak people.
The trouble is that it can get to the point where you can’t imagine quitting forever because you can’t imagine life without “the treat” of alcohol.
If you want to discuss alternative rewards / vices, I am happy to honestly share my thoughts on safer and healthier alternatives!
Could you go one month without alcohol?
A month off is definitely a good place to start. You don’t have to commit to forever and you can get a better sense for the role that alcohol plays in your life by removing it for one month.
If you can’t go one month without your preferred “treat”, how can you say that you are fully in charge of yourself? I say this with compassion: if you can’t go one month without any alcohol, you definitely have a problem.
Here’s where alcohol is super-sneaky…if you are a regular drinker and you’ve been drinking within the last 30 days your experience of reality is distorted. The anxiety is not cured by alcohol it’s caused by the alcohol (or to be more specific by withdrawal from the alcohol).
It takes at least a month to fully clear the system and achieve a dopamine reset. But this one month of abstinence is really the start rather than the end of the process.
Here is the good news. There is only one month max of “white-knuckling it”, then another two months of occasional temptation. You don’t have to get through forever, you just have to get through three months. After that it’s much easier.
Alcohol Is Poison
Seeing alcohol as poison is a reframe but it’s not just a mental trick. The reframe is only powerful because it’s true.
It may feel fun, it may taste good, it may take the edge off in awkward social situations but that doesn’t change the fact that alcohol is poison.
Alcohol is a depressant and a nerve toxin. It works (gives you a buzz) by suppressing inhibitions but the toxic effect is chronic (long term). The longer your drink for, the greater the cumulative damage inflicted on your nervous system.
Consider the alternative uses for alcohol:
Sterilising medical equipment
Fuelling your car (ethanol is alcohol and you can run cars on it)
Would you drink petrol? Thought not!
It’s terrifyingly easy to fool yourself. Drinkers will cite questionable studies, whilst ignoring the evidence of their own crashing hangovers.
What else makes you feel that bad? Nothing…if you felt that bad after taking anything else, you’d probably check in to Accident & Emergency. But a hangover from booze? all normal…nothing to see here!
You can’t just “burn off the calories”
Gyms are full of people trying to “burn off the calories” from their booze habit.
Anyone working to improve their health has my respect but people make it (losing weight, getting healthier) harder than it needs to be.
The naive version of the CICO (calories in-calories out) model implies that it doesn’t matter where your calories come from as long as you “burn them off” with activity.
But if alcohol is a poison (and it definitely is), then ingesting poison will wreck your bio-chemistry. And everything in your body will then work less well.
Alcohol is particularly bad for men’s health (it lowers testosterone and is oestrogenic) and reduces libido chronically (i.e. gradually over the long term).
If you are a guy worried about low libido or excess body fat, alcohol is the prime suspect.
The joy of missing out
We drink for the perceived benefits and once you understand that those benefits are illusionary you can lose the urge to drink at all.
As Allen Carr says: once you see the truth about drinking, the fear of never being able to drink again is replaced by the excitement of never having to drink again.
The fear of missing out becomes the joy of missing out.
Chronic alcohol use trashes baseline dopamine
Dopamine is the molecule of pursuit, reward and movement; it’s what drives you to go out and get things done. Dopamine is the fuel for focus and motivation.
Alcohol spikes your dopamine level up sharply (but briefly). But after the spike, dopamine then drops below baseline. All you’ve done is borrow happiness from the future for a short period of time. The bill always falls due. This is the hangover.
Healthy baseline levels of dopamine are essential for motivation. With low baseline dopamine, we feel listless, burnt out and apathetic.
This is why people relapse…the cravings caused by dopamine deficit overwhelm them.
The good news is that it’s possible to boost baseline dopamine via better sleep, diet, exercise and supplementation.
It’s possible to change your mind
It is possible to go from “this is the most important treat in my life” to “alcohol is poison…and it’s not helping me anymore“.
This has left me with an expanded view on what’s possible in terms of changing your mind.
There are at least 2 levels at which you change your mind (maybe more but let’s keep it simple). Firstly, I had to start by engaging my conscious mind with the problem of understanding the pros versus the cons of alcohol. But secondly I needed these lessons to sink in at a deeper level in my subconscious mind.
The good news is that once you accept the reframe that alcohol is poison, it is only a matter of time before that sinks in to your sub-conscious.
When The Student is ready…
Alcohol was my weakest link and the thing that I needed to change before I could move onto the next stage of the game.
But I was not ready to quit alcohol until I was ready. It took many years (and a number of health issues) before I was ready to change.
In some ways, it’s the hardest thing I ever did (or at least it seemed that way for the first 3 months).
Health coaching
If you want help and support changing your relationship with alcohol, you might find it useful to discuss detailed tactics and strategy with someone who has walked The Path already. I can promise you total honesty on what works.
So if you would like to talk about Health Coaching, you can choose a slot for a free introductory video call here.
If you have any questions, please hit reply or email me on barney.whiter@gmail.com
Love to everyone
Barney