time will be different... and for a little while, it was. Then a hard week came along.
For years I tried to stop drinking alcohol with more discipline, more rules and more willpower, and I kept landing in the same place.
Looking back, I’d been treating alcohol as the problem when it was closer to a doorway. Behind it sat what I believed a drink did for me, and willpower never reached that far.
Why willpower fails when you try to stop drinking alcohol
Most advice on how to quit drinking comes as a plan. Set a date, clear the house, write down your reasons, get ready for the cravings.
A plan can give your days some shape while everything feels unsteady. If a quit date and an empty fridge have worked for you, keep them. What I’m describing is for the person who has tried that more than once and keeps ending up back at the start.
Those steps mostly work on the behavior, though: the glass in your hand at six o’clock. They rarely reach the quiet sentence running underneath it.
I need this to unwind.
As long as part of you still believes that sentence, each evening turns into a negotiation, and you’re asking willpower to argue against something you think is true. It can hold out for a day... sometimes for a month. Then a bad day comes (or a good one worth toasting) and the belief tends to win.
All that effort went into the drinking. The belief itself never got looked at.
Why you keep drinking even when you know the downsides
You probably know the downsides already. The hangover, and the guilt that shows up with it the next morning. Knowing them hasn’t been enough, and research on beliefs about drinking hints at why.
Researchers call these beliefs alcohol expectancies: the effects you expect a drink to have before you’ve taken a sip.
In one study of alcohol expectancies, researchers Andrew Lac and Nathaniel Brack found that people who expected good things from drinking, such as relief from tension, tended to drink more. Expecting the bad things didn’t go along with drinking less.
That may be why one more list of reasons, or one more rough morning, changes so little. You already knew the costs. The relief was what you were still expecting.
The beliefs doing this work tend to sound ordinary.
Most of the time they pass for plain facts about who you are.
“It helps me relax”
After a long day, a drink feels like an off switch. Underneath sits the idea that rest has to come from a glass.
“I’m more myself with a drink”
This one convinces people that alcohol lets out an easier, funnier version of them. Without it, a dinner party can start to feel like an exam nobody told you about.
“I’ve earned it”
The drink turns into a reward for getting through the week, so going without feels like a punishment.
Making space between the urge to drink and the choice
What I call a pause is the moment after an urge shows up and before you act on it. It doesn’t have to be long. Even a few seconds can give you room to notice what’s going on underneath.
What am I hoping this drink will do for me right now?
The question works best before the glass is poured, while there’s still a moment to choose.
Sometimes the honest answer is rest. Other times it’s a way out of a feeling you’d rather not sit with. Once you’ve said the belief to yourself in plain words, it gets easier to question. Is it true? Is a glass the only way to get what you’re after?
You don’t need answers tonight. Just asking them can slow you down a bit before you pour.
When it isn’t safe to just stop drinking
If you’ve been drinking heavily for a long time, your body may depend on alcohol. The NIH’s Rethinking Drinking guide warns that stopping suddenly in that situation can set off a painful or even life-threatening withdrawal, with symptoms that can include nausea, a rapid heart rate and seizures.
Looking at your beliefs won’t make that safe, though a doctor can help make it safer. Please talk with one before you stop. Coaching isn’t medical treatment.
How to start changing your relationship with alcohol
What helped me in the end was talking honestly about what I thought alcohol gave me.
Not everyone needs to quit outright. You might be drinking more than you’d like while looking nothing like the picture most of us carry of “a problem.” That middle ground has a name, gray area drinking, and wanting to drink less from there is reason enough to look closer. If you’ve already tried cutting back and couldn’t stay within the limits you set, the same NIH guide suggests quitting may be the better path.
The pause assessment is a free self-reflection tool on this site. You can use it to look at what alcohol has been doing for you, and what you’ve believed it does.
If you’d rather talk those beliefs through with someone, you can read about how I work with people one-on-one.
