Remove the booze
The first step to living an alcohol-free life is ditching the booze. This might sound obvious but removing booze from your house is really step one. For many people, the temptation of drinking can be too much to resist. So it’s important to remove all the alcohol from your home and to avoid places where you know you’ll be tempted by it.
Mindset
My beliefs about alcohol and how I thought about it also had to change for any of this to stick. If I continued to think that it was the only thing that was going to give me relief from all my problems, I was going to fail. I could not think my way out of not liking wine anymore, it had been my go-to for decades. I started to devour information, books podcasts, and anything i could get my hands on to start questioning my beliefs about alcohol. I soon felt like I had been brainwashed by society and big alcohol after reading books like Quit like a Woman and this Naked Mind. It felt good, a little rebellious.
When I was able to find someone that didn’t drink and looked like they were enjoying themselves I then was able to find the inspiration to say, if they did it, I can do it too.
Shifting your mindset to what you will gain by giving up alcohol is truly what is going to help this new habit stick. You likely turned to a habit of drinking because it likely worked for a little while. Now you are here because it’s not working. This attempt at using a substance as a coping mechanism is something that you can turn around. It doesn’t mean that you need to continue in the cycle and there’s a way to break free of it by forming new habits. The cycle that you’re stuck in is not because you have some type of moral failing or that you have a lack of wheel pair of power. Remember that it’s a habit that can be unlearned.
Support
Habit change is really hard to do in a vacuum. Seeing other people that are similar to you succeed and being able to talk through your cravings and cues is what is going to help you stick to your goals. That can look like even one person to whom you can stay accountable or full-on support groups, virtual or in-person meetings. Find someone that you can continue to come back to, even if things do go perfectly as planned. Those people are around, you might not know them yet but feel free to reach out to me for resources and recommendations. A sober coach can help keep you personally accountable and help guide you through the entire process. Reach out to find out more how I can help.