Coby Grace

PRACTICAL SOBRIETY

A Guide to Getting Sober

Sample Edition

Copyright © 2024 by Coby Grace

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For my friend Heather, who believed in me long before I believed in myself.

We have two lives, and the second begins when we realise we only have one.

—Confucius

DISCLAIMER

The information in this book is provided for motivational and educational purposes only. The content reflects the author’s personal experiences, opinions, and understanding. The models and strategies contained in this book are simplified tools intended to support understanding and encourage positive lifestyle changes. These simplified tools are not comprehensive explanations of mental and physiological processes. While every effort has been made to provide accurate information, no guarantees or warranties are made regarding its accuracy, completeness, or timeliness.

This book is not a substitute for professional diagnosis, medical advice, or treatment. Recovery is an individual journey, and experiences may vary widely. Statements such as “You’re never going to drink again” are intended as motivational tools rather than guarantees. Recovery is an ongoing process which includes the possibility of relapse. Consult qualified healthcare professionals to create tailored recovery plans, particularly if experiencing withdrawal symptoms, co-occurring mental health conditions, or distress following a relapse.

Personal Responsibility
Readers are solely responsible for their own health and well-being. Any decisions made based on this book’s content are taken at the reader’s own risk. Neither the author nor the publisher assumes liability for any injuries, damages, or losses that may arise from following the book’s content. Readers should consult healthcare professionals to assess and adapt any suggestions to their specific needs and circumstances.

Specific Health Considerations

Substance Use and Cessation: Stopping alcohol consumption can be dangerous. Consult healthcare professionals to create a safe and effective plan for reducing or stopping alcohol.

Diet and Supplements: Nutritional advice and supplement suggestions are general recommendations and may not suit everyone. Seek advice from healthcare professionals or registered dietitians before making dietary changes or beginning supplementation. Certain conditions or medications may be affected by these choices.

Exercise: Follow physical activity recommendations only after consulting a healthcare professional, especially for those with pre-existing health issues or who are new to exercise.

Hypnosis: Hypnosis is not a replacement for professional therapy or medical treatment. Results may vary, and readers are advised to ensure that hypnosis content sources are reputable. Seek professional guidance if uncertain about the suitability of hypnosis, especially if there are mental health conditions that may be impacted by its use.

Mental Health and Psychological Support: This book is not a substitute for professional mental health care, counselling, or psychiatric treatment. Readers experiencing mental health conditions, such as anxiety, depression, or other psychological challenges, should consult a qualified mental health professional.

No Warranties
The information is provided “as is” and is subject to change without notice. Individual results may vary. The author and publisher are not liable for any adverse outcomes resulting from the use of this book. Always consult healthcare professionals before implementing any significant lifestyle changes. This book is designed to complement—not replace—individualised treatment plans developed by licensed professionals.

Representation of Others’ Work
In discussing ideas, models, or theories from other sources, the content reflects the author’s observations, adaptation, and integration with personal experience and perspective. This book offers the author’s unique viewpoint and should not be considered an exact representation of others’ original work.

I

OVERVIEW

About this book and its author

1

INTRODUCTION

Alcohol is poison. It’s poison for your body, it’s poison for your mind, and worst of all, it’s poison for your potential. Has it been fun? Of course. Has it been worth it? There have been good times, no doubt. But until you stop and see what life really could be like, you can’t legitimately say ‘yes.’ And you can’t legitimately say ‘yes’ unless you’ve wholeheartedly given it your all.

If you’re stuck in a loop of trying and failing to stop drinking, it’s hard to see that life can be anything other than it is. Alcohol steals the joy of life: music sounds flat, colours look dull, and humour seems tedious. But none of these things are true. They are as rich and wonderful as they have always been; you’ve just damaged your ability to feel so. You’ve wandered so far from pastures green that you’ve forgotten what they look like.

The only thing that seems worth it is drinking because, with joy gone, it turns down the volume on pain—a feeling that somehow survives the deadening of all the others. If you’re reading this, then you’ve probably reached the stage where it’s not even doing that. But as bad as things may seem, the green shoots of recovery have taken hold. Something inside you can’t accept that this is it. It just can’t be this way.

This book is about the way back.

ABOUT ME

As I approached forty, my life was a total mess. The long-running problems I had with alcohol were exploding in my face; continuing was no longer an option. I’d known that something wasn’t right in my late twenties, although, in hindsight, it was obvious from the beginning. The first time I drank was at my school Christmas party; it was the mid-nineties, and I was fifteen years old. The party started with a bang but ended with my throwing up all over the school Christmas tree. The details escape me today, but somehow, there were no consequences. And without consequences, the behaviour continued. It wasn’t until years later that the significance of this event, in context, made much more sense.

In my thirties, I began to realise that I had a serious problem. It was at this point that my intentions to cut down or drink only at weekends just did not materialise. Not only did they not materialise, but I drank more—more drinks, more often, with higher alcohol content. And as the decade rolled on, the problem got worse.

My attempts to sort it out became more determined and would be accompanied by varying periods of sobriety. After the initial hump, things get better quickly when you stop drinking: you feel better, look better, and your world improves. The problem is, when this happens, you delude yourself into thinking that you can go back and have both. You can’t.

And thus began the iterative process of recovery and relapse. I’ve lost count of how often I did this, but it’s a lot. But because it’s a lot, I’ve experienced it a lot. And because I’ve experienced it a lot, I know it well: I know how hopeless it can feel, I know how hard it is, I know what to expect, and I know how to make it easier. This is what I want to share with you.

Eventually, I achieved escape velocity. So much so that when the events of 2020 rolled around, the thought of alcohol didn’t even cross my mind despite very challenging circumstances. All I want to do now is help others do the same. I hope that by sharing my experience of that long, drawn-out process, I can offer you a shortcut to a better place.

Upfront, I should make clear that I have no qualifications in addiction counselling or anything similar. This book should not be seen as a replacement for traditional addiction treatments. I tried them all, and you should, too. They are helpful, but these alone did not get me over the line. It was, in the end, a problem solved only when I took full ownership: I sought, read, watched, and listened to as much as I possibly could about the problem.

I used myself as a guinea pig. I threw everything at it to see what stuck. I witnessed and analysed the pitfalls to see where and why I failed. I treated it as an engineering problem where I could. I accepted with faith the crossover into the spiritual, which makes no sense to the logical.

What I learnt was that a life of sobriety was always possible for me; it was just a matter of arranging the pieces and moving parts into a configuration that allowed for it. In this book, I’ve aggregated, structured, and packaged the concepts, practices, and motivations that I discovered along the way. They worked for me. I hope they work for you, too.

2

THIS BOOK

The structure of this book is simple: clarity, strategy, sobriety. It begins by explaining your current predicament, suggests an overall strategy to tackle the problem, and then lays out the practicalities for each stage of recovery. The information is mainly presented in a linear, progressive order, so you will benefit most from reading it this way.

As you will see, the earlier chapters are conceptual, and the latter are practical. While you can and should read the conceptual chapters first and in full, you may want to read the practical chapters as and when they become relevant. You may also want to jump back and forth from the practical chapters to remind yourself of previously presented concepts.

The intention of structuring the book this way is such that the conceptual information lays the groundwork for the later practical suggestions to make sense. If you understand why you should do something, you’re far more likely to engage wholeheartedly. You’ll also notice plenty of content repetition, especially throughout the practical chapters. The reason for this is twofold: certain themes have recurrent relevance, and repetition more successfully influences subconscious behaviour.

Now that you understand the overall structure, let’s examine each of the book’s three parts.

CLARITY

This part of the book clarifies your situation—past, present, and future. It describes and characterises the addiction and recovery process and orients you within it. To know where you’re going, you need to know where you are and how you got there. This framing both starts and finishes this part of the book.

In between, we look at three closely related and overlapping topics: the subconscious mind, the dopamine system, and the higher brain. These topics explain why you behave the way you do and why you’re seemingly not in control.

STRATEGY

This part of the book explains the overall strategy for achieving sobriety. It explains why the approach is structured the way that it is and what to expect from it. Again, by helping you understand the ‘why,’ you’re more likely to engage and persevere. This is especially important where the value of earlier suggestions only becomes evident in later stages. Without understanding the ‘why,’ suggestions may seem otherwise pointless or ineffective.

SOBRIETY

This part of the book puts theory into action. By providing an example skeletal plan, it describes when and how you could apply, practice, and integrate these principles in your life. You are encouraged to adapt this model to your circumstances, personality, and preferences.

Feel free to read all chapters at the outset, but realistically, you should give them your focus and attention as you move from each stage of recovery to the next. Progression through the different stages of recovery greatly alters your overall outlook, mood, and mental clarity. The needs of someone in long-term recovery just aren’t the same as those of someone in early recovery. Neither perspective makes sense to the other because they are completely different states of being. Finding your life’s purpose is irrelevant to someone struggling to make it through the day.

The penultimate chapter covers the unfortunate occurrence of relapse. At the outset, I’ll emphasise that relapse is to be viewed as a learning experience. It’s part of the trial-and-error process of recovery. It does happen, though, so this chapter aims to limit damage, dust you down, and send you back into the recovery process as painlessly as possible. You can go to this chapter whenever appropriate.

The book concludes in the final chapter with some closing thoughts and good luck wishes.

AVATAR

The book also refers to the following avatar throughout. This avatar represents both me (and you) and illustrates the three key elements in the battle for sobriety: the conscious mind, the subconscious mind, and the body. Master these elements, and you’ll master sobriety.

So, wherever you see a small black circle, it represents the conscious mind; the larger white circle represents the subconscious mind. The body, unsurprisingly, represents the body. Don’t worry about the details for now. We’ll explore this topic when the time comes.

WEBSITE

For additional content and resources, you can also visit the Practical Sobriety website:

www.practicalsobriety.online

II

CLARITY

Your situation as a whole—past, present, and future

3

THE TIMELINE

If you’re reading this book, then you’ve reached the point where you know you have a problem. You probably also realise that you currently don’t know how to solve that problem. That’s perhaps the most important step of all: to admit that you’re not in control of this thing. With that established, the next step is to ask, ‘What on earth is going on?’ The answer, unfortunately, isn’t entirely straightforward, but the best place to start is the beginning.

Let’s look, then, at the complete timeline of addiction (how we got here) and recovery (where we’re going). This will be the launch pad for the work ahead.

PHASES OF ADDICTION AND RECOVERY

As the following illustrates, the phases of addiction and recovery have distinct stages that overlap in the middle.

To determine exactly where you are and how you got there, we can identify and characterise these distinct stages in the overall trajectory. This is important because what you should focus on—and what will be most beneficial—changes depending on how far along you are, how far along you have been, and where you’re most likely to relapse.

ADDICTION PHASE

The addiction phase consists of four main stages:

FORMATION

Formation is the stage where you first encounter alcohol, and drinking becomes embedded in your habitual behaviour. Social licensing normalises this process.

AWARENESS

Awareness is the stage where the negative consequences begin to seep into your consciousness. It starts to become apparent that your life is a disorganised mess. For example, you may be exhausted or overly emotional, but you don’t necessarily make the connection.

REALISATION

Realisation is the stage where the negative effects are fully manifest and obviously linked to your drinking. These issues may affect your health, relationships, or career, for example. You reach a tipping point and can no longer deny that you have a problem. You attempt to stop but realise you’re not in control.

COMMITMENT

Commitment is the stage where you have accepted the reality of your situation and orient yourself toward sorting it out no matter what. If you are reading this, you’ve almost certainly reached this stage. (Well done, by the way.)

RECOVERY PHASE

The recovery phase, in brief, consists of the following stages:

SHORT-TERM

Short-term recovery includes the first few days and weeks after you stop drinking. Relapse happens and isn’t particularly unexpected. The primary focus here is just to stop consuming alcohol and prioritise your comfort. Changing too much, too quickly, will likely cause more instability and backfire.

MID-TERM

Mid-term recovery begins after a month or two of sobriety. Alcohol is out of your system and no longer consumed. The primary focus of this stage is to maintain sobriety and intensify the process of repairing your physical, mental, and emotional health. Relapse is less likely than in short-term recovery, but pitfalls are many. They should be anticipated and overcome.

LONG-TERM

After regaining physical health and restoring overall stability, your attention turns toward working on emotional and psychological well-being. You are making real progress towards a better life, which at this point is self-evident. Relapse becomes even less likely as you don’t want to give up everything you have achieved.

As part of long-term recovery, you begin to move toward self-actualisation. Self-actualisation is where the person you were meant to be—without this little detour—is fully recovered. It is the highest level of personal development, where your potential is fully realised. And that’s where we’re headed. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?

So, where do you sit on this timeline? You’re certainly at the commitment stage and heading in the right direction. We’ll revisit the timeline later, but for now, with a high-level understanding, we’re ready to explore the dynamics that led us here.

4

PRIORITIES

Addiction changes priorities. When your addiction is your priority, by definition, you must deprioritise something else. That something else is taking care of yourself and your basic needs. But these are the foundation of your life; neglecting them—even slightly—profoundly affects your general well-being. If they are degraded, they cannot support general health, let alone higher-order needs, such as happiness and life fulfilment. This needs to be recognised, stated, and rectified—no matter how obvious it may seem.

Abraham Maslow proposed the theory of a hierarchy of needs in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation.¹ The theory offers a framework for what we ought to do for ourselves to achieve balance and growth. In our circumstances, it can help us to prioritise what to focus on and fix before moving on to higher-order needs. As the following illustrates, the hierarchy can be split into five levels or layers.

The wide base of the pyramid represents broad foundational needs, including fundamental necessities for survival, such as air, water, food, and shelter. These are universal and essential for everyone. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the narrow peak of the hierarchy represents the pinnacle of human development. The pinnacle is associated with individuals reaching their highest potential and a fulfilled life. Once the needs of a lower layer are satisfied, an individual can achieve and maintain the needs at a higher level. Ironically, failure to meet these higher-level needs can lead to a descent to the bottom for some (us). When this happens, our focus and energy can become anchored to the lowest layers for reasons we’ll explore shortly.

When you first encounter alcohol, it enters into your hierarchy somewhere in the middle. But over time, alcohol makes its way further and further down the hierarchy. As it does, layers of needs have to give way until, finally, alcohol is at the base. It’s your number one priority.

You’re never really present for anything because your mind is obsessed with your base need: alcohol. The catch is—as we shall see in the following chapters—that your need for alcohol is never met because it cannot be met. It’s an entirely open loop.

When you’re sitting eating garbage for dinner because you can’t be bothered to make anything else, that’s because your time, energy, and money were allocated to your number one priority. Whatever was left over was allocated to feeding yourself.

Unwinding all of this is not straightforward, either. In theory, you could just decide that you were going to stop prioritising alcohol, but it doesn’t work that way. You’re stuck in a Chinese finger trap—a complicated one that’s been years in the making.

5

WHY CAN’T I STOP?

Addiction is so much more than just the act of consumption. Most people can willpower themselves sober and stop drinking for a few days or weeks. Maybe sobriety lasts until that wedding you’ve got coming up or whatever the event might be (there’s always something). But staying sober for the long term is completely different. The reason it’s different is that long-term behaviour is almost entirely dictated by internal mechanisms that are separate from—and far more powerful than—conscious intention (thought). Not only does alcohol degrade your ability to resist these mechanisms, but it also empowers them. Right now, they have a stranglehold on everything you do. And without fully understanding them, they shall continue to do so.

You can consciously think to yourself, ‘I’m quitting forever, and I really mean it,’ or ‘From now on, I’m only going to drink at the weekends,’ but these underlying mechanisms care not unless they have been firmly aligned with alternative behaviours. Anything other than drinking is completely foreign to them, so they simply can’t ‘be’ that way. It’s not who or what they are.

Despite your best intentions, these mechanisms eventually take over and return you to the misery that they know and feel safe with, even if that’s destroying you in the long term. The alternative behaviours you aspire to are relegated to the realms of the wishful.

What your conscious mind can do, though, is begin the process of realigning these underlying mechanisms with what you actually want. And that, essentially, is the key to recovery: convince the underlying drivers of your behaviour to do something else.

Before you can do that, you need to understand exactly what is going on. You can’t change the things you do when you don’t know why you do them. So why do you do the things you do? The reasons are many. Some are unknowable. But for our purposes, we can simplify and reduce these factors into three overlapping and intertwined topics: the subconscious mind, the dopamine system, and the higher brain.

To complicate things further, each aspect is complex and not entirely understood. Our understanding of each is improving constantly, but much of their workings remain a mystery. So long as we remain mindful that these models are simplified tools rather than precise explanations, we can combine them with practical experience to develop solutions.

6

YOU

For the sake of simplicity—and to provide us with a useful model of our behaviour—we will break ‘you’ down into three components: the two minds and the body.

The two minds are specifically the smaller conscious mind (black circle) and the larger subconscious mind (white circle).

Together, these three elements instigate, engage in, and experience your behaviour.² Let’s examine each element and its role.

THE BODY

The simplest to describe is the body. It’s just a passive vehicle—a vessel for the two minds. In the context of addictive behaviour, it’s a lackey running errands, such as fetching another bottle of wine before the shop shuts. The same motivation to go to the gym the next day is mysteriously absent. From the body’s perspective, one of these choices leads to a dreadful hangover and a shell of a person. The other promises a rush of endorphins and a healthier, stronger version of itself. It’s not the body that’s calling the shots, though: it does as it’s told and deals with the consequences.

This is not to say that the body isn’t crucial in recovery. It’s very important. Improving the health of the body feeds back into the health of the minds and the control of behaviour. Working with the body is downstream of the two minds, though. The body won’t choose to improve itself. It can’t.

CONSCIOUS MIND

The conscious mind is the one that you are using to read these words. It’s the ego—the one you use to reason with. It’s the voice in your head that says, ‘I’m never drinking again.’ It handles basic arithmetic, such as 2+2, and if you consciously think, ‘scratch my nose,’ your body makes it happen.

The conscious mind is profoundly useful but doesn’t encompass your entire being. Rather, you should view it as a tool for specific functions and tasks. It’s certainly not the go-to for solving long-term behavioural issues. In reality, it influences only about 5% of behaviour. That’s not a lot, considering how often people identify exclusively with their conscious minds.

The conscious mind has flaws, too. It has limited bandwidth (processing speed), commonly understood to be just 40 bits per second. It’s also single-threaded; it can only process one task at a time.

Another weakness is that rationality—its speciality—isn’t always the right tool for the job, and it doesn’t like to step aside.

At this point, the conscious mind fully recognises that your behaviour is out of control, but it operates solely on what it has encountered in the past and present. It can project and strategise into the future based only on what it knows and has experienced. This is a crucial point because when you’re trying to stop drinking without a broader strategy, you’re asking your conscious mind to do something totally new—something it’s never done before nor knows anything about. It’s like asking you to perform brain surgery. Unless you’re an actual brain surgeon, it’s going to be a disaster. It needs help.

SUBCONSCIOUS MIND

The subconscious mind is a fundamentally distinct entity. And it’s a big one. It’s the majority shareholder in your decisions and behaviour. It’s responsible for involuntary actions like regulating your heartbeat, blinking, breathing, and generally keeping you alive and safe from danger. Continuously active, it generally operates beyond the conscious mind’s awareness and drives about 95% of behaviour. It likes to operate in the familiar, favouring what it knows to be safe and comfortable. Unfortunately, for you, what it knows to be safe and comfortable is alcohol dependency and everything that goes with it.

How did it conclude that this behaviour is a smart thing to do? In a nutshell, the answer is ‘environment and conditioning,’ but let’s break it down into its core elements:

The subconscious is inherently fixated on safety.

It is deeply social in nature.

It perceives safety as alignment with the larger social group.

Your larger social group (society) likes alcohol.

Your subconscious aligns with that.

The subconscious constantly scans its environment with a bandwidth much larger than that of the conscious mind. It is commonly estimated to process about 11 million bits per second in parallel. That’s huge. And the conscious mind isn’t even really aware that it’s happening.

Utilising this vast amount of information, the subconscious functions as a scale, weighing all environmental content. It then tallies the most repetitive content in its surroundings and mimics it. That way, it fits in. It’s safe from the unknown and rejection.

It’s pretty obvious, really. Imagine you were born and raised in Japan. You were surrounded by all things Japanese: your parents, your culture, music, TV, smartphones, everything. And so, you, too, would be aligned with being Japanese.

Children born into Japanese families don’t randomly grow up French, nor do children born into French families randomly grow up Japanese. They simply aren’t exposed to that kind of input, so the subconscious has nothing to mimic. Of course, nationality is a bit of an exaggerated example. But it’s the same principle at work with customs such as drinking: grow up with friends and family that drink, see it in films and on TV, celebrate your peer group’s drunken behaviour. Mimic it all. Fit in. Be safe.

Consider all the nights out, pub visits, weddings, parties, weekends, sporting events, concerts, and much more. Collectively, these experiences carry a huge amount of weight, strengthening the subconscious mind’s resolve to perpetuate the same behaviours. ‘This is what we do.’

Trying to override such deeply ingrained programming with conscious intention alone is almost always ineffective in the long run. Eventually, the subconscious mind exerts its influence and floats a thought into the conscious mind, ‘Just one won’t hurt.’ The conscious mind perceives and rationalises the idea as its own, and the body acts it out as a behaviour. Back to square one. Where was the rationality? Disarmed, disabled, and deluded. Again, it’s not the right tool for the job.

The conscious mind has difficulty accepting this because it has a humility problem. What has to happen to change all of this is not the conscious mind making the decision to stop; your conscious mind needs to grasp these dynamics and then collaborate with the subconscious. By capitalising on the strengths of each and working around their shortcomings, you can develop a more effective strategy for altering behaviour. Or, in other words, you need a team.

So, for the sake of the conscious mind, I will repeat this once more: conscious ‘you’ is responsible for only 5% of behaviour. You contribute very, very little to your manifest reality. The best contribution you can make is to stand aside and start working with the subconscious mind. If you want change, that’s who you need to convince.

THE SUM TOTAL

So, that’s ‘you.’ With the subconscious sitting in the big chair as command and control, the three elements intertwine with each other and the external world to create your overall state. ‘State’ generally refers to your condition—both physical and emotional—at any given point in time. The two are, however, inextricably linked: emotional states impact physical ones and vice versa.

Dominated by the subconscious, you’ll move in and out of different states for various reasons, both internal and external. These states then influence your behaviour and, subsequently, your actions. The total of these actions creates your manifest reality.

THE BATTLE OF BEHAVIOUR

For most of your life, you weren’t even aware a battle was brewing. Your conscious mind thought that going out and getting wasted with your friends was an excellent idea. It was a badge of honour to down several shots, and because all of your friends were doing it, your subconscious was into it, too.

Your conscious and subconscious minds were aligned, and they were basically in cahoots to beat you up. Behaviour was firmly balanced towards drinking.

This dynamic continues until the damage hurts, and it’s no longer funny. The conscious mind eventually realises it’s got a problem: it’s in the cage with a 500-pound gorilla, and it likes to play. You need to put away the toys, but every time you put one away, the gorilla gets two back out again.

Behaviour is still firmly balanced towards drinking, but hope is here. The seed of the great comeback is the split between conscious and subconscious intention.

Now that you know what you’re up against, you’re beginning to realise that a battle of pure strength is probably a losing one. The good news is that now the conscious mind is awake to what’s happening, it can fight back. It just needs a game plan and the will to see it through.

Where do you start? Dopamine. It’s what the gorilla eats for breakfast.

7

DOPAMINE

The next major player in behaviour is dopamine. You can think of dopamine as fuel for the fire of what you do and don’t do. This subject is explained beautifully in the book The Molecule of More by Dr Daniel Z. Lieberman and Michael E. Long, which I highly recommend reading when you have the capacity.³ To get started, though, we just need a rough understanding of how this system operates—specifically from our perspective.

HAVE AND WANT

Essentially, an individual’s possessions—both real and abstract—can be separated using a simple paradigm: the things you have and the things you don’t. It follows, then, that the brain has evolved two modes of operation for the purpose of each. One mode deals with what you have, the other with what you want. And because there are no other options, these two modes collectively form the totality of your behaviour. That’s why this matters.

For simplicity, we’ll call these two modes ‘have’ and ‘want.’ In ‘have’ mode, you operate within the domain of what you already possess; in ‘want’ mode, you identify and acquire the things you want but don’t yet have. Simple. The distinction is that identification, intention, and action are required to transfer the desired from ‘want’ to ‘have.’ Enter dopamine.

By definition, the things you have are here in the present moment. The things you want can only be had in the future. In between, you have to get up and make things happen. Only when the desired enters your possession do you finally have what you want. Having what you want then extinguishes the original desire.

Your brain and behaviour switch between these two modes in a balancing act of sustaining yourself with what you have and getting more. In theory, the system should self-regulate, but for the alcohol-dependent, you’ve fallen off both ends. The see-saw may have been rigged from the start—or it’s been damaged by daily use—but either way, you’re going to have to supervise until you can restore some kind of balance.

A NEVER-ENDING CYCLE

You can think of the system as a repeating cycle. That’s how it’s supposed to function, anyway. Sometimes, there’s a glitch in the cycle, though, which is the crux of our problem. Let’s understand it as a functioning system first.

At any point in the cycle, we operate either in the ‘want’ or ‘have’ mode. We continue to do so until conditions send us back toward the other. And so we continue, going around in circles, flipping from one to the other.

HAVE MODE

The ‘have’ mode operates when we are engaged in the present moment. It is overseen by neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, endorphins, and what are known as endocannabinoids. (The details are not particularly important, but rather the overall concept.) Because this mode of operation is configured for the present moment, the pathways and neurotransmitters facilitate a feeling of contentment and satisfaction. These states oppose mental projection into either the past or the future. Examples of being in this mode include engaging in a good conversation or listening to music that makes you forget yourself and time.

WANT MODE

The ‘want’ mode is very different and seemingly more complex. First and foremost, when this mode activates, it draws you out of the present and thrusts you mentally into a future projection of possibility. The ‘have’ mode stands down.

This mode is fuelled by the neurotransmitter dopamine. We can also refer to this mode as the dopamine circuit, which has the opposite function to the apparatus of the ‘have’ mode: it makes us dissatisfied with the present moment and propels us toward a future outcome.

For evolutionary purposes, this system gets us the resources we need for survival: food, reproduction, and so on. The resources we need—or perceive we need—in modern societies are much more complex. The ‘want’ mode isn’t designed for such rich environments, so herein lies the potential for things to go awry.

Activation of this mode (dopamine release) occurs when you experience an element of excitement in your world. This happens when you identify an item of novelty or possibility in your physical or mental environment. Your subconscious mind continuously scans and maps your environment, and a flag goes up whenever it identifies a contrast between the known and the unknown. When you encounter something new or unexpected, it signifies possibility: the potential of resources directly or the means to obtain or maximise resources indirectly. This sets the dopamine-driven functioning of the cycle in motion. From here, alert and motivated, you investigate, strategise, and extract—where possible—what you can.

Once you exhaust all possibilities and the new becomes normal, dopamine has done its job. The dopamine circuits shut down, returning you to ‘have’ mode. You stay there until you encounter the next deviation from the known and are thrust into ‘want’ mode again. That is, under normal circumstances.

Imagine being lost in the desert, and you catch a glimmer of the sun’s reflection in what looks like water in the distance. Possibility! Is it? Isn’t it? Despite being tired and exhausted, you sprint as fast as you ever have and jump into crystal-clear water when you arrive. You drink till your heart’s content, and you can drink no more. The dopamine has done its job, and you’ve secured a new resource. You know where it is now, and while you might need it again, you’ll never sprint toward it like your life depends on it. That was the dopamine.

DOPAMINE MADE ME DO IT

The behaviour required for survival doesn’t necessarily align with what you like, especially in the long term. The system fulfils its survival requirements now; you’re alive to deal with the unintended consequences later.

An obvious example of this disconnect is sugar—a rare energy source until relatively recently. Your dopamine system drives you to binge on it because it perceives it as scarce. You might not have access to it again anytime soon, so you’d better stock up.

Today, sugar is abundant, so binging on it provides no survival advantage whatsoever. Quite the opposite: it’s unhealthy. You might survive today, but what about tomorrow? When you eat too much, you gain weight and increase various health-related risks. The myopic dopamine system presses on and makes us want it now, whether we need it or not. Over time, the consequences of overeating become noticeable, undesirable, and in conflict with the immediate priorities of the dopamine system. Do you like this? Probably not. And so the difference between ‘want’ and ‘like’ becomes evident. The same dynamic applies to alcohol: even when its effects are clearly ruining us, the wanting does not subside. While sugar provides perceived physical sustenance, alcohol provides emotional sustenance.

Unfortunately, the dopamine system isn’t voluntary. It is completely reactionary, and whenever it fires, you are in it for the ride, whether you like it or not. You go through the motions until you get what you want, or the dopamine burns itself out and gives up. When the dopamine subsides, we are left with the fruits of our dopamine-fuelled behaviour as we transition back to the ‘have’ mode.

Eventually, most people reach a threshold—enough is enough. The dopamine stops flowing, and we stop. The bad news for the dependent is that dopamine just keeps coming. The system doesn’t recognise ‘enough.’ It never shuts down, and we get stuck in ‘want’ mode. By definition, this mode is not, and cannot be, satisfied. That’s not what it’s for. And because the dopamine never stops, away we go. It only ends when it’s no longer possible to get what it wants. You run out of alcohol, run out of money, or pass out. Even then, you’re left with cravings as the dopamine reluctantly skulks away. What you wake up to is deep dissatisfaction.

When we are forcibly returned to ‘have’ mode, the outcome is misaligned with the dopamine promises. It was never physically or mentally healthy to want or do what we did. We neither needed nor liked the outcome; we only wanted it. The gap between just one drink and waking up after passing out is filled with promises of ‘one more won’t hurt.’ This is a very revealing phrase: we go from ‘a drink would be nice’ to ‘one more won’t hurt.’ Dopamine carries us across the line of sensible to harmful, which is then rationalised by the conscious mind.

Exposing the brain to such extreme levels of intoxication throws normal brain function into a state of imbalance. The short-term fix for the discomfort is to go again. So you do. The brain and body barely have time to rest and recalibrate before the whole cycle fires into motion again—each episode taking you further and further away from a state of balance and general well-being.

At first, it’s just the link between consumption and dopamine that becomes established and habitual. Once entrenched, together they then become associated with almost everything: every circumstance, feeling, person, mood, emotion, food, activity, and so on. Ultimately, the dynamic flips and circumstances become the trigger. You now have conditioned behaviour.

My suspicion is that because substances like alcohol provide an artificial sense of connection and acceptance, the dopamine system can’t tell the difference and makes you want it in an attempt to meet these survival needs. But because it’s an artificial sense, the dopamine circuit doesn’t fully recognise it as the real thing. If it were substantive, the system would eventually recognise it as such and power down. Instead, the system attempts to compensate for this inauthenticity and gets stuck in perpetual motion.

DOPAMINE VS DOPAMINE

The good news is that you can and do want different things. You can want diametrically opposed things. If you are reading this, then you clearly don’t want to be drinking. But also, you do want to drink because you do. We, therefore, have an interesting conflict where dopamine appears to be in direct competition with itself.

Essentially, the winner is whichever desire is stronger, although what exactly defines strength in terms of dopaminergic desires is complex. There are many factors: time, place, energy levels, environment, people. It’s difficult to know and understand them all. To complicate matters, they’re dynamic, too: a factor’s weight shifts in context. Observation of yourself, your behaviour, and these competing desires will help you to understand them. As we will see later, awareness is the first step. Like a muscle, you can then exercise and strengthen healthy desires and let the undesirable ones atrophy.

The part of you that wants to stop is already ascending, and it’s dopamine compelling you to keep reading. You see the possibility of something better. Dopamine will continue to propel you forward because you want it. From here, you just need to accumulate enough knowledge and experience to strengthen that desire and overcome the other—permanently.

THE TWO CIRCUITS

It’s important to understand that the dopamine circuit comprises two sequential but distinct functions. Each of these functions performs a different role in the act of getting something. Understanding this structure will help you to weaponise the dopamine system against itself and put you in a position of strength moving forward.

DESIRE CIRCUIT

The first of the two functions is called the dopamine desire circuit. The desire circuit is the part of the dopamine system that involuntarily fires in response to certain stimuli. (You can consider this a subset of the subconscious mind.) When the desire circuit activates, dopamine draws your attention, focuses the mind, and produces desire for a particular object or outcome. It has no plan for getting whatever it has set its eyes on; it just stimulates pure desire for whatever it is. ‘Get me that.’

When it comes to competing desires, a weighing process takes place. The relative weight of contradictory desires—pulling in opposite directions—depends on the wider context and various other factors.

The desire to drink is heavily influenced by factors such as who you are with, where you are, and how you feel. These elements are bundled together and determine the weight of that desire at that time and in that context.

One of the two conflicting desires outcompetes the other, and the scales tip in its favour. The winning desire is then fed to the second of the two functions.

CONTROL CIRCUIT

The second function is known as the dopamine control circuit. (You can consider this a subset of the conscious mind.) Once the desire has been stimulated, the job of the control circuit—again powered by dopamine—is to work out the following:

Whether it’s worth it.

How to get results.

How to maximise those results.

It thinks, strategises, plans, and implements whatever it deems to be the best course of action. The following illustrates this relationship: the dominant desire circuit decides what it wants and instructs the subservient control circuit to go and do its bidding.

You can think of the desire circuit like a child who sees a new toy advertised on TV. They identify it as something they simply must have, even though it costs a fortune. They then relentlessly pester their parents to get it. The parents (the control circuit), not wanting to upset the child, will look into whether they can afford it, where they can get it cheapest, whether discount codes are available, and so on. If they can make it happen, they’ll execute and get the toy. If the cost is too high, or the sacrifice elsewhere is too great, they’ll back out and deal with the child nagging. A nagging child is easier to deal with than Child Protection Services knocking at your door to find out why you aren’t feeding them.

If the desire circuit determines that it wants to drink more than not, the control circuit goes to work to make it happen: ‘Where can I buy alcohol? Do I need money? How can I get there?’ If the desire circuit determines that it doesn’t want to drink more than it does, it goes to work to make that happen instead: ‘Where can I get help? What excuse can I give for not going to the party? How do I get to sleep without a drink?’

COOPERATION

So basically, that’s what’s going on here. Dopamine and its related systems wield significant influence on your behaviour, and this is how. Now that you understand, you can once again aim to cooperate with this system rather than fight against it. You can incentivise it to want what you really want—not whatever takes its fancy. Otherwise, it will just keep doing what it does, and you’ll be going along for the ride.

8

THE HIGHER BRAIN

Willpower seems to be noticeable in its absence only. A lot is riding on it to do some of the heavy lifting—especially at the beginning—so it needs to make a comeback. For this to happen, though, we need to understand how it operates and where it’s gone. Let’s take a look.

HIGHER BRAIN AND LIMBIC SYSTEM

To understand willpower, we can use a model of the higher brain and limbic system. Although the brain is a much larger and more complex organ, this dichotomy serves our purpose here perfectly.

The higher brain—also known as the frontal lobe—is located just behind the forehead, and the limbic brain is located behind that. The responsibilities of these regions are as follows:

The frontal lobe is the seat of higher-order thinking, such as intellect, judgement, reason, and, of course, the will. It is also responsible for impulse control.

The limbic brain is responsible for processing emotional and feeling-based responses.

When we encounter a new situation, we have a high degree of conscious choice over how we respond. The frontal lobe plays a significant role in that choice and, therefore, the outcome. This is the will in action. But when we encounter the same or similar situations thereafter, we become increasingly likely to respond in the same way. A habit is just behaviour that is handed over to the automatic.

What’s more, these behaviours are registered alongside associated feelings and emotions. When the behaviours become habitual, choice (will) takes a back seat. At this point, behaviour is more likely to be directed unconsciously—and emotionally—by the limbic brain. It’s not that we don’t have free will over such choices; it’s just that a path well-worn becomes easier to take. So unless willpower re-enters the equation, the neural pathways that have been carved out take over. And the more you take a path, the more willpower (energy) you need to make and take a different one.

NEURAL PATHWAYS

The term path is quite literal: the transition to habitual behaviour takes place via the formation of structural pathways in the brain.⁴ To illustrate this, consider the following simplification.

We encounter some kind of situation for the very first time. This input is received by the brain cells (neurons), and we can respond in various ways.

At this point, let’s say we choose response A. The neurons representing this behaviour connect via neurotransmitters and form a neural pathway.

The more that response A is repeated, the stronger and more established the pathway becomes. At the same time, the other options are more or less fenced off. As this goes on, it takes more and more willpower to change it.

This is also how we learn. On a larger scale, when we encounter alcohol (input) and choose to drink (response), we subsequently experience relaxation or euphoria (outcome). These relationships begin to interweave and interconnect into a much larger network. We then quickly learn that when we encounter an uncomfortable emotion—like anxiety—alcohol can relieve it because it causes relaxation. Anxiety is the input; drinking is the response. Before you know it, you have an array of uncomfortable situations for which the conditioned response is alcohol. This is how associations get wired up in your brain as neural pathways.

The good news is that these established pathways can be changed.⁵ Throughout its entire life, the brain retains its neuroplasticity, so you can teach an old dog new tricks with the will to do so. To do that, though, we need our higher brain operating at peak performance. This leads us to our second problem: the health of the higher brain.

DEGRADATION OF THE HIGHER BRAIN

Parallel to this is the self-inflicted degradation of the higher brain. The higher brain functions fully when it’s in a healthy, stable environment; when conditions are adverse or polluted, it becomes compromised. Drinking alcohol is an obvious reason for a degraded environment, but there are many other contributing factors: stress, late nights, lack of exercise, and so on. Unsurprisingly, they all go hand in hand with alcohol and collectively create a self-reinforcing feedback loop. They simultaneously degrade the higher brain and compromise your ability to resist them. It’s a classic vicious cycle.

In alcohol dependency, you’re on a physical and emotional roller coaster. When you’re in this state, the frontal lobe struggles, and behaviour defaults to the limbic brain and established pathways. There’s no mental energy to do otherwise, so you just run on destructive auto-pilot.

Again, the good news is that we can unwind all this and set the cycle in reverse. How exactly we do that, we’ll cover later.

9

THE STORY SO FAR

Before we look at solutions, now is a good time to revisit our timeline. This time, though, we can look at it with a deeper understanding of how and why we arrived here. Of course, everyone’s circumstances will be different. The following may not describe yours exactly, but hopefully, you’ll recognise the broader underlying patterns. Forewarning: it’s not particularly nice reading, but to move on, we need to own our mess. The mess is the message and it must be understood.

FORMATION

The addiction stage arguably begins before you even encounter the substance. One of the most surprising realisations I had after stopping drinking was that while drinking was a major problem, it wasn’t the problem. Addictions often take hold because there’s fertile ground within the individual. Introducing the substance provides some kind of instant relief from latent issues. Relief feels like a solution.

Alcohol opens the doors of possibility previously restrained by inhibition. Dopamine gets involved and propels the dynamic forward. Combine this with subconscious programming, and we’re on our way.

Without the foresight of how this plays out over the years, it just seems normal. Your peers approve. Your family culture probably approves, too. In fact, it would be bizarre not to be doing what you’re doing. You’d be alienating yourself from the group if you didn’t.

What starts out new becomes normalised. You regularly participate and subconsciously develop patterns: weekends , quiz nights, football games, and so on. There’s always a thing you want to or have to go to. And at that thing you go to, there’s always alcohol.

Somewhere along the line, the habit becomes the thing, and the thing becomes the accompaniment. At one time, you couldn’t wait for the weekend because you were free to do as you like; you might just so happen to use that freedom to drink. Now, you can’t wait for the weekend because that’s when you drink—big difference. The ‘freedom’ part gets lost in the process.

For most, there are few noticeable consequences, so why not? The consequences that do arise become a badge of honour: ‘I have the worst hangover today,’ ‘I don’t remember a thing,’ ‘I spent all my money.’ Unbeknownst to you, what’s actually happening is that you are becoming dependent. The subconscious has taken notes, learned the routine, and taken over. You’re now running on autopilot.

Meanwhile, the opportunity cost of your time and energy is underway, running in a parallel dimension invisible to the unaware. The effects begin to compound and take you further away from your potential. You gravitate toward friends who do what you do and isolate from those who don’t. You’re not even awake when others are out in nature on a Sunday morning or whatever disgustingly wholesome activities they’re up to. No, you’re busy reinforcing the track you’re on.

What started out as fun and novel has insidiously taken over your life. On the surface, it’s still nominally about socialising or special occasions. But the gears of reality are grinding away in the background, and you’re about to find that out.

AWARENESS

Eventually, the law of cause and effect makes its presence felt. What began as subtle and unseen steps into the room. Effects may be mild at first: you’re overly tired, especially on Mondays; your life is a bit of a disorganised mess; you’re overly emotional and impulsive; your health and diet suffer. You may or may not associate these with drinking. If so, only vaguely.

Time marches on, and the mild becomes the moderate: your work performance declines and is noticed; you have money issues but still wake up with drink receipts in your pockets; others may start to notice and comment. Rather than self-reflect and take action, you remove people and circumstances that interfere with or draw attention to your behaviour. Validation of your behaviour shifts from general social settings to those that include others like you and eventually to cheap entertainment in which the same behaviours are celebrated.

What began as pleasurable morphs into outright self-medication for a mixture of compounding problems: low self-esteem, anxiety, frustration, depression. The soothing effect you get from alcohol diminishes, and diminishing returns lead to an escalation of consumption.

From here, the situation bursts into the obvious, seen, and undeniable. Your outer world is a physical projection of your inner world. It’s a mess: your living space is disgusting; you’re involved in arguments or altercations; you have blackouts; you wake up with feelings of dread; you hide what you’re doing or have done because you’re embarrassed.

The links between your circumstances and alcohol are clear. You can’t reasonably deny that you need to stop. So you try—consciously.

REALISATION

Where you’ve ended up is so far from where you started that it’s hard to believe it’s even possible. If the version of you who took that first drink was dropped at the final destination, you would freak out and never do it again. But the process probably took years—inch by inch, you became conditioned into this way of living and being. It’s like looking in the mirror every day: there’s no noticeable change from day to day, but when you look at a picture of yourself from a few years ago, you’re shocked at how different you look.

The effects are now fully manifest, the problem is more than real, and you realise that you have to stop. The nasty surprise is… you can’t. You try to cut down or take a break for a while. But you don’t. You wake up after a blackout and think, ‘I’m never drinking ever again.’ But you do.

And so begins the cycle of trying. You begin to look for answers and have varying degrees of success. But inevitably, you return to the same place despite your best intentions. Whenever you get to a place where you’ve restored some of the lost vitality, you entertain the idea that you can drink in moderation. You start with ‘just the one,’ but in reality find yourself back at square one.

Realising you’re not the one directing your life is a scary moment: it’s not hard to project forward and imagine where this ends up. But as terrible as this feels, it’s where the road to recovery really begins.

COMMITMENT

When you’re as low as you can get and still don’t give up, then the only option left is whole-hearted commitment—physically, emotionally, and spiritually—to overcome the seemingly impossible. Whatever it takes will be done because there is no alternative. It’s going to involve sacrifices. It’s going to involve pain and boredom. It’s going to involve accepting missing out and upsetting people. It’s going to be sleepless nights. And you’re never going to drink again. What you are going to have, though, is faith—faith that on the other side, there is a better life waiting for you. Because there is.

10

WHY ME?

You may be wondering at this point, ‘But why me?’ It’s an important question. Other people are exposed to similar environments and circumstances, if not the same. We all have a dopamine system, a subconscious, and a higher brain. They aren’t susceptible to alcohol dependency. Why not?

Addiction is complicated. There’s a lot going on: environment, genetics, neurobiology, culture, childhood development, and on it goes. It’s not feasible to pin down any one reason; everyone has unique circumstances. Ultimately, you’ll be the best judge of this one, and it’s worth exploring this question. You may never come to a solid conclusion, but you will gain valuable insights in the process. Introspection will help you understand yourself and why you do what you do.

In my case, I believe that hypersensitivity plays a significant role. While searching for answers, I stumbled across a book called The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine Aron.⁶ In a nutshell, her thesis is that around 20% of the population has a personality trait of high sensitivity. This trait is characterised by increased sensitivity to external stimuli, deeper processing of information, and heightened emotional responsiveness. Yep, that’s me.

The trait has been proposed as an evolutionary adaptation that may benefit the group rather than the individual. Highly sensitive people may serve as ‘canaries in the coal mine.’ They act as an early warning sign that all is not well in the environment, and the group needs to be wary of danger. The flip side of this is that some are not particularly sensitive. They are less acutely aware of potential danger and push the group’s boundaries in search of new adventures.

Whether this is accurate or not, I’m not sure, but it made a lot of sense to me. The implications in terms of addiction seemed to be twofold: firstly, the euphoric and numbing effects of alcohol are more pronounced and attractive to me than they might be to someone else; and secondly, any subconscious programming I was exposed to was amplified by my inherent nature to feel emotions strongly—emotion being the language of the subconscious.

Understanding this was a game-changer. It wasn’t that I was inherently defective or at fault for being unable to pull myself together. My life simply wasn’t positively oriented for someone with these characteristics. The trait is neither good nor bad. It just is what it is. The input comes in, it’s amplified within me, and a bigger version is acted out in my life. For most of that life, I had exposed myself passively and actively to a discordant mess. I hadn’t put anything harmonious or wholesome into my mind or body. So, why would I expect a harmonious and healthy life? It’s very simple: garbage in, garbage out. And for me, that relationship is very tightly linked—more so than most others.

Notes

PRIORITIES

¹ Maslow, A. H. A Theory of Human Motivation. Martino Fine Books, 2013.

YOU

² Murphy, J. The Power of Your Subconscious Mind. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1963.

DOPAMINE

³ Lieberman, D. Z. and Long, M. E. The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race. Dallas: BenBella Books, 2018.

THE HIGHER BRAIN

⁴ Hanson, Rick. Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence. London: Rider, 2013.

⁵ Hanson, Hardwiring Happiness.

WHY ME?

⁶ Aron, Elaine N. The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You. New York: Broadway Books, 1996.

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