We wake up after drinking and feel anxious, shaky, flat or just not right. We regret drinking again. We get frustrated with ourselves and promise that tonight will be different. Then the day wears on, the discomfort builds and a drink starts to look like the quickest way to feel better.
So we drink and go straight back to the beginning of the cycle. Many of us have lived through this cycle hundreds of times without seeing that all the parts were connected. I call it the Cycle of WARF: withdrawals, anxiety, regret and frustration.
And each time around, it can pull us in a little more.
Where the cycle starts
WARF usually starts as the alcohol wears off, before we decide to have the next drink. That reaction doesn’t always look like the severe withdrawal people picture. It might be poor sleep, sweating, irritability, a racing mind, nausea, shakiness or a feeling that we can’t get comfortable.
Other times, we just feel off. We have no energy, everything bothers us and we don’t feel like ourselves. We might call it stress, a bad mood or a hangover and miss the fact that it’s part of the drinking and withdrawal cycle. And if we don’t realise alcohol helped create the discomfort, alcohol can still look like the answer to it.
Withdrawals
The first part of WARF is withdrawal. Alcohol slows us down, but that feeling doesn’t last. For some of us, that means feeling anxious and restless the next morning. For others, it could start while we’re still in bed during the night or later in the day when the last drink is wearing off.
And if we’ve become physically dependent, the discomfort can feel much stronger. Then a drink can bring quick relief. But that relief can fool us. The drink has only taken away some of the discomfort alcohol caused in the first place. And if our tolerance has been rising, we may need more alcohol, or need it earlier, to get the same relief.
And this can pull us further into dependence, even though we tell ourselves we’re only drinking to take the edge off.
Anxiety
Next comes anxiety. We might wake with a tight chest, racing thoughts or a horrible feeling that something is wrong. Maybe we replay the night, worry about our health or feel on edge for no obvious reason. Sometimes there really is something to worry about. But alcohol can turn the level of anxiety up as well.
So the anxiety can feel like a reason to drink, even when drinking helped create it. A drink might quiet it for a while. Then as that drink wears off, the anxiety can return and we’re back in the same place. And when this happens often enough, we may start believing that alcohol is the only thing that calms us down.
Regret
Then there’s regret. It doesn’t have to come from one huge disaster. We might regret how much we drank, the money we spent, the message we sent or the fact that another evening disappeared. Maybe we had promised ourselves we would stop after two and finished everything in the house. Or we woke up knowing we had done the exact thing we said we wouldn’t do.
That regret hurts because many of us already know alcohol is taking too much from us. But instead of looking at the cycle, we can turn the whole thing against ourselves. We say, “Why can’t I control this?” or “What is wrong with me?”
And now we have another feeling we want to escape.
Frustration
Regret can quickly turn into frustration. We make new rules. We decide we’ll only drink at weekends, only buy a certain amount or start again on Monday. Then we break the rule and feel even worse about ourselves. After going around like this for years, we can become exhausted by our own promises.
And the thing is, frustration doesn’t remove the urge to drink. It can make us want relief even more. So by the end of the day, the drink can look like a break from the withdrawal, the anxiety, the regret and the frustration all at once. We drink, feel different for a while and reset the cycle.
Why WARF gets stronger
Each time a drink takes the discomfort away for a while, our brain remembers it. We feel bad, we drink and the relief comes quickly. At the same time, drinking can increase our tolerance, make the withdrawal worse and give us more to regret. So each time we go around it, the cycle can become harder to get out of.
We might drink earlier because the discomfort starts earlier. We can end up drinking more because the old amount no longer works. Or we stop thinking of the first drink as optional because it now feels like something we need. By this point, physical dependence, anxiety, regret and frustration are all mixed together.
Start by seeing the whole cycle
We often focused only on the final drink. We asked why we poured it without looking at what had been happening in our body and mind for the hours before it. So it can help to look back at the last few times we drank. What did we feel as the alcohol wore off? When did the anxiety start? What did we regret? What were we saying to ourselves by the time frustration set in?
When we look at our own version of WARF, the next drink might not seem so random anymore. We can see the pressure that had been building before we drank and where it came from. And once we recognise withdrawal discomfort as part of the cycle, it stops looking like proof that we need alcohol.
That pressure didn’t come out of nowhere. The drink might have felt like a rescue for a while. But it was also keeping the cycle going.
— Brent