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Staying positive is one amazing tool you can use to stay alcohol-free for the next few weeks, and beyond if you choose. Positive thinking and believing in yourself are helpful, but I’m also talking about how you use words in sentences. Psychologists have studied how our brains process negative statements and found that the way a sentence is constructed affects brain activity. Negative constructions can cause higher levels of activity, which means we have to think harder.
Let’s keep this easy, okay? If we don’t have to think hard about drinking, the experiment will be less stressful.
So, say someone asks you, “Would you like a drink?”
You could answer in the negative: “No, thanks. I’m not drinking tonight.”
Or you could answer in the positive: “Yes! I’d love a club soda with lime.”
By speaking with positive statements, your subconscious mind isn’t triggered into activity. It’s happy. It believes you enjoy drinking, and so you’re enjoying a drink. It just happens to be a nonalcoholic drink this time.
How We Talk Changes Our Experiences
Furthermore, according to Albert Ellis, one of the fathers of modern psychology, how we talk about what is happening to us and around us actually changes our emotions around our experiences! One of the most powerful things I want you to learn in this experiment is that you are much more in control of your life than you may realize. Sure, it takes practice and awareness to begin to shape our emotions and experiences through our language—specifically the language we use when speaking to ourselves—but, wow, is it worth it!
I honestly can’t believe the changes that have happened inside me once I learned the importance of how I talk to myself—the words I use and even the tone. Do yourself a favor: Over the next few days, start to pay attention to how you speak to yourself. Ask yourself if you would speak to a stranger like that? What about someone you consider a friend? What about your child?
Listening to Your Inner Voice
You may find it hard to “hear” your inner voice. If that’s the case, do this—notice your emotions. When you start to feel anxious, upset, or stressed (or any other negative emotion), use that as a signal to pause and reflect on what you were just saying to yourself.
How we speak to ourselves has a huge impact on our emotions. This is true not only around drinking but in all areas of our lives. Studies show that the majority of most people’s thinking is negative and self-destructive. However, since our inner dialogue is constant, we are not often aware of it. The next time you start to feel badly about yourself, I want you to stop and notice the words you just said inside your head. Write them down. And then ask yourself, Was it nice? Was it helpful? Was it something you would say to someone you love? Was it even something you would say to a complete stranger, or are you talking to yourself in a more destructive way than you would talk to a complete stranger? Take time every day to listen to your inner dialogue and consciously try to speak to yourself with respect. Like any habit, how you speak to yourself is unconscious, and it will take some conscious awareness to discover exactly what that inner dialogue consists of. But if you can learn to speak to yourself as you would speak to someone you love, your entire life can change for the better.
TODAY, observe your language patterns—both what you say out loud and the self-talk in your head (we’ll get into even more about self-talk later in this book). And write down the words you’re using on a piece of paper. Do you use the same words over and over? Are they negative or positive? When you think about alcohol, do you feel sorry for yourself and tell yourself you are not able to drink? Or do you feel excited about the challenge and tell yourself you don’t have to drink—and don’t have to wake up with another hangover? How are you treating yourself internally? Are the things you are saying to yourself generally helpful or hurtful? Will they help make these 30 days a more pleasant experience? Don’t judge yourself for using negative language. Instead, think of some ways you can turn your language around and make it more positive. Make it a fun exercise.
Day 2 Reflections from alcoholexperiment.com
“My mind-set has definitely changed. Everyone around me is still drinking, and waking up with a hangover. This morning when I woke up I found myself wondering, ‘Why would they do that to themselves? Why?’ Then I remembered, ‘Oh, yeah, I used to do that to myself, too.’ It was so strange truly not being able to comprehend why people would purposefully ingest poison knowing that they would wake up feeling like shit!”
—CARL
“I’m feeling great without alcohol! New things have opened up for me—some simple things like planting a little garden, trying a different grocery store, exercising more. I’ve already lost weight, and I never have to worry about how much I’ll embarrass myself while drinking. I feel more present with my children and am not forgetting as much, or having to constantly remind myself of things I said I’d do with them.”
—ARLETTA
“I feel a change happening inside me, and I feel confident in myself again, or maybe for the first time. I feel like there is hope for the future and that there is so much to learn and ways in which I can grow and simply experience being human.”
—MORGAN
DAY 3
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Why We Think We Like to Drink (#ulink_bacb9337-ed2c-5cad-a1d0-a3ee558337a4)
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
Clearly, we must like drinking. Otherwise we wouldn’t do it, right? At least, in the beginning we liked it. Right now, you might be struggling with how much you actually hate the aftereffects. But there’s no denying that the first drink feels good. Before we can unpack all the complicated pieces of the alcohol puzzle, it’s important to understand what’s actually happening in the brain when we drink.
So, I’m out with my friends, and I order a glass of wine. I’ve had a hard day at work, and I’m looking forward to relaxing and laughing with people I love. That first glass makes me feel giggly, and there’s a little rush of euphoria that makes me feel good, maybe for the first time all day. What’s happening is that the wine artificially stimulates the area of my brain called the nucleus accumbens, or the pleasure center. The chemicals responsible for euphoria are endorphins, the same chemicals responsible for the good feelings when you exercise.
DOPAMINE AND SEROTONIN
Two main chemicals work in the pleasure center: dopamine, which is responsible for desire and craving; and serotonin, which is responsible for the feelings of satiety and inhibition. In a healthy brain, there is a delicate balance between the two. But alcohol throws off that balance, and so as I’m drinking that glass of wine lots of dopamine gets dumped into my system, making me want more of what gave me pleasure (the alcohol). Since the pleasure center has been artificially stimulated by an outside substance, my brain seeks to regain the correct balance. So it sends out a chemical downer, called dynorphin. This actually suppresses my feelings of euphoria, and as the effects of the first glass start to wear off, my sense of well-being actually falls below where it was when I started drinking. That means I’m lower than when I got off work after a hard day. Bummer.
The dopamine is still working, though, and makes me crave more of what made me feel good. So I order another glass of wine. And the cycle starts all over again. An unwanted effect is that in order to combat the depressant effects of alcohol, my body counteracts the alcohol by releasing things like adrenaline and cortisol. You may have heard of cortisol—it is also known as the “stress hormone.” So now in my body’s attempt to maintain homeostasis and combat the alcohol, I am lower than when I started. In other words, I now have to cross an even bigger gap to get above that baseline of pleasure. And that’s miserable. Even worse, though, is that the alcohol is starting to affect other areas of my brain. My senses are being numbed, and my brain is actually slowing down. Eventually, I might slur my speech. Perhaps my vision blurs. I feel detached from reality. I convince myself that this is a welcome break from the real world.
The Cycle Continues
The drinking cycle continues, and I get more and more drunk. What was at first a nice tipsy feeling is now completely out of control. But I don’t care because my brain isn’t processing the long-term meanings and implications of my behavior. Eventually, if I’m drinking a lot, it’s been slowed down so much that I have to work hard to walk straight on my way to the restroom.
My brain receptors have become numb, and my senses don’t relay the information as well, and so memories aren’t formed. I don’t completely recall the embarrassing things I say or do while I’m drunk. I don’t feel the pain I’m trying to escape. The stress from the workday fades away for a little while. But the stress remains when I sober up, and it’s compounded by the hangover I’m suffering from. The embarrassing photos show up on Facebook. And my best friend won’t talk to me because I pissed her off so badly . . . somehow . . . I’m not really sure what happened.
If you’re reading this book, you know what I’m talking about. The initial rush doesn’t last. The more drunk you get, the more you regret it when you sober up. It’s a downward spiral. And if you’re like me, you blame yourself. Why can’t I get it together? Why am I so weak? What’s wrong with me?
TODAY, realize that the cycle has nothing to do with you being strong or weak. It has nothing to do with you being a good or bad person. It’s a chemical chain reaction that happens to everyone. Although we all feel the effects slightly differently based on our age, weight, sex, and environment, the biological reactions are the same.
Day 3 Reflections from alcoholexperiment.com
“This is my third day and already I feel like I slept better. I woke up happy that I finally committed myself mentally. It is a shift I have a hard time explaining or putting my finger on. I am embracing the idea that I do not need to hit rock bottom. It is hard to break that way of thinking, but I believe in my heart now that is true. I can quit right now, feel better right now, and not drink again. It is that simple. An aha moment!”
—MONICA
“I had a situation last night that would typically send me straight to the bottle or a six-pack of beer. I won.”
—BRADY
“This is the first Saturday in as long as I can remember when I haven’t woken up hungover and miserable. I am anxious, which feels like a craving, but I recognize that it is because I have so much time on my hands. What shall I do? I’m going to need to get some hobbies!”
—PENNY
ACT #2 (#ulink_6800b4a9-815e-51f3-9e0a-21e5a9b2274a)
Alcohol and Sleep (#ulink_6800b4a9-815e-51f3-9e0a-21e5a9b2274a)
AWARENESS
When I started researching this book, I sent out a survey asking people what their biggest fears were about giving up alcohol. I was surprised to see sleep come up high on the list. It’s a huge fear for people that they won’t be able to fall asleep or they won’t be able to stay asleep. Let’s name this belief:
“I need alcohol to sleep.”
If you’re struggling with this belief, you’re definitely not alone. One of my favorite authors, William Porter, who wrote Alcohol Explained, is well versed in alcohol’s effects on sleep, and he explains this topic brilliantly. So let’s dig into this belief a little deeper.
CLARITY
I’m not sure how much the media is responsible for this particular belief. There’s not a lot of insomnia portrayed in the movies or on TV. However, if you’ve ever had a bout of sleeplessness, you know how disconcerting it can be. Sleep is critical to our mental and physical well-being. And when you can’t sleep, you’ll do anything to be able to fall asleep. Lack of sleep has been linked to serious health problems, including cancer, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, infections, and obesity. It also affects alertness, mood, and physical strength. This is because your body repairs itself while you sleep. It’s also a time when your mind digests what happened during the day. It assimilates the information and often comes up with solutions to problems. So when you wake up, you feel better physically and mentally. That means if you’ve experienced alcohol helping you sleep, then this belief takes hold very quickly.
Regular, high-quality sleep is essential to our well-being. So let’s look at how sleep actually works. There are two levels of sleep: rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and deep sleep, or slow-wave sleep. Every night, you go through several cycles of both levels. First, you dip into REM sleep, when you’re a bit restless and your eyes are literally darting back and forth inside your eyelids (which is where the name comes from). This is light sleep, but it’s crucial to your good health. Scientists don’t actually know why REM is so important, but they’ve done studies where rats were deprived of REM sleep and it killed them in just a few weeks. Once you cycle out of REM, you go into a deeper level of slow-wave sleep. That’s when the body does the repair work that needs to happen to keep you healthy. When you’re getting a good night’s sleep, you go through six or seven cycles of both REM and deep sleep.
Now, what happens when alcohol is introduced to the equation? Alcohol is a chemical depressant, so it reduces neural activity in the brain. Normally, your brain releases a variety of chemicals and hormones at different times to help bring you back to homeostasis. As you already know, homeostasis is the delicate balance where all the systems in your body are working correctly. When you drink, you’re introducing a foreign chemical. And in order to reach homeostasis, your brain has to release powerful counter-chemicals and stress hormones.
So the cycle looks like this:
You have a drink, and you stimulate your pleasure center while the blood alcohol is rising. But as time goes on and the alcohol levels start to go down, your brain knows there’s a depressant in your system. So it releases stimulants (adrenaline and cortisol) to bring you back up into homeostasis. Unfortunately, the depressant alcohol wears off before the stimulants do, and you’re left with an overstimulated brain for hours after the drinks have worn off. It’s as if you drank alcohol and a triple espresso at the same time. The alcohol wears off, but the espresso is still affecting you hours later.
The alcohol is disrupting your sleep schedule. After you drink, you go into a deep sleep for the first five hours or so. That might seem great, but you don’t get into REM sleep. And you need both. So while your body is trying to process all the chemicals in your body, your cycles are completely thrown out of whack. You wind up with only one or two cycles of REM sleep instead of the six or seven you actually need.
After those first five hours, you wake up and can’t get back to sleep. Many people wake up at three or four in the morning and fret about everything they can think of. The worry and regret creep in, and the negative thoughts take over the brain. All this is happening because you’re overstimulated and your body chemistry is completely out of balance. Here’s the thing—any amount of alcohol will disrupt your sleep. It doesn’t matter if you have one drink or you go on a margarita binge-fest. You’re not going to sleep well. If you do this night after night, the lack of quality sleep cycles will begin to take its toll.
And there’s another big problem. When you start getting ready for bed without alcohol in your system, your body releases its own chemicals to quiet you down and prepare you for sleep. But when you drink regularly, you train your brain to utilize the artificial depressants in the alcohol to do that job. So that means you’re relying on alcohol to put you to sleep. But you still aren’t rested, because your natural sleep rhythms are out of whack.
So what does this mean for you during this experiment? It means that for the first two to five nights of not drinking, your body may still be expecting those artificial depressants. Your brain might be confused during those early days, and you could have trouble falling asleep. The worst thing you can do at that point is to have a drink to help you sleep. It might seem like the right thing to do, but it will actually set your progress back. The good news is most people find they’re sleeping better than ever after the fifth night. You’ve given your brain time to readjust itself and get the chemical release balanced again. And once this happens, for the first time in years, or maybe decades, you will start getting the rest that your body so desperately needs. This is great news!
While you’re waiting for your brain to readjust, you can try a few tricks to help you get to sleep. First, avoid caffeinated drinks after about noon. Caffeine can affect the body for up to 10 hours. So you want it all out of your system by the time you’re ready to hit the sack. The other trick is to get a bit of exercise. When you get your body moving, you’ll actually find you sleep much better than if you’re at rest all day long. You don’t have to do anything extreme. You can simply take a walk in the fresh air and get your blood moving.
If you’ve been drinking for a long time, you may not even notice the daily fatigue you’re experiencing because of disrupted sleep patterns. You might think it’s because you’re “getting older.” Maybe you’re always tired and you tell yourself, “That’s just how I am.” We are so overworked and undernourished that fatigue has become completely normal. Let me give you some good news: Once you stop drinking and get your sleep regulated, that fatigue and brain fog often disappear completely. You’ll feel better than you have in ages! That’s your reward. But you have to get through those first few days and give your body a chance to fix itself.
TURNAROUND
The opposite of “I need alcohol to sleep” is “I don’t need alcohol to sleep.” Come up with as many ways as you can that the opposite is as true as or truer than the original belief.
DAY 4
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Dealing with Discomfort (#ulink_362c9a1d-c6fc-57da-a111-46c2c801b623)
If the only thing that people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.
—SYDNEY BANKS
When you decide to give up alcohol, you might experience some discomfort. I am not talking about severe physical addiction here. If you’ve been drinking heavily for a long time, your body and mind may have become physically dependent to the point where you have severe withdrawal symptoms, such as delirium tremens or hallucinations. If that’s the case, you need to get medical help. You may even need to be hospitalized for a while. When I say “discomfort,” I’m talking about the physical symptoms that occur while your body is healing itself. I’m also talking about the psychological and emotional discomfort that comes up because you’re giving up something you believe you need.
It takes time, up to a week or longer, for your body to rebalance after you stop drinking. While that’s happening, you’re probably going to feel uncomfortable. Because alcohol is physically addictive, there are withdrawal symptoms, which are different for different people. When I stopped drinking, I had headaches, anxiety, irritability, and weird nightmares that I accidentally had a drink. The first 10 days were the most intense, but the symptoms went on for about 30 days. Clearly, that’s longer than the time it took for the chemical substance to clear out of my body. So, what gives? Why did it take so long? Shouldn’t we feel better as soon as the alcohol is gone? Our bodies are more complicated than that, and there’s an emotional side to withdrawal as well.
When researchers studied heroin addicts, they found that the severity of withdrawal could depend on the individual’s access to the substance they were addicted to. For instance, if the person went to jail and suddenly had zero access to their drug of choice, the withdrawal symptoms weren’t as severe as one might expect. But when that person was released years later, and they suddenly had access again, the withdrawal symptoms came back. How weird is that? How is it possible to go through withdrawal years after ingesting a substance? This demonstrates how physical and emotional withdrawals are intertwined. Each affects the other, and our subconscious can easily keep things buried for a long time and then allow them to resurface later.
CHANGING YOUR MIND-SET
What helped me get through this initial period of physical withdrawal was flipping my mind-set. Instead of seeing the headaches and anxiety as punishment for an addiction that I should have been able to control, I chose to see them as signs that my amazing body was healing itself. I was willing to be sick and put up with the discomfort to make my body whole again. I knew I had been treating it poorly. So I decided to treat it with kindness and give it whatever time it needed to heal.
If you’re not feeling your best right now, cut yourself some slack. Imagine if your child was feeling sick. Would you yell at her for being a “bad person” or tell her she was “getting what she deserved”? Of course not! You’d let her rest on the couch, eat chicken soup, and maybe watch some cartoons. You’d tell her to let her body do its job. Give yourself the same courtesy.
The Emotional Aspects
As you probably know, there’s more to withdrawal than physical discomfort. There’s an emotional side as well. And both sides are all tangled up with each other. It’s almost like as soon as you get a handle on one, the other falls to pieces and you’re so tempted to give up this experiment and crack open a beer. I get it! On the emotional side, you might feel sad, angry, or resentful. After all, you’re giving up something you believe you enjoy. Your subconscious believes you need alcohol to loosen up, relax, have fun with your friends, or handle stress. When you take that coping mechanism away without dealing with these subconscious beliefs, there will be consequences in the form of emotional distress and cravings.
That is why I’m calling these 30 days an “experiment.” You’re simply testing the waters to see how you might feel if you weren’t drinking. Your subconscious mind isn’t necessarily going to like that, but it’s better than laying down the law and saying, “No more alcohol ever!” That kind of ultimatum can result in a full-on emotional mutiny.
Throughout the course of this experiment, you’re going to explore those subconscious beliefs of yours. One day at a time, you’re going to read a little bit about different ideas that might make you question what you once thought was true. By the time you reach the end of this book, in fact, you might decide that you never need or even want another drink. And your subconscious will totally go along with it. That’s called spontaneous sobriety, and it happens all the time. It happened to me. When your conscious and subconscious minds are in harmony and desire the same thing, there’s no cognitive dissonance. And when that happens, there’s no struggle. You have no cravings and no desire to go back.
Getting Curious
But that’s later. For right now, simply realize that your feelings and physical symptoms are real. Take the time to feel them. Honor them. Appreciate what your body is trying to tell you. And do not give in to the temptation to use alcohol to numb them. These symptoms are temporary. They will go away in time.
So what can you do in the meantime? How do you handle the emotional discomfort and strong desire to give in?
My solution was to get curious about my own behavior. Anytime I had a strong urge to drink, I sat with it and went deep into what was going on. I became an internal reporter. I asked myself questions all the time to find out what I was feeling exactly and what was actually causing me to feel that way. Sometimes I felt like I was missing out because I was with a group of friends who were all drinking. Other times I’d had a hard day at work and felt like I needed a drink to calm my nerves. Other times I felt like I’d been good for so long that I “deserved” to have a drink as a reward.
TODAY, instead of trying to ignore or overcome your discomfort by having a drink, ask yourself, “Why do I want to drink right now? What is it that I think alcohol will do to make this moment better?” And then ask yourself, “Is that true?” If you’re completely objective and honest, you might surprise yourself with your answers.
Do this little exercise first. Write down your answers, or record yourself in a video diary or voice memo. By doing this, you’re observing the symptoms as something separate from you. You’re giving yourself perspective—and a little bit of time for the feelings to subside. And remember that your body is amazing. It’s taking care of you right now by getting rid of all the toxins it’s had to deal with for a long time. Yes, you might not feel your best for a bit. But when the process is complete, your body will feel better than ever.
And consider the online social challenge at alcoholexperiment.com; you can find thousands of others who are also doing this experiment. Sharing your insights with others in a safe, judgment-free environment is incredibly powerful.
Day 4 Reflections from alcoholexperiment.com
“Good days but bad nights. Woke up at 3 a.m. not feeling the best but definitely not hungover. And a bit of a headache this morning. I spent the day thinking about all the holidays and times with my kids I don’t remember. Yesterday it dawned on me how much time alcohol has stolen from me. Yes, I let it. But the reading today very much reinforced that. I am generally happy. Still thankful!”
—ROBYN
“I have been having such strange dreams, I feel such a physical difference. I didn’t realize alcohol takes so long to get out of your system, so even though I binge-drink once or twice a week, I was feeling so crappy because I was never alcohol-free. I had constant headaches, fatigue, bloating, nausea. I am learning so much!”
—GEORGE
“Didn’t expect the physical symptoms to be so real. Glad I understand why I am having them. Still better than being hungover. Need to be gentle on myself and others through this. Can’t wait to sleep again!”
—HECTOR
DAY 5
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What Are Cravings, Really? (#ulink_87234a1d-0e05-5398-80a4-cf87c1f9998f)
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!)
Psychological or emotional cravings can be much harder to handle simply because they are triggered by certain circumstances that your subconscious knows (from experience) may be helped by having a drink. You’ve reached the point in your relationship with alcohol that it’s taking more than it’s giving, and you feel like you want to cut back or stop. That’s a conscious decision you’ve made. But if your subconscious mind still believes that alcohol is key to relaxation and that you have to drink to have a good time with your friends, then those psychological cravings will creep in—sometimes years after you’ve had any alcohol. Your desires originate from your subconscious mind. And a craving is a desire.
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.
