4 Simple Tips to Ditch The Booze & The Excuses For Good
- Stop relying on willpower alone.
Willpower alone will never work when it comes to removing alcohol or any other substance from your life. The conscious mind can only handle about seven different things at the same time (7 plus or minus two chunks of information). So let’s say you’re trying to remember not to drink alcohol, help your kids with their distance learning, feed the animals, pay the bills, sleep, and take the car to the mechanic. After a certain amount of chunks of information on our mind, things start to drop.
Thus, why, when you arrive home, or it’s finally the weekend, you just don’t have it in you anymore to stick with your good intentions of not drinking and grab that bottle of wine to “unwind.”
If you want to achieve your goal of not running to that glass of wine every night or on the weekend, you can’t rely on your intention to stay disciplined all day because your willpower tanks will be depleted.
Now that you know, relying on willpower does not work, you need to engineer your environment by removing the triggers for unwanted behavior and creating new triggers for the actions that lead to success. For example:
- remove all alcohol from your home,
- stay out of the alcohol aisle in the grocery store or get your groceries delivered,
- take a different route home from work that doesn’t involve driving past your favorite liquor store, and
- don’t put yourself into tempting situations (this is not a forever thing, just until you feel comfortable being around alcohol in social situations).
2. Let that sh*t out!
The act of expressing your feelings by writing them down on paper can feel extremely therapeutic. You’re making sense of things and detoxing your life by vomiting the negativity onto the page.
My three-step process is to help you stop ruminating and start becoming aware.
Write.
Put pen to paper and go. Don’t filter. Don’t edit. Write whatever comes up. There’s a reason why it’s coming up so go with it.
Process.
Ever wonder why we do the things we do? Journaling is a great way to get to the deeper causes.
Let go.
You can choose to keep festering on those thoughts or trust that you’re going through the lesson for a reason.
Don’t know where to start? Check out the Detox Your Mind — 30 Day Alcohol-Free Journaling Mini Course, and learn the 10 benefits of journaling; receive 30 days of in-depth journal prompts, 30 extra bonus prompts, and a 15-minute Breaking Bad Habits Guided Meditation.
Go to www.sobermomcoach.com/detoxyourmind for more information.
3. Immerse yourself in quit lit and podcasts.
If you didn’t know, “quit lit” is a trendy term for books on sobriety, and the first book that I read on the topic was Between Breaths by Elizabeth Vargas. She used alcohol in the same way that I did, which was to cope with anxiety, so she could help me see I wasn’t alone, and there was nothing wrong with me for using alcohol to self-medicate.
Through the last couple of years, there has been an explosion of books about addiction and sobriety and memoirs that have helped so many of us get through those beginning months.
Through quit lit and podcasts, you can educate yourself on alcohol and what it does to your brain, receive tips and tricks, and inspire you to keep going even on the days you want to throw in the towel.
In fact, many of my clients and challenge participants will put their headphones in and listen to a sobriety or personal development podcast or audible to help them through the craving. Cravings last for around 15–20 minutes, so by reading or listening to someone else talk, you can distract yourself until that urge passes.
Here are a few books and podcasts I recommend to start your journey.
Books
- This Naked Mind by Annie Grace
- We Are The Luckiest by Laura McKowen
- The Sober Diaries by Clare Pooley
- The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober by Catherine Gray
Podcasts
- Sober As A Mother
- Recovery Happy Hour
- She Recovers
- The Bubble Hour
4. Surround yourself with like-minded women.
We can’t go through life alone, and we certainly can’t go through this alcohol-free journey alone, either. The key to moving forward is to be able to share your successes, struggles and just chat about life. It doesn’t even have to be about sobriety. It could be about how your kids are driving you crazy. It could be that you feel your husband isn’t pulling his weight in the household. Or it could be that you miss wine as your go-to.
By the way, it’s OK to miss something and not want it back. Ending your relationship with alcohol is like breaking up in a relationship. You can grieve and throw yourself a pity party, but at the end of the day, you need to remember that that relationship was no longer serving you. It’s time to get out of your own head and figure out what you can do to distract yourself until that pain of longing stops rearing its ugly head.
Luckily for you, there is support everywhere you turn. There are online resources, sober Facebook groups, AA, SMART Recovery, Celebrate Recovery, Recovery Dharma, and Sober “Influencers.” Just search the #sober #sobercurious #sobermom #sobermomtribe, and you will see so many accounts providing information to help you on this journey.
Don’t forget I, The Sober Mom Coach (Alyson Premo), host LIVE Alcohol-Free Challenges and Group Coaching Programs. These programs provide knowledge, support, and accountability, what I like to call the trifecta of sustaining and THRIVING in long-term sobriety. These group programs are kept to a maximum of 40 mothers for a reason.
Most other programs have hundreds or thousands of people (men and women), which makes it hard for the people who feel intimidated by a big group like that. The small group allows you to be more comfortable in sharing, which is the first step to ridding the shame and guilt that some of us have been holding on to. The friendships that are formed in these programs last well beyond when the program is over.
