If stopping alcohol was only about discipline, many of us would have stopped years ago.
We can handle pressure, meet deadlines, solve difficult problems and keep promises to other people. So when we keep breaking a promise to ourselves about drinking, it can feel like there's something wrong with us.
We tell ourselves we weren’t serious enough. We need to be stronger, try harder and show more self-control. Then we make another promise and put the whole job back onto willpower.
The thing is, willpower is only one small part of stopping. We make a decision not to drink and expect that decision to be enough, even though we’ve been drinking for years. And all the thoughts, beliefs and situations that kept the drinking going are still there.
Willpower can help in a moment
Willpower is useful. It can help us pause, walk past the bottle, leave an event early or get through a difficult half-hour. But “I just won’t drink” isn’t much of a plan.
It leaves us facing the same situation, with alcohol still nearby and the same reasons for wanting it. The only thing we’ve changed is the rule.
That rule might work for a while. But if every evening becomes another test, sooner or later we’ll have an evening when we’re tired, stressed or just fed up with fighting. That doesn’t prove we don’t want to stop. It shows how much work we were asking willpower to do.
The thought can arrive automatically
Drinking doesn’t always start with a conscious decision. We finish work, walk into the kitchen or sit down at the usual time, and the thought is already there.
“A drink would be good.”
We’ve had that thought in the same situation so many times that now it turns up on its own.
That’s why alcohol is more than just a habit. Deciding we’ve had enough doesn’t stop the thought from appearing. Willpower may help us say no when it does, but it doesn’t stop the thought coming back.
Why saying no can feel like giving something up
We can force ourselves not to drink while still believing that alcohol would make the evening better.
Maybe we believe it relaxes us, rewards us, makes us more social or helps us cope. So every time we say no, it can feel like we’re denying ourselves something we need.
This back-and-forth is known as cognitive dissonance. Willpower may help us keep saying no, but it doesn’t change the belief that keeps starting the argument.
So we need to look at what alcohol is promising and what actually happens when we drink. And if we don’t, the same thought is likely to keep coming back.
Harder days don’t mean we want it less
Some days saying no feels fairly easy. On other days, we can spend hours arguing with ourselves about it. Maybe we’re tired, work was rough, alcohol is right in front of us or we’ve been thinking about it all evening.
We could want to stop just as much as we did the day before. We’re just dealing with a harder situation. So it doesn’t help to judge ourselves by the hardest moment.
We need a plan for those days as well. We can’t just hope we’ll feel determined enough when they arrive.
Then we try the same plan again
When willpower is our only explanation, drinking again feels like a personal failure: “I knew what I wanted and still couldn’t do it.”
So we make a bigger promise, set stricter rules and try to feel more determined next time. But if nothing else changes, we’re going back into the same situations with the same plan.
And when it happens again, we’re also thinking about every other time we made a promise and broke it.
Being harder on ourselves isn’t going to help. We need to understand what keeps bringing the drinking thought back.
Give willpower less work to do
So we make things easier before the drinking thought shows up:
- Know the times and situations when the drinking thought normally appears.
- Decide what we’ll do before we’re tired and standing in front of the bottle.
- Don’t keep alcohol close by and then expect ourselves to ignore it all evening.
- Know who we can contact when things start getting difficult.
- Keep questioning the beliefs that make alcohol feel useful.
All of this gives willpower less work to do.
And when an old thought appears, it helps to remember that we’re not our thoughts. A thought can turn up, and we can leave it there.
It was never a character test
Willpower not being enough doesn’t make us weak. We’re trying to deal with years of drinking using one promise.
Willpower still has a place. It can help us make the next good decision. We also need to look at why we want alcohol in the first place and what keeps bringing the thought back.
And when we deal with those things, saying no doesn’t have to feel like such a fight.
— Brent