Our drinking could feel all over the place. But when we look back, the same things often happened in the same order.
We felt stressed and drank. We finished work and drank. We thought about alcohol, started wanting it and drank.
Then we dealt with the result and somehow ended up back at the beginning. That’s a drinking loop. And most of us didn’t have just one.
A few of them could be happening at the same time, which made it hard to know what was really driving the next drink.
Put all of that together and it can look like one big drinking cycle. But there are usually several smaller loops running inside it.
How a drinking loop works
Something starts the loop. We respond in the usual way and, for a short while, we get something from it.
The thing that starts it could be a feeling, a time of day, a place, a person, a thought or physical discomfort. Our usual response is to drink. Maybe we feel relief, distraction, a buzz or less discomfort.
And our brain can remember that quick relief, even when the rest of the night turns out badly. So the next time the same feeling or situation comes up, the thought of drinking can appear faster. After we’ve done this enough times, it starts feeling automatic.
Alcohol then becomes more than a habit. The routine is only one part of what keeps it going.
Physical loops
One of the strongest loops starts with physical discomfort. Alcohol wears off, we feel anxious, shaky, sweaty, sick, restless or just not right, and we drink to make the feeling ease up. The relief can come quickly, so it looks like the drink solved the problem.
But the next drink keeps the dependence going, and the discomfort comes back when that alcohol wears off. That’s the drinking and withdrawal cycle. The Cycle of WARF shows how withdrawal, anxiety, regret and frustration can all feed the next drink.
And the loop doesn’t always begin with physical discomfort. It could start with a thought.
We see a bottle, picture our first drink or remember a certain place, and suddenly we can feel the urge in our body. Then we drink, and next time the thought can bring the urge up even faster. The craving escalation cycle shows how a drinking thought can build until it starts to feel urgent.
Emotional loops
Stress, sadness, anger, loneliness or overwhelm can all start a loop.
We drink because we want the feeling to stop. For a short time, alcohol may dull it or distract us.
But the original problem is still there afterwards, and now we may also have poor sleep, anxiety or regret to deal with. So we can end up with more emotional discomfort than we started with. Guilt can take us around again too.
We regret drinking, judge ourselves for it and drink again because we don’t want to feel that guilt.
Other times, worry about our health can feed the loop. We feel anxious about the damage alcohol may be doing, then drink to get away from the anxiety for a while.
So we end up drinking because we’re worried about our drinking.
Routine and reward loops
Some loops are tied to ordinary parts of the day. We finish work, start cooking, sit in a certain chair or notice the time, and the thought of a drink comes up.
Nothing dramatic has happened. We’ve just repeated the same routine so often that one part now leads to the next.
And we can do the same thing with rewards.
We get through a hard day and tell ourselves we deserve a drink. It can also become our reward when something goes well or we’ve made it to the evening.
Boredom can become another loop.
We feel flat, drink to make the evening more interesting and then do even less with our time. That leaves us more bored the next night, and the boredom trap gets stronger.
Social and memory loops
If we drank in social situations for years, being with certain people could bring up the urge before anyone even offered us a drink. We may have believed alcohol helped us fit in, loosen up or have more fun. So we drank, felt less self-conscious for a while and gave alcohol the credit for the whole night.
Old memories can pull us into another loop.
A song, a holiday or an old photo reminds us of the good parts of drinking. We picture the buzz, the laughter or the feeling of being younger.
And we don’t always remember the arguments, the hangovers, the anxiety or the years when drinking stopped being fun. That’s how the rosy version of drinking can start the next loop.
The justification loop
Then there are the things we tell ourselves just before we drink.
“I’ll only have a couple.”
“Tonight is different.”
“I’ve been good all week.”
“I’ll stop again tomorrow.”
The thought gives us permission to drink. Then when it goes the way it usually goes, we regret it and make another rule.
Later, a new justification gets us around that rule as well.
That’s part of the cognitive dissonance around drinking. We want to stop, but the same old reasons to drink keep turning up.
The loops can run into each other
Our loops don’t normally stay separate.
We might finish work and reach the usual drinking time. That routine brings up the thought of alcohol. The thought creates a physical urge. Then we tell ourselves we deserve it because the day was difficult.
After drinking, we sleep badly and wake up anxious. We regret it, get frustrated with ourselves and drink again later to escape how we feel.
That can look like one long problem, but several loops are feeding it. And when we only focus on the last decision to drink, we miss everything that led up to it.
Find the loops that show up most
We don’t need to memorise every possible loop. Pick the two or three that appear most often in our own drinking.
What usually happens before the thought of a drink? What do we do next? And what do we get from drinking in that moment that keeps us going back?
Maybe the loop is stress, drink, temporary relief. It could be evening, drink, familiar routine. Or it might be withdrawal discomfort, drink, brief relief.
Write the steps down. They may be much easier to spot on paper.
Once we can see the pattern, we don’t need to treat it like a personal failure.
It became familiar because we kept responding in the same way. Now we can start catching it earlier and try something else.
— Brent