Dealing with cravings

When I finally turned in my membership card to the nightly wine drinkers club and quietly whispered “Uncle”, I gave little thought to what the transition from drinker to non-drinker would be like. I assumed I'd get the instruction manual, follow the rules, sit back, and start reaping the rewards of the dry life.

Not so much.

Years of habitual, “heavy” drinking carved deeply grooved pathways in my brain, and the process of carving new pathways proved to be harder than I expected. I was itchy as hell.

Dipping below your baseline, the hack + my way

• Dipping below your baseline

Anna Lembke perfectly explains cravings in her book, Dopamine Nation.  Here's my attempt at a condensed version: 

There's a balance of pleasure and pain in our brains called the “hedonic setpoint”. That's the sweet spot where the brain wants to be - a perfect balance on the pleasure/pain scale. Drinking alcohol floods the brain with artificial pleasure and dips the scale to the pleasure side. 

But the brain wants balance and must dip back. Before going back to the hedonic setpoint the scale dips an equal and opposite amount to the pain side. This dip to the pain side is a craving. (Think not letting yourself pick up your phone when you want to check your apps, not pressing “watch next episode” when you're binging a show, resisting another cookie, or putting a cork in the bottle when you want one more glass.) That's the pain side of the scale. ITCHY.

According to Lembke, “With prolonged and repeated exposure to pleasurable stimuli, our capacity to tolerate pain decreases, and our threshold for experiencing pleasure increases.” 

Basically, with an increased tolerance comes a decreased ability to fight a craving, And what used to be a fun buzz from a couple of glasses of wine becomes a weak attempt to crawl up from the pain side of the scale into balance. 

• The hack

Here's what I know. If you're a habitual alcohol drinker, you're going to experience cravings when you stop drinking. It's a physiological fact. But the good news is, they don't last forever.

The situation of the pleasure/pain balance I explained above works both ways. When you experience a craving and the scale dips to the pain side, before going back into balance your brain dips an equal and opposite amount to the pleasure side. You get a reward for the discomfort!

Think about exercise, cold plunges, sauna, and all those other uncomfortable things that are good for you. The reward for the pain is the pleasure from the brain chemicals released after these practices!

The next time you don't give in to a craving for a glass of wine, piece of cake, mindless scroll…whatever it is…notice how you feel after the fact. Proud of yourself? A little smug? Happy? Good for you! Notice and enjoy that pleasure.

• My way

There's no right or wrong way to deal with cravings. There's only your way. Here's my way:

I avoided them.

Making dinner was my trigger. Every evening, as I got out the pots and pans, I would pour a glass of wine. As clueless as I was at the beginning of my sober journey, I knew I needed to avoid the trigger of making dinner to avoid pouring that first glass of wine. 

I either made dinner earlier in the day, ordered it, had my husband make it, or let them all eat cake. And I did this as long as I needed to until I felt strong enough to fight the craving for dinner-prep wine. 

When I felt strong enough to do dinner prep, I set up an NA bar directly next to my stove, but that's a topic for another newsletter. 

Today, the thought of a glass of wine doesn't even cross my mind at dinner time. If I ever do get a craving for a drink (which I rarely do) the thought of going through that itchy, craving time again is a motivator to not have it. 

Resisting cravings rewires your brain and, believe it or not, can bring pleasure. As they say, “What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.”