‘If I buy this, what is likely to happen?’

A speaker at a conference I went to described an exercise he does with his clients. He has his group members write down the things that are highest priority in their lives. Invariably they write family, friends, sometimes their jobs, etc. In all the dozens of times he’s done this exercise, only once did anyone list ‘alcohol’. And that was only in the context of recovery.

Yet, as he pointed out, every one of the people in each group had elevated alcohol to a position very high on their list of actual priorities. They had made it more important than many of the other things mentioned—especially family—because they were willing to use alcohol even if it harmed things they rationally, consciously described as more important.

We can spend an amazing amount of time debating theories and looking for root causes for our difficulty with impulse control. But it is the behavior, a variety of forms of self-destructive behavior, that is the concern. It manifests itself in ways that go beyond drinking. Other substances, eating disorders, cutting, sabotaging relationships; all might be traceable to the same roots as our drinking. It will obviously be useful to look at that and try to deal with those issues.

But the first step is to stop the behavior.

I know it seems as though nobody in your life understands how hard it is to resist the temptation to drink. I do, and so do the other folks here. The way I got past that temptation was that I made an absolute rule that I wouldn’t buy alcohol under any circumstances, that it wouldn’t come in to my house.

That is a rule I’d advise anyone with a drinking problem to adopt. So no matter how tempting it is, you JUST DON’T BUY IT. I don’t live with another drinker, thank goodness, so there’s a corollary to this if you happen to live with one; you don’t accept alcohol if it is offered.

Lots of people say that it’s the first drink that’s the problem, and we all know that once we start drinking it will be very difficult to stop—because we know that oblivion is our goal. We don’t want the feeling of one beer. We want the feeling of more and more alcohol going into our bloodstream.

A teenage boy that I mentor asked me the other day, “so you can’t even drink one glass of wine?”

To which I replied, “I could, but I find that if I drink one I want two, if I drink two I want three, if I drink three I want four, and with each succeeding glass my ability to make rational decisions about drinking diminishes.”

That shut him up for a minute.

So to not drink, there are two parts and the first part is the most important. You don’t buy or accept alcohol under any circumstances. The second part is dealing with the things that upset you. But you need to get it out of your head that you will ever buy, own, have, drink, or accept alcohol. It just isn’t part of your life. You and I don’t make good decisions about drinking once we start.

It doesn’t matter...

·          how upset you are about something,

·          how pissed you are at someone,

·          how much you want to show people that you’re upset,

·          how overwhelmed you feel by work or school,

·          what a rotten day you had,

·          how frazzled you are about your kids or parents,

·          how you want to cut loose and be irresponsible.

 

Those are all valid feelings, impulses, and thoughts. You just don’t use alcohol, and you don’t do other self-harming behaviors.

Then—then! -- you can try to deal with the things you’re upset about. Yes, it’s important to be watchful for when your stress is building, for when you’re getting angry about things, for when you aren’t communicating well with someone, for when you’re getting that overwhelmed feeling. Perhaps it will be important to start trying to meditate a bit each day, or spend some time reviewing the concepts at an online recovery group, or writing in a journal, or reading a bit about emotional management. But the most important thing is to NOT buy or drink alcohol. Period.

If you tell yourself you can’t stand that, some might call that a rationalization. But that implies character defects, and IMO a better way to describe it is as an irrational or unhealthy belief. You know that beliefs can be changed. But you don’t have to change the belief to first change the behavior. You can stop buying alcohol. Today. Ever. And then you can work on the other stuff.

The less often you drink, the easier it gets to stay sober. Perhaps you went days or weeks or months without drinking. Notice how once you drank again, it became a fresh memory and again became something that you turned to automatically? So consciously get rid of the behavior and it will steadily recede back into the less immediate part of your brain’s memory system. No, it isn’t gone. Events, smells, situations can trigger the desire; that’s what we call an urge. But urges are time-limited and bearable.

Try asking yourself some questions.

What’s the problem? What makes you feel that you have to buy it?

What are you thinking when you pick it up off the shelf and put it in your shopping cart?

What belief do you hold in your brain about why you’re doing that?

How do you imagine yourself using it—‘just one’? Is that really likely? Of course not. Play the scenario all the way to the end.

Ask this all-important question: ‘If I buy this, what is likely to happen?’

Drinking is a series of small choices, and each of us has a tipping point in the process when we’ve actually made the decision to get drunk. In my case I decided it was allowing alcohol into my house, so I don’t buy it and if it happens to end up here I just pour it out. For many the decision is made at the grocery store; once it’s been bought and brought home it becomes ‘inevitable’ that you’re going to drink it.

So the decision at the grocery store may be your time to decide NOT to drink, and to focus instead on what you’re going to do to occupy your time that evening. Because obviously if you are thinking about drinking that evening, it will be important to do something else with your restless mind. Perhaps the moment of decision is when you agree to meet your friends at a bar after work. So you don’t do that anymore. Achieving sobriety involves changing our beliefs, changing our lifestyle, and consciously changing our behavior in any number of seemingly small ways.

Right now you may have resolve; perhaps due to a recent drinking bout you may even have a hangover and probably some guilt and remorse. But we all find that slips away pretty quickly, and we can start accepting unhealthy beliefs again. Create and repeat new replacement beliefs and activities every day. Do something every day to enhance your sobriety.