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The Alcohol Experiment: How to Take Control of Your Drinking and Enjoy Being Sober for Good by Annie Grace
It’s YOUR body…
It’s YOUR mind…
It’s YOUR choice…
There are a million reasons why you might drink. It tastes great. You feel more sociable. Sex is better. It helps you relax.
But are you really in control?
Whether you’re reading this because you know you drink too much and want to quit, or whether you just want to cut back for a while, this book is for you.
The Alcohol Experiment is a 30-day programme with a difference. Each day, it will show you a new way of thinking about booze, and ask you to look a little closer at why we drink, what we get out of it, and whether it’s really the alcohol that’s giving us what we want.
In the bestselling This Naked Mind, Annie Grace offered a completely revolutionary solution to dependency, and a path to sobriety. Now, let Annie give you the tools you need to understand alcohol – whether or not it’s a problem. Packed with humour, patience and the latest research, try The Alcohol Experiment today, and take control of your drinking for good.
THE ACT TECHNIQUE
AWARENESS. Name your belief. In the context of alcohol, this is your conscious reason for drinking, simply put it into words: Alcohol relaxes me.
CLARITY. Discover why you believe it and where it originated. You do this by asking questions—both of yourself and of the external evidence—and uncovering truths about your belief.
What have I observed that supports this belief?
TURNAROUND. This is where you allow your subconscious to let go of the belief, deciding if after exploration it is indeed true for you. There are two steps here.
First, you turn the initial belief around and find as many ways as you can that the opposite of your initial belief is true. For example, if your belief is “alcohol relaxes me” the opposite becomes “alcohol does not relax me” or “alcohol stresses me out.”
ACT: Awareness. Clarity. Turnaround. It’s an effective, scientific way to shine a light into your subconscious and figure out what’s actually causing your behavior.
When we’re tired, stressed out, cranky, or upset, we don’t need alcohol. What we need is to change our emotional state. We need to do something to go from tired to energized, from cranky to happy. And we turn to alcohol.
Here are a few things you can do to help the process along.
- Make a firm decision to commit to this experiment 100 percent.
- Tell someone you trust about what you’re doing and
- Drink plenty of water to flush out all the toxins in your
- Get some exercise.
- Eat healthy foods, especially protein.
- Start a
- Take a photo and weigh yourself.
- Stay social.
- Be positive!
- Join this book’s online social challenge at alcoholexperiment.com.
Day 1: What’s Your Why?
The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to blame. The gift is yours—it is an amazing journey—and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins. —BOB MOAWAD
We’ve talked about how you’ve been unconsciously conditioned to believe alcohol is a vital part of life for relaxing, socializing, and everything in between. And you know there are competing desires inside your mind. Your conscious mind wants to drink less, or even stop drinking completely. And your subconscious mind believes you need to keep drinking for some very good reasons. Before we dive into those beliefs and stories and deciding if they’re true, we need to know what those beliefs actually are.
WHY DO YOU DRINK?
Write down a list of every reason you drink.
WHY THE ALCOHOL EXPERIMENT?
Write down all the reasons you want to take part in this experiment.
Act 1: The Taste of Alcohol
Taste is an innocent reason for drinking. After all, no one thinks twice about eating ice cream or nachos. They taste good! And our favorite alcoholic beverages are the same way.
So ask yourself, what observations and experiences have you had in your past that might have made you believe alcohol tastes good?
Imagine we could remove all the physical and emotional effects of alcohol. If it couldn’t actually make you drunk, would people still drink it? There’s a body of pretty convincing research suggesting they wouldn’t. It tastes bad. It’s poisonous. Drinking for the taste is a convenient, innocent excuse. At the end of the day, is it a possibility that there’s something more going on with your drinking than just the taste? Humans are incredibly adept at lying to themselves and believing their own stories.
TURNAROUND
This may be the most important part of the ACT Technique. Here you want to dig into the turnaround, or the opposite of the belief. You’ll want to take the time to come up with as many ways as you can (at least three) that the turnaround is as true or truer than the original belief. In this case, the opposite of “I drink for the taste” is “I don’t drink for the taste”
Day 2: It’s Not What You Give Up, But What You GAIN
One reason people resist change is because they focus on what they have to give up, instead of what they have to gain. —RICK GODWIN
As a participant in this experiment, you’re obviously giving something up. You’re giving up alcohol for 30 days. But there are two ways to look at it. You could focus on how hard it’s going to be and all the things you’re going to have to give up and go without. Or you could think about all the amazing insights and experiences you’re going to gain as a result of the experiment.
You don’t have to do this experiment. You get to do it. You have the opportunity to do this. You are excited to do this. You are choosing to participate. Recognize your old, disempowering, words around alcohol and replace them with new, empowering, words. This is important. The brain loves anything that gets you out of pain and into pleasure. It loves that shift both consciously and subconsciously, so choose the words you want to use. When you start consciously choosing your words, you’ll even start to get a little buzz, especially if you reinforce your statements afterward. If you say, “I’m going to enjoy some iced tea tonight,” reinforce it by actually feeling it. “Wow, I did enjoy that iced tea tonight!” The brain will latch on to the experience and repeat it more easily the next time.
Labeling
Another type of language you’ll want to pay attention to is how you’re labeling yourself and others. There’s a ton of research showing how labels can limit your experience. When we put a label on something, we create a corresponding emotion based on our beliefs and experiences. That’s especially true when we label ourselves and say we’re depressed or we’re alcoholics. It’s true that we might be suffering, but by labeling ourselves that we are those things, we ingrain the negative feelings and end up believing them subconsciously.
Day 3: Why We Think We Like to Drink
True happiness comes from gaining insight and growing into your best possible self. Otherwise all you’re having is immediate gratification pleasure—which is fleeting and doesn’t grow you as a person. —KAREN SALMANSOHN
DOPAMINE AND SEROTONIN
ACT 2: Alcohol and Sleep
Day 4: Dealing With Discomfort
Day 5: What Are Cravings, Really?
Knowledge renders belief obsolete. —NANA JANE
I’ve found there are two kinds of cravings you have to contend with at different times: physical cravings and emotional cravings. Physical symptoms such as anxiety, restlessness, and the inability to sleep show up while the alcohol is still in your system. We know they’re cravings because they go away if you give in and have a drink. It can take up to a week for alcohol to completely leave your system, so that’s about how long you can expect those physical cravings to last. After that point, you’re most likely looking at mental or emotional cravings. (Fortunately, you probably know exactly the last time you had a drink. When people try to get over a sugar addiction, they sometimes consume sugar without even knowing it because it’s hidden in so many food products!)
CRAVINGS AND STRESS
For example, if you used to handle work stress by drinking, like I did, then every time you experience work stress, you’ll likely trigger a psychological craving for alcohol. You’ve already wired your brain to do this. It’s a learned response. Your subconscious believes drinking reduces stress, even though science has proven that alcohol actually increases stress over time. And even though you’ve made the conscious decision not to drink, your subconscious didn’t get the memo. So it sends up a desire—a craving.
Day 6: Why Willpower Doesn’t Work for Long
If you don’t sacrifice for what you want, what you want becomes the sacrifice.—ANONYMOUS
Willpower can also be defined as the ability to resist short-term temptations in order to meet long-term goals. Some people think it’s a skill that can be honed and perfected. Or a muscle that can be built up and maintained. But it doesn’t seem to work that way. New research shows it’s more like an energy reserve, and when the reserve is low, there’s not much you can do until you top it back up.
Every decision you make requires you to expend a certain amount of energy, and that includes energy you might prefer to save up for exercising willpower.
Act 3: Alcohol, Relaxation, and Stress Relief
AWARENESS
If you’re drinking to relax, like I used to do, you are not alone. Relaxation and stress relief are some of the main reasons people drink. After all, who can deny that a few drinks totally relaxes you and relieves everyday pressures, stress, and anxiety? There’s a reason it’s called “happy hour,” right? You can’t use willpower to grit your way through and ignore the idea that alcohol relaxes you. Let’s name this belief: “Alcohol relieves stress and helps me relax.”
True relaxation is the absence of stress and anxiety. It’s not ignoring the stress or numbing it—real relaxation removes it completely.
It’s ironic that we drink to relax, because drinking actually adds stress to our lives. I’m not going to deny that alcohol definitely provides the illusion of relaxation, especially at first. But here’s what’s actually happening. That drink is simply numbing the senses and slowing the mind. For a short time, we truly don’t care about our problems, and we feel relaxed. But we’re not actually eliminating the problem or concern. Instead of solving the issue and removing it, we’re actually postponing it and prolonging the pain.
Remember that alcohol takes about a week to completely leave your body. So if you’re a regular drinker, you are in a constant state of withdrawal. Which means you have consistently elevated levels of cortisol and adrenaline. Which means you’re always stressed on a physiological level. Add on the everyday stressors of work, health, and relationships, and it’s no wonder you want to escape for a little while! One drink and that anesthetic takes over, decreasing your senses and slowing your brain function. The more you drink, the less you feel. And if you drink until you pass out, you get to feel absolutely nothing for a short time.
TURNAROUND
The opposite of “alcohol relieves stress and helps me relax” is “alcohol does not relieve stress and help me relax” or “alcohol adds stress to my life.” Come up with as many ways as you can that the opposite is as true as or truer than the original belief.
Day 7: Your Experiment and Your Friends
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).
—MARK TWAIN
ARE PEOPLE STARTING TO NOTICE?
At this point, some of your friends might be noticing that something about you has changed. Maybe you’ve been out with them and turned down a drink. Or maybe they’ve noticed a change in your behavior or even your physical appearance.
We’re Often Hesitant to Tell Our Friends
You might be a little hesitant to tell even your friends, and I believe there’s a pretty good reason for that. I think the crux of the problem is that we treat alcohol differently than we do any other addictive substance. For example, we don’t have “cigarette-aholics” or “heroinism,” but we do have “alcoholics” and “alcoholism.” When we say “cigarette addiction” or “heroin addiction,” we’re talking about the addiction, not the people themselves. But the word alcoholic defines a person. The word itself blames the person rather than the substance.
As a Society, We Don’t Seem to Realize That Alcohol Is Addictive
We don’t talk about the fact that when we party on a Friday night and end up puking, that physical reaction is our body’s way of saving our life because we literally poisoned ourselves.
We have successfully separated alcohol out from other toxic substances. We even say “alcohol and drugs,” as if alcohol weren’t also a drug, in spite of the fact that alcohol kills more people every year than prescription and illegal drugs combined. In fact, according to two independent studies about what is the most dangerous drug, alcohol won the prize.
Alcoholism has been defined as a lifelong disease for which there is no cure. Alcoholics must completely abstain from drinking forever. They have to label themselves as alcoholics for the rest of their lives, even if they manage to stay sober. Alcoholism is portrayed as a never-ending fight for control. A fight that, if people lose, could cost them their marriage, their job, their children, or even their life. That is so scary! No one wants to think about that when all they’re trying to do is unwind after a long day at work.
Day 8: How Alcohol Affects Your Senses
All our knowledge begins with the senses.—IMMANUEL KANT
Alcohol depresses the central nervous system and slows down your neurotransmitters, which are the chemicals responsible for moving information back and forth between your body and your brain. When your brain can’t process the information as quickly as usual, your senses are affected. They’re sitting there staring at that “buffer bar,” saying, “Come on .. . come on . . . why is this taking so long?” that a body in balance craves what will keep it in balance, whereas a body out of balance will crave what keeps it out of balance.
Day 9: The Power of Self-Talk
I AM. Two of the most powerful words; for what you put after them shapes your reality.
—GARY HENSEL
Becoming aware of how you speak to yourself is the first step. The second step is actually changing how you speak to yourself. Most people think this is difficult, because they’ve been beating themselves up for so long that it’s become a habit. And you can’t “get rid” of a habit easily, because it’s a neurological connection in your brain. It’s an unconscious loop that repeats itself over and over. By definition a habit happens without thinking. It’s unconscious behavior. Once you wake yourself up and become aware of the habit, you have to make a conscious decision to change it. And to do that, you have to rewire the neurological connections in your brain with new behaviors. It does take effort, but it’s completely worth it!
We aren’t always aware of our self-talk, and that is why emotions, even the negative ones, are such a gift. Emotions are the signal that something in our thinking is causing stress. Your job is simply to listen to your thoughts, identify the thoughts causing you stress, and question them.
Act 4: Alcohol, Our Culture, and Society
Humans evolved to fit in with others. Think about it. When a prisoner has the harshest punishment inflicted, it’s solitary confinement. Being separated from the group is the worst thing we can think of to punish a criminal. Let’s name this belief:
“If I don’t drink, I won’t be part of the group.”
So it makes total sense that to fit in with an alcohol-obsessed society, we must be drinkers.
We’ve also experienced that feeling of fitting in when we drink with our friends, right? It’s fun. We feel cool, at least for a little while. Whether we’re pounding beers at a baseball game or sipping champagne at a classical music festival, it doesn’t matter. When our friends are gathered around us, we’re all drinking and having a great time. We fit in. The advertising works so well because it mimics our everyday behavior.
Society’s view of nondrinkers is that they’re boring. They’re buzzkills. They aren’t any fun to be around.
One of the main reasons people say that they can “take it or leave it” is because they’ve never tried to leave it.
Once I was honest about my drinking, suddenly others felt like it was okay to question their drinking, too. They worried about the effects on their health and their families but were too afraid to talk about it. In the years since I wrote that book, I’ve discovered that the people who defend drinking the loudest are often the most worried about how much they drink. They desperately want to have the same amount of fun while drinking less, but they just don’t see how it’s possible. The cultural conditioning is that strong.
I also want us to ask, What kind of culture are we creating by choosing to be a part of it? It’s not popular to talk about, but there is a lot of evidence that an alcohol-saturated culture is actually a culture of violence.
FITTING IN DURING THE EXPERIMENT
Let’s talk about how to get through this experiment while keeping your friendships intact.
Don’t preach.
Be a positive example.
Be creative.
Day 10: Dealing with Sugar Cravings
Be gentle with yourself, you’re doing the best you can! —ANONYMOUS
It might surprise you to learn that you may experience heightened sugar cravings during this challenge. This can happen for a couple of reasons. First, most alcoholic drinks contain more than alcohol; in fact, they contain quite a bit of sugar. So your brain is accustomed to the sugar rush from your drink of choice, which will create an intense craving for sugar. Second, both sugar and alcohol create a similar kind of response in the brain.
Addictive substances cause the brain to flood with dopamine. That is true for alcohol and for sugar, which is also addictive. The dopamine is triggered by the substance, in this case, rather than by something important for survival, but the flood of dopamine tricks the brain into believing that alcohol is vital for survival. Just think—because of the flood of dopamine, your brain is learning that alcohol is important for your very survival. No wonder it’s so addictive!
When I was drinking regularly, I was consuming close to two bottles of wine per day. A bottle of red wine is about 600 to 800 calories, so just by cutting out the drinking, I was saving myself over 1,000 calories. For someone drinking the equivalent amount in beer or mixed drinks, the calorie count is much higher.
Allowing myself the extra sugar worked for me. However, if you don’t want to go that route, here are some ways you can keep the sugar cravings at bay.
Elevate your heart rate.
Eat fruit when you feel the need for sugar.
Drink lots of water.
Keep your blood sugar stable.
Consume naturally fermented food and drinks.
BABY STEPS
Focus on this one goal of eliminating alcohol for 30 days, and then you can revisit your other goals next month.
Day 11: The Alcohol Culture Is Shifting
Don’t be afraid of being different. Be afraid of being the same as everyone else.—ANONYMOUS
I first noticed the shift in some of the super-athletes and people who are deeply involved in the fitness and health world. They realized that while they were eating all-organic food, exercising, and doing yoga, they were also drinking a known toxin in excessive amounts. People are waking up, and they’re starting to question that behavior.
YOUNG PEOPLE ARE DRINKING LESS
CUTTING BACK IS A GLOBAL PHENOMENON
Children are the happiest people and they don’t drink.
Act 5: Alcohol and Happiness
For so many of us, alcohol has been central to so many meaningful and fun events in our lives that we blend the two together without thinking. Holidays, birthdays, weddings—celebrations of all kinds practically require alcohol in some form or another. So it’s no wonder we feel like alcohol makes us happy. It seems like it’s always there when we’re having fun. Let’s name this belief: “Alcohol makes me happy.”
Did you always need alcohol to be happy? When you were a kid, did you need a six-pack before every Little League game? Or did you and your girlfriends play hopscotch with real scotch? The average four-year-old laughs hundreds of times a day, no alcohol required. Think back and recall the years before you started drinking. Remember those friendships and activities that brought you joy.
Happiness is at the very heart of advertising, especially alcohol advertising. But there’s no balance in advertising. Alcohol actually causes far more unhappiness than happiness. It slows our minds and chemically depresses us. The ads never show the unhappiness that alcohol causes.
Children of alcoholics are up to four times more likely to develop alcohol addiction later in life.1 It’s a terrible cycle all based on the false belief that drinking makes us happy.
Maybe it’s the occasion and not the alcohol providing the happiness. It’s hard to separate the occasion from the drink, though, because drinking is completely intertwined with every social event we attend.
After alcohol has completely left your system can you fully realize that, yes, you can feel joy and happiness and incredible energy levels on a consistent basis.
Research has shown that only 10 percent of our overall happiness depends on external things, whether that’s a new car, a relationship, or alcohol. Things don’t make us happy. Ninety percent depends on our internal environment. How relaxed are we? How confident? How peaceful?
Day 12: Your Incredible Body and Brain
Take care of your incredible body. It is the most amazing thing you own, and it is the only place you truly have to live. —ANONYMOUS
Most of us don’t take the time to think about how amazing our bodies and our brains are. Think about all the incredible physical and mental feats we can perform. Our brains are more powerful than supercomputers; in fact, we created supercomputers.
Your brain and body’s function is to ensure you survive and thrive. Consider that for a moment. This amazing living computer is not meant to ingest large amounts of alcohol every single day.
Comedic actor Jim Carrey once said, “I’m very serious about no alcohol, no drugs. Life is too beautiful.”
Act 6: Is Alcohol Healthy in Moderation?
Our brains are excellent at rationalizing. And the alcohol industry counts on that when they promote this kind of pseudoscientific reporting.
The fact is, there are a handful of studies claiming that alcohol is good for you. Some of them were even funded by the alcohol industry itself. And there are thousands of studies that prove the exact opposite. The difference is that the positive studies get far more attention than the negative ones. Why do you suppose that is?
According to the World Health Organization, “alcohol can damage nearly every organ and system in the body. Its use contributes to more than 60 diseases and conditions.”The WHO also reports that alcohol has surpassed AIDS as the leading risk factor for death among males between the ages of 15 and 59.
Global study came out in 2018 stating that there is in fact no safe level of drinking; even a single drink, even on occasion, is detrimental to your health.
In a study of the harmful effects of 20 different drugs, alcohol came in as the most dangerous drug.9 It’s more harmful than heroin or crack cocaine when you look at the “ratio between toxicological threshold [or how much it will take to kill you] and estimated human intake.”
The International Agency for Research on Cancer declared alcohol a carcinogen in 1988. Not only is alcohol pure ethanol, which is extremely toxic, but it can contain at least 15 other carcinogenic compounds, including arsenic, formaldehyde, and lead.
We’ve also known alcohol causes cancer for 30 years, and yet it’s news to most drinkers. No matter how little or what type of alcohol you’re drinking, you’re increasing your risk of cancer of the breast, mouth, throat, rectum, liver, esophagus, and other organs. Cancer Research UK says, “There is no safe limit for alcohol when it comes to cancer.” Why don’t we know this? People just don’t talk about such things.
The term “drink responsibly” came from the alcohol industry itself.
Day 13: Let’s Talk About Sex
Sober Sex Is Truly Better Sex
Day 14: Staying Mindful in the Midst of Chaos
In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you. —DEEPAK CHOPRA
DISRUPT THE CYCLE
Neurologically, you’re physically disrupting the craving cycle in your brain. It is possible to separate yourself from your addiction. And the more often you do it, the easier it becomes and the less tightly the addiction will grip you. And it works even if you give in!
TODAY, think of your craving as a wave. It builds and builds, applying more and more pressure, until it peaks. Then it gradually subsides until it disappears for a while.
Act 7: Alcohol and Parenting (a.k.a. Mommy Juice)
Let’s name this belief:
“I need a drink to handle my kids.”
But whether you’re a parent or not, this section is incredibly powerful because what we’re actually talking about is stress. Drinking to relieve intense stress. Parenting happens to be one form of stress that millions of people share, and the alcohol industry has latched on to that and targets parents, especially moms, as a market segment.
Like all drinkers, you think you’re totally in control and can leave at any time. But the slope gets steeper and steeper, and the darkness closes in around you. You try to stop drinking and fly away, but it’s too late. The pitcher plant has you completely in its grasp. Eventually you stop drinking long enough to look down and make out a pool of dead bodies floating in the liquid. You’re not drinking nectar—you’re drinking the juice of other dead creatures. You are the drink.
Alcohol is addictive, not only to some people—to all people. And we need to understand that something as innocent as having a glass of wine to get through making dinner for the kids can end up becoming a huge problem. The only way to get out of the trap is to avoid it altogether. And the only way to do that is to understand that alcohol is, indeed, a trap. Oftentimes addiction takes hold when we use a substance to relieve stress. And in our society today, there aren’t many things more stressful than parenting, especially when the kids are young.
Wine was more than just a fun way to relax; it became my friend and ally. It wasn’t something I wanted. It was something I thought I needed.
Day 15: Social Life and Dating
Day 16: The Power of Belief
Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives. —TONY ROBBINS
You’ve heard this before, and you’ll hear it again: Your mind is incredibly powerful. It can be a staunch ally or your worst enemy, depending on how you use it. The good news is that once you learn how the mind works, you can take control and use its power to change anything in your life. If you believe that you’re going to be miserable without a drink in your hand at a social occasion, sporting event, concert, or even home alone, you will be. If you believe you’re going to be lonely, you will be. If you believe you’re going to be bored, you will be. If you believe this experiment is miserable, it will be.
CONDITIONING
Let’s talk about conditioning for a moment. Neuropsychologists agree that we spend our lifetimes being conditioned. We’re teaching our brains what to expect in any circumstance. Whether what we expect actually happens doesn’t matter, because we will manufacture circumstances that deliver exactly what we expect. This phenomenon has been studied over and over again.
One mistake people make is to think about and visualize what we don’t want. But the mind doesn’t necessarily understand the word don’t—you get whatever you think about. Which, in this case, is the opposite of what you do want. So if you imagine, I don’t want to just sit there being miserable, but you’re thinking of yourself sitting there miserable, that’s what your brain works from. It tries to make that scenario a reality. But if you think of yourself going out and having a great time, your brain tries to make that scenario a reality.
Act 8: Alcohol Is My Friend
Drinking often starts out as a social activity, but then it becomes something that we do alone and sometimes even in secret, driving us further and further away from true human connection.
TURNAROUND
The opposite of “alcohol is my friend” is “alcohol is not my friend” or “alcohol is my enemy.” Come up with as many ways as you can that the opposite is as true as or truer in your life than the original belief.
Day 17: Relieving Boredom Without Drinking
Boredom leads to creativity. Imagination is more important than knowledge. —ALBERT EINSTEIN
Boredom is an incredibly uncomfortable state for many people. Scientists studied this by putting people in a room for 15 minutes to be alone with their thoughts.
So we have this feeling that we don’t know what to do about, and our parents, teachers, and other authority figures tell us we shouldn’t be feeling it. That sets us up for classic cognitive dissonance. We feel bad or embarrassed that we’re bored, so we seek out ways to change our state of mind. Some people eat. Some people mindlessly scan social media. And many of us reach for a drink. For a short time, alcohol numbs the boredom and the guilt we feel about being bored in the first place.
People who are easily bored are more prone to addiction. Teenagers who report being easily bored are 50 percent more likely to try drinking, illegal drugs, or smoking.
While it’s true that alcohol does temporarily relieve boredom by slowing down your brain, it also numbs your ability to experience and appreciate the things that bring you joy.
TODAY, remember that boredom has a purpose. Turning it off robs you and the world of something beautiful and important that only you can offer. Try, just for now, to sit with your boredom. Let it wash over you. Allow the discomfort. And see what happens.
Day 18: Why Tolerance Is Literally a Buzzkill
Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.—THOMAS MERTON
THE SCIENCE BEHIND TOLERANCE
It’s a neurological fact that the more alcohol you consume, the lower your pleasure dips until you are much worse off than you were when you started. Does that sound like fun to you?
Dynorphin affects the pleasure you get from everything. That means when you build a tolerance for alcohol, you’re also building a tolerance for sex, and laughter, and ice cream! Anything you used to find pleasing doesn’t do it for you anymore. You have to return to using alcohol (or whatever your drug of choice is) in higher and higher quantities until you become more and more focused on your next drink. Eventually, everyday pleasures don’t even register anymore. That IS a big deal.
Day 19: Dealing with Depression
Stars can’t shine without darkness.—ANONYMOUS
Often it feels like depression and alcohol are linked in this chicken-and-egg scenario. Which comes first? Alcohol itself is labeled as a depressant, meaning it suppresses your arousal levels and reduces excitability. It’s capable of causing both sadness and depression, as well as making a sad situation worse.
When you use alcohol to numb your sadness, you’re also numbing anything that makes you feel happy. And that only worsens your depression.
When we’re depressed, we obsess. We blow the thoughts up and make them true inside our heads until the thoughts become a compulsion.
Depression is incredibly complex. And every person experiences it differently. One thing that I know to be true, though, is that alcohol doesn’t help. It only masks the problem and makes it worse.
Day 20: Our Headline Culture and the Science of Sharing
The science of sharing says that people share content that gives them social currency. That means we share things that we think will make us look good in other people’s eyes. As we’ve discussed, anything that confirms our own personal biases or makes us look smart or hip or funny—that’s what gets shared. Anything that makes us feel bad or uncomfortable gets ignored. Consequently, positive articles about alcohol are shared far more often than ones about its negative effects on our lives.
Day 21: Hey, Good Lookin’!
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON
ALCOHOL MAKES YOU FAT
You might be surprised to learn that alcohol is more quickly stored as fat than excess calories from sugar, carbohydrates, or protein—or even from fat itself. Alcohol has 7 calories per gram (fat, for example, has 9 calories per gram), but alcohol does not require as much time or effort for digestion; it is quickly absorbed. Not only does alcohol provide a dense source of calories —which is quickly stored as fat—but because alcohol is poison to the liver, the liver prioritizes processing alcohol over digesting other foods (and all other tasks) and stores it as fat.
Day 22: Drinking Due to Unmet Needs
Human happiness and human satisfaction must ultimately come from within oneself. —DALAI LAMA
In 1943, Abraham Maslow published his now famous “hierarchy of needs” (illustrated on the next page). He was interested in human motivation and what made people behave the way they do. He proposed that people must meet their lower needs first before they will be motivated to move up to fulfill their needs at the next level.
Act 9:Alcohol and Sadness
Does drinking make you happy or sad? Alcohol does give us a little reprieve from our feelings, but not for long. If you’ve ever had a drink to help you escape from sadness, you know it never lasts.
Tragically, there’s a strong link between alcohol and suicide. In fact, drinking is the most common factor with all suicides. More than one-third of victims were drinking prior to death. And statistics show that people who are dependent on alcohol are 120 times more likely to commit suicide—120 times! That’s because alcohol causes depression and makes us act impulsively.
Depression lies to us, and alcohol makes those lies believable. So when life drags you backward with hardship and sadness, it simply means that you’re getting ready to launch forward into something great! Out of the pain and sadness, you can find the courage and strength to truly heal yourself instead of masking the symptoms with alcohol’s temporary lift.
Something great is waiting for you. I know it!
TURNAROUND
The opposite of “alcohol relieves my sadness” is “alcohol doesn’t relieve my sadness” or “alcohol makes me sad.” Come up with as many ways as you can that the opposite is as true as or truer than the original belief.
Day 23: Alcohol’s Effect on Your Health
YOUR BRAIN
Alcohol slows the pace of communication between neurotransmitters, the chemical messengers that transmit messages between different parts of your brain and body. It interrupts your brain’s pathways, literally reducing the speed of delivery of information between parts of your brain and body by slowing down your brain’s neural highways. It slows communications from your senses, deadening them and decreasing your responsiveness.
YOUR HEART
Your heart beats over 100,000 times per day to carry 2,000 gallons of blood through your body. That’s a big job. Alcohol weakens the heart muscle so that it sags and stretches, making it impossible to continue contracting effectively. When your heart can no longer contract efficiently, you are unable to transport enough oxygen to your organs and tissues, so your body is no longer nourished appropriately.
YOUR LIVER
Two million Americans suffer from alcohol-related liver disease, making it a leading cause of illness and death. Your liver stores nutrients and energy and produces enzymes that stave off disease and rid your body of dangerous substances, including alcohol. When your liver metabolizes alcohol, it creates toxins, which are actually more dangerous than the alcohol itself. Alcohol damages liver cells by causing inflammation, and it weakens your body’s natural defenses. Liver inflammation disrupts your metabolism, which impacts the function of other organs.
Further, inflammation can cause liver scar
Drinking also causes steatosis, or “fatty liver.” Fat buildup on your liver makes it harder for the liver to operate. Eventually fibrosis (some scar tissue) becomes cirrhosis (much more scar tissue). Cirrhosis prevents the liver from performing critical functions, including managing infections, absorbing nutrients, and removing toxins from the blood. This can result in liver cancer and type 2 diabetes. Twenty-five percent of heavy drinkers will develop cirrhosis.
ALCOHOL AND CANCER
Occasional drinking couldn’t possibly cause cancer, could it? Yes, apparently it does. In a meta-analysis of 222 studies across 92,000 light drinkers and 60,000 nondrinkers with cancer, light drinking was associated with higher risks for many types of cancers, including breast cancer. A seven-year study of 1.2 million middle-age women highlights the direct and terrifying link between drinking and cancer. According to this study, alcohol increased the chance of developing cancers of the breast, mouth, throat, rectum, liver, and esophagus.
“There’s no ‘safe’ limit for alcohol when it comes to cancer.” It also doesn’t matter what type of alcohol you drink. It’s the alcohol itself that leads to the damage, regardless of whether you imbibe beer, wine, or hard liquor.
Although many of us are not aware of the relationship between alcohol and cancer, it should not come as a surprise. Again, alcohol was officially declared a carcinogen in 1988. Alcohol itself, ethanol, is a known carcinogen, and alcoholic beverages can contain at least fifteen other carcinogenic compounds, including arsenic, formaldehyde, and lead.
ALCOHOL AND DEATH
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, alcoholism reduces life expectancy by 10 to 12 years.
Act 10: Alcohol and Anger
There’s a well-documented link between aggression and alcohol consumption. Drinking is involved in about 75 percent of all child abuse deaths and half of all violent crimes. On college campuses, 95 percent of all violent crimes and 90 percent of sexual assaults involve alcohol. Why? What is it about alcohol that fuels all this anger and aggression? The biggest reason is that alcohol gives you tunnel vision.
Day 24: Are Addictive Personalities Real?
THE WAY IN IS THE WAY OUT
Take my case: I’m decisive. I have a strong will. I take commitments seriously. All those traits likely caused me to become addicted to alcohol. I was strongly committed to my decision to drink. However, once I decided to stop drinking, I was equally strong-willed and committed. The way in was also the way out.
Day 25: Setbacks and the Way Forward
You never fail until you stop trying. —ALBERT EINSTEIN
Day 26: Liberation vs. Fixation
Liberation is when I can take the substance or leave it. I’m in control, and I will have a great time whether I choose to drink. Fixation is when the cravings and addiction have taken hold and I am losing my power over my own choices.
One of the most painful things for us as humans is to feel powerless. Ironically, we give away our power to alcohol without even realizing it is happening. Today’s ideas will help you recognize where you are inadvertently giving up your power to booze so that you can consciously decide to take it back.
Liberation is being offered a beer and truly feeling like you could take it or leave it. Fixation is waiting to be offered a beer. It’s walking into a party and wondering when someone will offer you a beer.
Liberation involves no internal dialogue. There’s no “other voice” in your head arguing with you. Fixation is talking with yourself about whether you should have a drink, if you will feel bad in the morning
Liberation means you can have one drink and not give it another thought. You’re perfectly content. Fixation means you’re thinking about your next drink, often before the one in your hand is even finished.
Liberation does not come with a jonesing for the substance after it leaves your system. Fixation often means withdrawal symptoms and cravings begin as soon as the substance begins to fade away. Someone who can handle themselves around chocolate can have just a bite. But someone addicted to chocolate has to finish the whole bar that’s in front of them, and then strategizes how to get more.
Liberation puts the focus on the people and the environment. There’s little or no focus on the substance. Fixation puts the focus on the drink, not the party, even if that focus is how not to drink.
Liberation lets you be around the substance without a problem. Fixation means you can’t have it in the house without temptation.
Liberation is rational. You can decide not to drink because you have to get up early in the morning. Fixation is irrational. Even though you have that early meeting, you still want to drink.
Day 27: Is Alcohol Really Poisonous and Addictive?
How you think about a problem is more important than the problem itself. —NORMAN VINCENT PEALE
Before we discuss alcohol as an additive substance, let’s talk about what addiction actually is. It’s nothing more than an up-and-down cycle. You consume something (sugar, drugs, alcohol—doesn’t matter) and you feel better temporarily. Then the feeling goes away. You want that feeling back, so you consume the same substance again. But this time it doesn’t feel quite as good as your subconscious mind remembers, so you need a little bit more. Then the effects wear off, and you consume it again. It’s literally a high-and- low cycle that keeps you coming back to whatever substance you subconsciously believe makes you feel better.
There are four types of alcohol: methyl, propyl, butyl, and ethanol. If you consume even tiny amounts of the first three types, you’ll either go blind or die. They are extremely toxic. Ethanol is the only type of alcohol humans can consume without dying. However, it’s still so toxic that if you take even just a sip or two of pure ethanol, you will instantly vomit the poison out of your body. Ethanol is a general anesthetic. If you inject two or three milliliters of ethanol per kilogram of body weight, you will anesthetize the human body. That means you’ll go completely unconscious. Ethanol was used as a general anesthetic in Mexico, London, and Germany in the 1929–31 era, but was abandoned because of its toxicity.
When we drink, we’re consuming pure ethanol in tiny amounts. A strong beer is about 6 percent alcohol by volume. Wine is generally 12 to 16 percent alcohol by volume. Even hard liquor is only 40 percent alcohol, and people usually add mixers, which dilute the percentage even more. We’re masking the poisonous ethanol with a lot of other stuff that makes the drinking taste better. But the anesthetic effects remain.
Anesthetic and Depressant
In addition to being an anesthetic, alcohol is a depressant. It depresses your feelings and your nervous system. Depending on how much pure alcohol you consume, you might pass out completely or just feel nicely numb for a while. But our brains react to stimuli, and they are designed to maintain balance, or homeostasis.
Let’s say you had a hard day at work and you just want a drink. Happy hour it is! You head to your favorite watering hole and have a drink. Within a short time, everything slows down. The alcohol’s natural depressants dull your senses, and you subconsciously interpret that as relaxation. You feel better, for about 20 to 30 minutes. Then it’s time for your brain to kick into action and regain balance. There are depressants in your system, so your brain releases more stimulants to bring you back up. The problem is those stimulants make you even more uneasy and anxious than you were to start with. Well, one drink was good, so two must be better, right?
You have another drink in an effort to counteract the chemicals your brain released in an effort to counteract the alcohol. Confused? So is your body! It releases more stimulating stress hormones to battle that second drink. Back and forth. Depressants. Stimulants. Depressants. Stimulants. This cycle might continue on and on until you pass out from the sheer amount of poisonous ethanol in your system. And thank goodness, because blacking out gives your body a chance to metabolize the poison and detoxify your blood as best as it can.
Alcohol is addictive because you wind up worse off after each drink. And you mistakenly believe that another drink will bring you back up.
It’s the problem and the solution at the same time. It’s the chicken and the egg.
Detoxing from Alcohol Is Even More Toxic
Here’s the kicker. In order for your body to process and get rid of the alcohol, it has to create the chemical acetaldehyde. The amount of acetaldehyde that is released into your body from just one unit of alcohol would never be allowed in any food because it would be deemed too toxic. Acetaldehyde is actually more toxic than the alcohol itself! So, we drink. We build tolerance. To get the same feeling of relief from everyday stress, we need to drink more. We produce higher and higher levels of acetaldehyde to process the alcohol. And we don’t even realize how much poison is circulating in our bodies at any given time.
Once we consciously realize what we’re actually putting into our bodies— ethanol and acetaldehyde—we can’t go back to blissful ignorance. Now that you know what happens and why alcohol is addictive, you can’t unknow it.
Day 28: The Truth About Moderation
Don’t bother just to be better than others. Try to be better than yourself. —WILLIAM FAULKNER
We’re coming to the end of this experiment, and you’re going to have to decide what to do next. Will you stay alcohol-free for another 30 days? Or 60 days? Or indefinitely? Or will you decide to carry on as before but become more mindful of your behavior?
moderation is possible. Either alcohol just isn’t important to a person because they have not developed an emotional or physical addiction and can truly take it or leave it. Or they are willing to put in the effort to pay attention and moderate how they drink. This means constant vigilance and regular assessment.
THE POWER OF DECISION
But there is incredible power in making a decision. Once you’ve truly made a decision about something in your whole body and mind, there is no plan B. There’s no turning back. And that’s a good thing because it lets you escape the “maybe” trap.
When you make a decision that you’re not a drinker anymore, that’s it. You’re free from the hamster wheel. Alcohol no longer has a hold over you because you are of one mind. Your conscious and subconscious want the same thing.
The ins and outs of moderation are complex both physically and psychologically. So before you make a decision to moderate, consider these ideas.
- Moderation means you’re always making
- Moderation doesn’t make sense from a physiological
- Alcohol impairs your ability to stick with your
- Alcohol makes you
- Alcohol numbs your response to normal stimuli.
- Alcohol increases cravings but not
“I’ve tried moderation so many times and besides being exhausting, I hated being a slave to alcohol.
Day 29: Tough Love
The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment. It is not in luck, or chance, or the help of others. It is in yourself alone. —ORISON SWETT MARDEN
We spend so much time thinking, I would drink less if my life weren’t so stressful. Or If my husband hadn’t left me, I wouldn’t be drinking so much. Or If my kids were nicer to me . . . Or Maybe when the kids are out of the house . . . There’s always a reason or an excuse for drinking too much. The truth is, this train runs only one way—forward.
If you go back to mindless drinking, you could be headed somewhere you don’t want to go. Self-medicating with alcohol is not a long-term answer to anything. In fact, it’s the opposite. It only increases stress, depression, and anxiety. If you’ve got real-world problems, drinking is only going to mask them in the short term and make things worse in the long term.
The longer you’re on the train, the harder it is to get off. So ask yourself, Where are you headed? What does your future look like if you don’t make a change? What’s life going to be like for you a year after this experiment? How about in 5 years? Or 10? Whatever alcohol is costing you now, it’s going to cost more in the future.
Day 30: What’s Next?
Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved. —WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN
Completing this 30-day experiment is a big accomplishment, and you should be proud. No matter where you go from here, you will never lose this time of learning, self-reflection, and empowerment. And while you may not realize the enormity of your accomplishment, I promise you that powerful shifts have happened. You have embarked on a path of awareness, and you will naturally and effortlessly be more mindful of your drinking in the future.
Another non-negotiable for me was drinking as self-medication. If I simply “had to have a drink” because I was stressed out for some reason, that was not okay. I was totally committed to finding other healthy ways to deal with stress and uncomfortable emotions. I couldn’t keep going back to the bottle every time I had a bad day or things were tough, because I knew where that train was headed, and I did not want to be on it when it crashed. Before I started drinking, I used to run or read a book to handle negative emotions. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that alcohol was making things worse.
Understand That Maybe Means Yes
One Final Word
Your brain is amazing, and you can program it to do what you want by repeatedly succeeding. If you make the target too hard to hit, you’ll consistently fail. When that happens, your brain gets the message that you’re a failure. And you start to believe it! When you believe you’re a failure when it comes to alcohol, that belief makes your life SO difficult. Train your brain to believe you’re successful instead, and you can do anything you decide to do.
