Most "real [1]" alcoholics try over and over to stop like myself and Bill Wilson. The following story from the Big Book illustrates the problem [2]
Yet he got drunk again. We asked him to tell us exactly how it happened. This is his story: "I came to work on Tuesday morning. I remember I felt irritated that I had to be a salesman for a concern I once owned. I had a few words with the boss, but nothing serious. Then I decided to drive into the country and see one of my prospects for a car. On the way I felt hungry so I stopped at a roadside place where they have a bar. I had no intention of drinking. I just thought I would get a sandwich. I also had the notion that I might find a customer for a car at this place, which was familiar for I had been going to it for years. I had eaten there many times during the months I was sober. I sat down at a table and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk. Still no thought of drinking. I ordered another sandwich and decided to have another glass of milk.
"Suddenly the thought crossed my mind that if I were to put an ounce of whiskey in my milk it couldn't hurt me on a full stomach. I ordered a whiskey and poured it into the milk. I vaguely sensed I was not being any too smart, but felt reassured as I was taking the whiskey on a full stomach. The experiment went so well that I ordered another whiskey and poured it into more milk. That didn't seem to bother me so I tried another."
Thus started one more journey to the asylum for Jim. Here was the threat of commitment, the loss of family and position, to say nothing of that intense mental and physical suffering which drinking always caused him. He had much knowledge about himself as an alcoholic. Yet all reasons for not drinking were
So the problem here is going into a type of trance or hypnotic state, where you forget that you shouldn't drink. Have you ever gone into the next room and then forgotten why you went there or driven for many miles in the car and not noticed anything, but suddenly you "wake up" and notice where you are? That's a kind of trance. Stephen Wolinsky has a good book called "Trances People Live" [3] That I found helpful. Some people are always in an emotional bind that looks like a trance.
In order to quit drinking I had to wake up and remain awake, develop situational awareness, use tools like meditation and Cognitive Behavior Therapy, and a big one is deal with my traumas. I had some that I ignored or laughed at and minimized, but turns out traumas caused me to "space out" more than anything.
You ask an alcoholic why they drank again and they can't tell you why. They don't know. Drinking because you went in a trance state is a really difficult problem to solve and the reason most alcoholics don't recover.
Hope this helps.
Edit: I forgot to add that doing the 4th step is like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and doing the 5th step is like Cognitive Processing Therapy (for trauma) so you can get those for free in AA
[1] I use the term real because some of us in AA use it to distinguish ourselves from people that have 1 too many glasses of wine in the evening and then go to AA as a social club and call themselves alcoholic. I avoid meetings with too many of those.
This is real relatable insight I haven't seen anywhere else. Thanks for sharing. I struggle with eating healthy and order out way too much and relate to the same exact phenomenon - one minute I'm driving home and the next I end up at some random drive-through. No memories, no premeditation, no route planning. I didn't leave the house planning to eat out today, and yet here I am, and well now I have a spot in the line and I'm hungry anyways...
I'm trying to apply what I know to food and failing. Now is the first time I've tried dieting and I have a lot more respect for the degree of difficulty. You're right, the issue is very similar
I've hypothesized that a unique problem with unhealthy eating habits compared to other addictions is that you have to eat. I would think at least with something like alcohol or nicotine, what you need to do as an addict is fairly simple (which of course is different from easy). But you can't just cut out food entirely, so it's a much more complex issue trying to eat in a healthy manner. Especially since even being too restrictive and structured can be a problem as well. Do you think there's anything to that?
It'd be near impossible to become obese (or remain obese) if you just cut out sugar and processed foods. Nobody ends up in an electric scooter by pigging out on vegetables and chicken breasts. If you want to get shredded you'll have to do much more, of course, but if you just want to look and feel like a normal weight human, it really doesn't have to be any more complex.
Just as many alcoholics can't handle a glass of wine with dinner or a beer with a friend on a Friday night, many food addicts just can't handle sugar or fast food at all, and would be better off cutting these things out of their lives entirely. It's a more hardcore lifestyle change, but it can also be a psychologically simpler ruleset to follow.
> It's a more hardcore lifestyle change, but it can also be a psychologically simpler ruleset to follow.
It's a hardcore change but "simple" to follow? Isn't that part of the problem? The physical and mental are tightly interwoven. Telling someone they should just eat vegetables and chicken breasts ignores all of the other problems, mental and physical, that could be leading someone to unhealthy habits. In fact, a "ruleset" like this could contribute to further psychological problems and then further physical problems. This is the issue with diets, they ignore all the other factors outside of food.
You can cut out entire categories of food or drink though. People drink way more calories than they realize. Drink water instead of soda.
It's definitely hard but the "just say no" approach can work. I do recommend taking it one at a time though. Once you've cut out one thing successfully, add another.
Totally does not work for me. It doesn't help that I figured out the "drinking calories" problem a long time ago and mostly drank water already. Cutting things out just seems to lead to eating more of others, because the problem isn't what food I eat.
It's harder, but the biggest trick was learning to pay attention to what my body was telling me, stop when it first gave me a sign to stop, don't start until it gave me a signal to start, and also... realizing that if you're obese (as opposed to an underweight person with an eating disorder), that maybe spending a part of your day feeling hungry is a sign that you are taking care of yourself. That sounds pretty simple too when you write it out like that, but my goodness just doing that is a so hard (yet effective).
Second this. Setting simple rules is the only way I've been able to make consistent change. No soda. No bread. One at a time. I'm probably down only 20 pounds from my max but I feel so much healthier.
Well, one of the problems with alcohol and nicotine is that you also can't just cut them out entirely. Withdrawal symptoms are brutal and not compatible with modern 40 hour week jobs. Cutting out food, especially sugary ones, probably would bring about some subset of the same withdrawal symptoms...so the problems are more closely related than they appear, IMO (disclaimer that I have never been addicted to either so I may be completely off).
Sure, if you stop you're going to struggle against withdrawal symptoms. As far as nicotine goes, the good news is that if you can stop for a week, the temptation dramatically decreases. If you can stop for two weeks, the residual nicotine has completely left the body and you shouldn't be feeling withdrawal symptoms. If you can be disciplined for just two weeks, you can kick the habit.
It took me 7 years to quit nicotine. The first two weeks were the toughest and every minute my mind was screaming at me to go smoke. The next three months were still constant cravings, all the time, all day. After six months cravings were once a day and easier to let go. The entire first six months were difficult.
It wasn't until about two years later until I would have several days without cravings.
10 years later, I get cravings maybe once every few months and they are easy to let go of. Two days ago I got into a Lyft and someone dropped a pack of cigarettes in the back seat. The temptation was moderate to take them.
I think in part the brain hardwires to confuse nicotine as a type of food. Do not eat for two days, and that is what a smoker feels like for the first 2 weeks. Do not eat fir a day and that is what the first 3 months felt like (all the time, constantly). Your mind is telling you that you will literally die if you don't resolve the urge.
I think this is why relapse is so high for nicotine. You have to be consistently strong every time for months to almost be hone free. During that 7 years I had relapses usually after days, a few times I made it a week or two, once I went 3 months, and had gone 6 months twice as well before relapse.
FWIW, a person just has to keep trying. I admitted that 1) I deeply loved smoking. It is amazing. 2) there is no such thing as one last cigarette. Relapse would likely occur, and when that happens, my cessation efforts would continue.
Most of the physical consequences of nicotine go away within a couple of weeks. There's a never ending psychological battle, but that is pretty compatible with holding down a job. Find a way to get two weeks off at once if you have to.
As for alcohol, I'll just say that as incompatible as withdrawal is with holding down a job... being drunk is pretty incompatible too. I think if you can finesse one, you can probable finesse the other.
In general, my observation has been that as horrible as withdrawal is, that's the easiest part of kicking a habit.
My point is that once you've managed to quit, what you need to do is simple: not have any. Doesn't mean it's easy, as there are still compulsions. But with food you can't do that—you still need to eat.
Thank you for sharing. That was an incredible insight into the process and a good behavioral pattern to watch out for, especially because it resonated so much with my difficulties eating too much. I know, that doesn't generally compare to problems with alcohol, but I guess some of the mechanisms are the same. Thank you for being so gracious in providing this.
Thank you for elaborating. Seeing familiar information in another context, another story-wrapper, is helpful. All this resonates with me, though for other escapes than alcohol, and what finally tipped the scales to learning and practicing was The Blindboy Podcast, particularly the mental-health episodes where he covers CBT, transactional analysis, and how he handles anxiety. Thankfully for me, my family and personal history is similar enough to his (he seems careful to stay within the limits of his experience and knowledge). He also interviews people who know more than he shoes, like Sabrina Brennan and Paul Liknaitzky.
