What Do You Do When You Think About Drinking?

1. Slow Down.

If you’re triggered, it means you are below the line and in an unconscious state. A young PART of your psyche wants you to drink alcohol because you feel unsafe. If you don’t slow down, this PART will find the auto-pilot switch, and you will do what you’ve always done.

1. Rate the Trigger

An aspect of the Liquid Lie that keeps you hooked is the story that you must succumb to alcohol cravings because they’re intolerable. It’s bullshit. If you can slow down, breathe and feel the intensity of the craving, rating it out of 10, you’ll find that with focus, it’s nowhere near as strong as you think. YOU ARE DESIGNED to feel a craving and to let it pass. Get curious about the feeling. Where is it in your body? If it had a voice, what would it say it needed?

1. Talk to Yourself

If you’re triggered, there is a PART of your psyche that feels unsafe. Find your way into self-energy, communicate with this PART, and find out what it needs. You’ll find that it needs compassion, empathy, and love. Provide it to yourself.

1. Widen the Gap

All of this (and more) is designed to widen the gap between stimulus (trigger) and response (drinking). Imagine being on a flight from LA to London for 10.5 hours, and there is no alcohol on the plane. Your PARTS will calm down once they realise they can’t drink for 10.5 hrs. It’s not that your body can’t handle it. It’s 100% psychological. Trust that it will pass, and it will.

1. HALT

H-Hungry

A-Angry

L-Lonely

T-Tired

Eat something. Scream into a pillow. Phone a friend. Take a nap.

Much love and STRIVE on!

Lee