A craving can feel like it's all happening in our head.
But at the same time, we might be holding our breath or pulling our stomach in without noticing. Our shoulders creep up and our whole body starts to feel under pressure.
Now the feeling is bigger, and alcohol looks like the fastest way to release it.
The thing is, some of that pressure might be coming from the way we're holding our body. Physical tension can become one of those hidden triggers we don't connect with drinking.
We can tense up without noticing
Think about what happens when we're reading a difficult email. We stop breathing for a few seconds, our stomach tightens and before we know it, we've been sitting that way for the last ten minutes.
The same thing can happen when we're waiting for an answer, concentrating hard or trying to keep our irritation to ourselves.
By the time the drinking thought arrives, the body already feels uncomfortable. And because alcohol used to be how we changed that feeling, the mind puts both things together: "I need a drink."
We haven't caused the whole craving. It might have been there anyway. But we've made an already difficult feeling more urgent.
Separate the tension from the thought
When the thought appears, take a second to notice how we're holding our body. Is the stomach pulled in? Is the breath moving normally? Sometimes we don't realise how tense our shoulders are until we let them drop.
That gives us more information. The drinking thought can still be there, but now we can also see that our body has been tightened up for the last hour.
We can let the stomach go, drop the shoulders and breathe normally. Then see whether the urgency changes at all. We aren't trying to make the craving disappear in one breath.
Sometimes it eases a little. Other times, it doesn't. Either way, we've checked whether the body was adding to it. We haven't treated the whole feeling as proof that we need a drink.
What does the body need?
Sometimes the tension is telling us we've been pushing for too long. We might be hungry, tired or still wound up from work. Or we may have been sitting at a screen all afternoon without a proper break.
If alcohol became our automatic answer to discomfort, we can jump straight from "I feel bad" to "I need a drink." We don't stop to ask what actually changed.
Maybe we need food or a bit of movement. Or we simply need to stop working and leave the email until morning.
That won't explain every craving. But it stops us assuming alcohol is the answer to a feeling we haven't looked at yet.
A useful check
Relaxing the stomach won't remove every craving. And that isn't what we're asking it to do.
We're checking whether we're making a difficult moment harder without knowing it.
If the urgency eases, even a little, that tells us something. It shows the feeling can change without alcohol. And if it doesn't, we can still deal with the drinking thought without adding more tension to it.
So when the urge shows up, check the breath and stomach before assuming it means we need a drink.
— Brent