Stop Negotiating With Your Cravings for Alcohol
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another one of these ten minute Mondays. Today, I wanna start off with a moment, and this will probably be a moment that you're familiar with. Maybe it's the end of the day and you're standing in your kitchen. Maybe you just closed your laptop.
Speaker 1:Maybe the kids finally went down. Maybe it's even just the middle of the day and you're out walking and this thought comes to your mind. A drink would be nice. And at first, that's all it is. It's just a thought.
Speaker 1:But then something else starts. Maybe it's just one. You know, I've been good this week. It doesn't really count because I'll reset tomorrow. Or maybe even worse, already went over my plan, so what's the point?
Speaker 1:That's not just a craving anymore. That begins a negotiation. And once you're negotiating the craving, it's already starting to drive the conversation. And so today, I want to help you to interrupt this. Ultimately, what we're talking about today is something called urge surfing.
Speaker 1:I have mentioned this in other episodes, but today I really want to bring this into the spotlight and give you a better picture of why this is a proven method that works and also how to do it effectively. And it comes out of real addiction research. It's been used clinically for decades and it's one of the most practical tools that I've found for people trying to drink less. Now, it's not because it makes cravings disappear, but because it gives you something to do in that gap between the urge and the decision. And that gap is where a lot of people need support and it's where this practice lives.
Speaker 1:Here's something that helped me to understand this differently. A craving, it's not just a thought, it's a body event. So what do I mean by that? Your brain has spent years building associations, certain moods, certain times of the day. And at some point, becomes that automatic answer for a lot of those.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's the end of the workday. Maybe it's sitting on your favorite comfy couch. Maybe it's the end to a long week, that transition from working to not working. Your body registers the cue first before even consciously deciding anything, and then your brain labels it, I needed a drink. But that label might not be the whole story.
Speaker 1:Researcher Rajita Sina has spent years studying stress and alcohol cravings, and one of her findings is that stress doesn't just make you want to drink more, it also changes how your brain is actually operating in the moment. Your attention focuses on that, your future maybe gets a little more distant, and the reasons that you wanted to cut back feel less real. And the next five minutes might feel like the only thing that matters, which is why thinking your way out of cravings is so hard. You're not reasoning from this neutral place. Part of your brain is already skewed towards relief.
Speaker 1:It's already making the case for a fast reward. Most people think they have two options: give in or fight harder. But fighting has its own problems. When you're fighting a craving, you tighten around it. You start monitoring yourself.
Speaker 1:Is it gone yet? Why am I still thinking about this? When that happens, you don't just have the urge, you have the urge plus the stress about the urge. And if stress is part of what triggered the craving in the first place, you might have just made it worse. And there's research showing that trying to suppress thoughts about drinking can actually increase the preoccupation with it.
Speaker 1:The harder you say, I don't want to think about it, the more mental bandwidth it ends up taking up. So fighting it backfires and giving in keeps the pattern going. There's actually a third option. You watch it. Urge surfing comes out of the work of psychologist Alan Marlatt, who worked alongside Andrew Tatarsky, who I've had on the show many times, a pioneer on harm reduction.
Speaker 1:And Marlatt basically rebuilt the way clinicians think about relapse. Marlatt instead looked at the actual process around it, the triggers, the high risk moments, the thoughts that show up, and what happens after that first drink. He identified something he called abstinence violation effect. Someone trying to cut back has an unplanned drink, tells themselves they already blew it, and then the whole night goes sideways. One thought turns one drink into three and that spiral is what Marlatt was trying to interrupt.
Speaker 1:And urge surfing was one of the tools built for that gap between the urge and action. The image is simple. A craving is like a wave. It rises, it peaks, and it shifts. Your job isn't to punch the wave.
Speaker 1:It's to stay on board long enough to realize that the wave is already moving. Here's what the research actually shows, and this part is worth paying attention to. A study out of the University of London took heavy drinkers and split them into two groups. One did an eleven minute mindfulness practice. The other did a relaxation exercise.
Speaker 1:Immediately after, the relaxation group felt calmer and actually reported lower craving intensity. The mindfulness group didn't really win on that measure. But what's really interesting is that when they followed up a week later, only the mindfulness group had significantly reduced how much they drank, a meaningful reduction from just eleven minutes. And that's the point. Urge surfing isn't trying to make you feel better right now, although in my experience it does.
Speaker 1:It's also changing what you do after the craving shows up. What we really see in the studies is that this is a very valuable response skill, not necessarily a mood fix. Okay. So what I'd like to do is kind of just walk you through it. So bring to mind a familiar craving, maybe not the hardest one that you've ever had, just sort of a normal one that appears.
Speaker 1:And then think of maybe that moment that you start making small deals with yourself. Now, before you decide anything, I want you to just pause. Instead of saying, I want a drink, try this instead. Something in me wants a drink right now. That wording matters.
Speaker 1:Something in me. Not all of me. Not the part that set a plan this morning. Just something in me. We want to create a little separation and that separation is what we're after.
Speaker 1:Next, feel your feet on the floor. Let your shoulders drop. Slow your inhale, longer exhale. And you're not trying to feel perfectly calm here. You're just letting your nervous system know that there's no emergency going on.
Speaker 1:Now ask yourself, where do I feel this in my body? You don't need to answer this with a story. Look for actual sensations. Do I feel this in my mouth, in my throat, in my chest? Maybe your jaw is tight.
Speaker 1:And then describe it like you described the weather. It's not good. It's not bad. It's just what's here. And then rate what you're feeling from a one to a 10.
Speaker 1:Don't do anything with that number. Just notice it. Now imagine the urge as this wave. Is it rising? Is it peaking?
Speaker 1:Maybe shifting? It doesn't need to disappear for this work. You're just watching it closely enough to see if it isn't this one solid unmovable thing. It moves. It has texture.
Speaker 1:It gets bigger. It gets smaller. Now, if you're still in the midst of this craving, your mind at this point is still negotiating, and that's fine. You know, it might be saying, just have one. It's been a hard day.
Speaker 1:Now don't argue with any of that. Just label it. Okay. It's bargaining. It's justifying.
Speaker 1:It's future promises. Then after that, come back to your body. Where is the urge now? Is it the same? Has it shifted?
Speaker 1:Has it gotten more intense? Has it gotten less intense? Now ask the real question. What is this craving actually trying to show me? Is it relief?
Speaker 1:Is it to de stress? Maybe permission to stop being productive for the day? Just ask it, but don't force an answer. Because the craving named alcohol as the solution, but that might not be the actual need. Now the last step, what's one thing that you could do in the next ten minutes?
Speaker 1:Could it be eat something, step outside, make a phone call, maybe move to a different setting? What is something that you could delay that first drink by ten minutes and then check back in? And then rate the urge one more time. Maybe it moved, maybe it barely changed. That's not really the whole point.
Speaker 1:The point is, did you create any space? Did you notice the urge without immediately needing to take action? Did you maybe get a clearer version of yourself with that few minutes to become more aligned? That's the whole practice. And in most cases, the answer is yes.
Speaker 1:Now, before we move on, a few ways that people might get this wrong. They expect maybe that the cravings will just magically disappear. And it might not. And that's okay. That doesn't mean it's not working.
Speaker 1:The goal isn't zero cravings. It's learning that you can stay present without automatically reacting because cravings are going to come up. It's whether you act on them. Instead, it shifts it. It shifts this fight that we have that we're constantly battling.
Speaker 1:We're thinking there maybe go away, and the more you think about it, the less it goes away. Instead, this is more like, Okay, what's actually happening? What does this craving want? What if I just watch it for a minute? And another thing you want to avoid is just pulling this out for the worst cravings.
Speaker 1:That's like kind of learning to surf in this big storm. Instead, this is a good idea to practice on mild urges at first and then have this go to skill for when it's at a level 10. And then finally, expecting this to do everything. Although this is a very powerful one, this is still just one tool. And it works best when you have a plan.
Speaker 1:You're tracking, you're reviewing, You're sleeping well and managing stress. All of those things in combination with this will set you up with a much higher success. But one unique thing to this is that urge surfing is where your plan meets the actual moment. So as we wrap up today, this episode, yes, it's about urge surfing, but it's also about more. It's about that moment right after the craving shows up, when that negotiation starts and when you feel like you only have two choices, fight it or give in.
Speaker 1:But you do have a third one. Pause and say to yourself, something in me wants a drink right now. Feel where this lives in your body. Watch it move. Notice the bargaining without buying into it.
Speaker 1:Ask what it's actually trying to solve and then make the next choice from a clear place. Not by fighting or pretending that you don't want alcohol, just learning that a craving can show up, that you can move through it, and that you can let it pass without automatically letting it become a yes. Ultimately, the goal is to stop letting every craving make the decision for you. Okay, that's it for today. Just remember, this is only a ten minute exercise that's backed by science and will, I promise you, if you use it, will make a big impact.
Speaker 1:Okay. Thanks again for hanging out with me today. And until next time, cheers to your mindful drinking journey.
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