You’ve had the conversation with yourself a thousand times. You know you drink more than you want to. You know how you’re going to feel tomorrow. You’ve made the resolutions, decided on the limits, given yourself the pep talks that this time, you’re going to stick with it.
But at some point, you pour a drink anyway like that was the plan all along.
This is why you feel like something is fundamentally broken. It’s not even the drinking itself. It’s the back and forth — it feels like an obsession. You’re always thinking about it. Rationalizing. Defending. Comparing yourself to other people.
You don’t want to want it this much. And yet the cravings are real. As reliable as the sun going down.
Here’s what I want you to understand. That urge to drink isn’t a character flaw or a weakness. This is about dopamine. And once you understand how dopamine actually works, the insanity starts to make sense. And more importantly, you can see how it’s fixable.
Why Willpower Keeps Failing You
Let’s get one thing straight. It’s not actually alcohol that you want. It’s the feeling that alcohol gives you. It’s the reward you deserve for all your hard work. It’s the relief you need from all the pressure you feel. It’s the ability to finally relax and connect with your people or even just yourself after a day of performing for everyone else.
The problem is that your brain has learned — through thousands of repetitions — that alcohol is the fastest path to those feelings. And here’s the part nobody explains. Dopamine fires when you think about what you want — when you expect that drinking is going to feel good. So the mere thought of a glass of wine at the end of the day gives you a hit of dopamine right in the middle of the afternoon — because your brain is predicting relief. That prediction –that fantasy– is what’s driving your cravings. This is such more than a drinking habit. It’s a thinking habit.
Which means every time you try to white-knuckle through the evening because you think that’s going to make you feel better (eventually), you’re not expecting to feel good without alcohol. Just the opposite. You’re predicting a battle. You’re fighting against the prediction your brain has been refining for years.
And the reason willpower doesn’t work as a long term strategy is that it’s a limited resource. You can only go against what you think you want for so long because you can’t stop wanting to feel better. That’s not weakness. That’s a fundamental feature of being human. And denying yourself the relief that you need and deserve is actually reinforcing the broken prediction loop that makes alcohol so appealing.
The harder you try, the harder it feels.
Dopamine Fires on the Story You’re Telling Yourself
Dopamine isn’t a feel-good neurotransmitter (those are called endorphins). It’s the motivation that drives you into action. It gives you the energy and focus you need to do whatever you have to do to get whatever it is that you think you want.
But the key phrase in that sentence is “whatever you think you want.” There’s a mind-body connection. Dopamine isn’t just a fixed amount of neurotransmitter in your brain that dictates whether or not you feel motivated. Dopamine activity — when and why it fires — is directly tied to the story you’re telling yourself.
Let me give you an example that has nothing to do with drinking. Say you want to lose ten pounds because none of your clothes fit. So you decide to start working out every day because you refuse to buy a whole new wardrobe in a bigger size. Notice that your motivation is tied to the end result–not to the actions that cause that result. You don’t actually want to exercise. You just want your clothes to fit.
Which means that you’re going to struggle with the day-to-day motivation you need to stay consistent with a new routine because the reward you’re seeking is too far away. You know that one workout alone isn’t going to change much, so it will get more and more tempting to just skip it when old routines are more immediately gratifying.
And even if the shame of feeling gross and out-of-shape is enough to drag you to the gym a few times, you’re not feeling much pleasure when you exercise. Because it’s inconvenient and you’re thinking about how long you have to work out this hard before you can feel the pleasure of having your clothes fit again. What’s more, when you rely on shame to motivate yourself to do something you don’t really want to do and it actually works–in this case, you lose the weight–then the shame disappears. Which means your motivation to keep working out is going to disappear with it. You slide right back into old habits because your dopamine is still firing on the wrong cues.
That’s exactly what’s happening with your drinking.
Why You’ve Forgotten What Else You Enjoy
Your focus is like a flashlight. You only get one. And you can only point it at one thing at a time. When you’re in the habit of thinking that alcohol is what you need at the end of the day, you’re not thinking about imagining, fantasizing, or predicting relief from other sources.
So the idea of curling up with a good book, taking a long walk, making yourself a really good cup of tea — none of that registers in your desire department. But that’s simply because you don’t think they sound as appealing as pouring a drink. It’s not that you’re not actually capable of relaxing and enjoying yourself without alcohol. It’s that no other ideas trigger a sense of anticipation. Your thinking habits have hijacked your dopamine response. That’s why I say this is a thinking problem, not a drinking problem.
This is fixable. But changing how you think requires time and practice. You have to set goals to re-experience things you’ve forgotten you enjoy, and explore new ways to have fun and relax. And then you have to think about those things, intentionally romanticize them, in the same way you’re unintentionally allowing your brain to start planning for happy hour in the middle of your workday. You have to give your dopamine something new to anticipate by mentally rehearsing yourself not only doing other activities, but actually enjoying them.
That’s the part that most people miss. If you can’t visualize yourself doing something–imagine how much fun it will be or how good it will feel, then you’re probably not going to do it. That’s why setting the goal to “not drink tonight” is so frustratingly ineffective. It’s a negative goal–the absence of a behavior. You can’t see yourself “not drinking.” Your brain has no clear target; your body feels no anticipation.
You need to point your focus on what you’ll be doing instead of drinking and how good that will feel.
And you have to do that with the understanding that desire is absolutely something you can cultivate. You already know that you can learn to like something by simply deciding you want to like it. At some point, you cultivated your taste for dry red wine or dark IPAs or whiskey sours. The first sip makes everyone flinch!
But you also know that you can’t just convince yourself that chilling out on the deck at sunset with a mocktail is going to feel amazing the first time. You have to do new activities in small increments — just long enough to experience them as pleasurable — even if all you can say the first few times is that “didn’t totally suck.” That’s how you rewire your dopamine. One “kinda okay” experience at a time that leaves you wanting more.
Why “I’ll Stop After Two Drinks” Never Works
Here’s how this plays out when you set goals to restrict your drinking. “I’m not drinking tonight.” Or “I’m only having two drinks at the party.” There’s nothing for your dopamine to fire on. You’re focused on restriction — on what you’re not going to do — and your brain has nothing to forward to tonight. Which is exactly why it feels like you’re dragging yourself through the evening with white knuckles. “Not drinking” sounds about as fun as trying to “not cough.” The only question is “how long can I do this before I give in?”
Depriving yourself of pleasure does not cause happiness.
But here’s what happens when you change how you think about the goal. Instead of “I’m not going to drink” or “I’ll stop after two,” you can set goals like, “I’m going to take 10 minutes when I get home from work and dance to my favorite music to let off some steam.” Or “I want to get to know everyone better at the dinner party–I’m going to focus on learning something new about each person.”
Notice that neither of these goals have anything to do with alcohol. Neither do they call for restricting your intake. But if you focus on reducing your tension or increasing your connection with other people, alcohol will have to take a back seat. Because you can only really focus on one thing at a time.
So what does that mean? Stop trying to change your drinking. Change your thinking — learn how to work with your brain instead of against it.
A person who thinks they hate running can’t experience a runner’s high. And a person who thinks they love drinking won’t experience “not drinking” as enjoyable. Because they feel like they’re missing out. But that’s because dopamine is tied to the story you’re telling yourself about what you want — what you think you like and don’t like.
When you’re telling yourself a story that “not drinking” is somehow hard or complicated, that’s demotivating at a biological level. You can feel it. Which means your body is your bullshit detector. It gives you real-time feedback. So when a thought doesn’t lift your heart and motivate your ass to move in the right direction sooner rather than later, then you need a new perspective. Not more discipline. A better story.
The Real Goal
This isn’t about your relationship with alcohol. It’s about your relationship with yourself. How you speak to yourself. How you respond to yourself when something feels hard. What you think you deserve and what you believe you’re capable of. When you start caring less about how things look and more about how things feel, you can heal the version of you who thinks she needs alcohol to cope. And you can make progress very, very quickly.
Language is the bridge in the mind-body dopamine connection. The fastest way to restore your motivation is to change what you think you want. Not by trying to convince yourself that you don’t want a drink. But by exploring the emotional need beneath the idea. Because it’s not even alcohol that you really want – it’s how you think alcohol will make you feel.
You need to get really specific and honest about what you need more of — more peace, more relief, more confidence in yourself and in the future, the feeling of being present in your own life, the feeling of being in control of your focus and energy.
Your brain is a tool. Its job is literally to help you get what you want. You just have to learn how to use it — how to think more intelligently about all of this.
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And if you want to learn more about my “Take it or Leave it” Methodology, check out these additional resources:
Free Masterclass
The Science of Take It or Leave It: Why Some Women Can and How You Can Too
It’s Not About the Alcohol podcast
EP307, How to Leverage Your Dopamine So That Alcohol Is Less Appealing