EP 04: Reader Question – How do I stop drinking at home alone?

[Music] This is Annie Grace and you're listening to this Naked Mind Podcast where without judgment, pain or rules, we explore the role of alcohol in our lives and culture. [Music] Hi friends, it's Annie Grace at this Naked Mind. I am answering readers questions and today's question comes from Tanya. Tanya says, "Hi, I love your video answers and I listened to one about how to handle not drinking one out in social situations. Can I ask the same question about how to stop drinking at home? My evenings as a single long working are always long and alone at home. So what's the best way to get out of my habit of drinking wine and smoking to relax and shut down, etc?" And I did actually ask Tanya if she read the book or not or if she was familiar with it because it would change kind of how I responded. So I'm going to respond because she hasn't read the book, but it's a really good question, Tanya. So I think that, you know, I believe and my work and my book is based around the premise that you actually have an internal conflict that's responsible for the difficulty you have around both wanting to stop drinking, smoking and wanting to drink smoke. You don't want to do it and you want to do it both at once. Cognitive dissonance kind of at its core. And most people, you know, are pretty aware that we have two kind of thought processes, if you will. So we have two ways of thinking are conscious way of thinking in our unconscious or subconscious way of thinking. And so conscious thinking uses language and intentional thought. And it's your conscious mind that's deciding that you'd probably be better off healthier, happier, not drinking as much. Now, you're subconscious. It doesn't use language. So this is the part of your mind that keeps your heart breathing, heart, heart breathing, heart beating, keeps you breathing, etc. So this stuff happens in a part of your mind without even being aware of it. But what most people may not realize is that it's actually your subconscious mind that is responsible for your desires. So your desires come from a subconscious place based on kind of a lifetime of conditioning around what you've been taught is important way, been taught is good, etc. So and what you're always exposed to that kind of conditioning. So as an example of this, you don't decide to fall in love. That doesn't happen consciously. You don't just say, okay, that's the man I'm going after him because I'm in love with him. It really is kind of a process that you don't feel like you have control over when you fall in love. And that's like a lot of our desires and our emotions. They actually come from a very unconscious place, a very subconscious place. So again, the premise of this naked mind is that while you consciously want to make this change in your life of stopping drinking as much at home alone, you have this far more powerful subconscious conditioning. And the subconscious mind is responsible for your desires. And your subconscious mind, frankly, just hasn't got the memo. It hasn't learned that alcohol is not everything you thought it would be that the party is not as fun as it once was. So it's taken years and years for you to form these very deeply ingrained beliefs that alcohol is vital to unwinding and vital to relaxation. And it takes very specific conscious effort to get to the bottom of why exactly you believe that and then rewire your thinking around drinking so that you no longer have this conflict between what you want to do, drink less. And what you also want to do is have that drink. So when you expose consciously, you're thinking about alcohol very specific to the reasons that you personally drink, for example, relaxation at home, then you're able to think really critically and doing that can actually change your desires. It's amazing. And without desire, there is no temptation. Without desire, you know, you're not going to feel missing out. You're not going to be wanting to do something that you also don't want to be doing. And drinking alcohol, you know, for a lot of people who read the book, it's like a light switch and they say it's like this switch. And alcohol suddenly sounds about as good as drinking motor oil. And then you're really free to leave it happily behind. And in my book, I use this very specific technique. It's called liminal thinking and liminal is the point between your conscious and your subliminal. So it's kind of the the bridge, if you will. And what we use is liminal points and liminal points allow you to uncover all of your subconscious conditioning and then regain harmony between your conscious and your unconscious desires around alcohol. And not everybody who reads the book stops drinking completely. Because that's definitely up to you. And it's very individual. And, you know, as I don't drink, but it's completely unrealistic for us to think that alcohol is just going to be eradicated from society tomorrow. So it's not about that as much as it's about regaining peace in your relationship with alcohol coming back to the place where you don't have the cognitive dissonance. And which for many like me, that just means drinking has lost all its luster. It's no longer desirable. And I just don't drink it all on that for me as peace. But equally, there's people who find peace just drinking on occasion. And that's what's right for them. But the first step in this process is really to write down a list of every reason you drink and all the benefits you think you get from drinking. And that's going to be your guide. And as you go through these, you will examine those to see if they're really true. Because the bottom line is like most things that have been ingrained in us repeatedly from all sorts of places our parents, our friends, media, advertising, you know, social situations, they've been ingrained in us. We believe in alcohol without question. We believe that's important. Like we believe the sky is blue. It seems kind of almost irrational to think otherwise. And so you need to go through a very intentional process to critically examine these deeply held beliefs around alcohol and strip away everything that's false. And this actually this process convinces your all powerful subconscious mind. And it allows harmony and agreement between your conscious and subconscious minds. And the result is the ability to choose when and if alcohol plays a part in your evenings. And if you actually think at the end of the process, it really does relax you. Which, you know, when you examine reality of what alcohol really does, and I would recommend watching yesterday's video because I went deep into the relaxation issue specifically, you know, the real reality of how alcohol actually, you know, really decreases your ability to deal with stress over time. Then you can decide what part alcohol is going to play in your life without kind of these illogical unconscious cravings. And then that process is a process that needs to be kept up, I will say, because we are constantly, you know, neuro linguistic programming says that we are exposed to, I think it's like five billion bits of data a day. And we only consciously filter in a few of those, but they're all hitting us at some level. So even when the lights which is turned off or on or whatever it is, you need to go very intentionally then into your experiences and continue to kind of protect your mind. And I think that's not only true for alcohol, I think that's true for all sorts of things, really protecting what goes in because it makes you just a happier person. So anyways, Tanya, that is my answer. And I have written a blog post on every single liminal point. So every point that's in the book, if you don't want to go get the book or do the audio program, you can find them on my blog for free. So every single liminal point, so when you have your list, you can go through and you can find all those blog posts. And those will just guide you through the process of how to kind of look at this and rewire your thinking around it so that giving up drinking during your evenings doesn't have to feel like a sacrifice and can actually just feel like, you know, just feel like freedom. So anyway, thank you so much for the question. This has been Annie Gray, so this Naked Mind podcast. Thank you so much for listening. You can learn more at thisnakedmind.com and please remember to rate, review and subscribe as it really helps us spread the word.