(Part Four) Atomic Habits - The habit of not drinking.
The 1st Law – Make it Obvious (ch 3-7)
If you are new here, welcome! This series, The Habit of Not Drinking, is less of a book report on Atomic Habits (my fav non-quit-lit, quit-lit book) and more of an examination of how and why we drink and how to change our habits to create an irresistible alcohol-free lifestyle. It’s also a guide on how to get out of your f*cking way and stop self-sabotaging :)
If you have been here for some time and have upgraded your subscription (TYSM!), you will find a section titled Four Things Sobriety at the bottom of each email. As you already know, researching is second nature for me, and sharing the intel is my love language. I’m also a bossy, only child, Gen X’er - so this tracks.
Notes on chapters one and two below.
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate – Carl Jung.
In chapter three of Atomic Habits, Author JC lays out what is known as the habit loop: cue, craving, response, and reward. Somewhere amongst these four steps, habits are formed. And once we know this and understand each step and what it potentially looks like in our own lives, we can use it to our advantage.
By introducing these four steps, JC has now opened the door to what this whole book is about—behavior change—how to create good habits or, the inverse, how to break a bad habit.
JC refers to this as the Four Laws of Behavior Change.
Creating a good habit:
1st Law - Make it obvious
2nd Law - Make it attractive
3rd Law - Make it easy
4th Law - Make it satisfying
And the inverse, breaking a bad habit:
Make it invisible
Make it unattractive
Make it difficult
Make it unsatisfying
The 1st Law – Making it Obvious (ch 3-7)
We’re so used to doing what we’ve always done that we don’t stop to question whether it’s the right thing to do at all. – JC
We will never change until we examine our choices and understand why we make them.
Even though I knew from the very beginning that alcohol was not for me, life was life, and I just did what everyone else was doing. Terrible excuse, but 100% truth. And in total transparency, I rarely rode the drinking bus. I was driving it.
Alcohol and our drinking culture are so all-encompassing that it’s nearly invisible. Only when we see someone at a party who is overly intoxicated and making a fool of themselves, or we see the quintessential “drunk” on TV, or someone is arrested for killing another human while driving intoxicated, only then do people point out the dangers of alcohol. Sadly, until those tipping points, it’s basically open season on any bottle with booze in it.
Thankfully, things are now starting to change. More and more of us are beginning to say time out and ask what the hell is happening here? Whether it is quietly to ourselves or going public on social media like yours truly, the spectrum of drinking, problematic drinking, and addictive drinking is all coming to light. But this spectrum will always be anecdotal, and we will continue to be blind to the obvious when we are surrounded by people who drink the same way.
If we are in a home surrounded by family members who drink, our friends from school who drink, or working in the bar industry with customers and co-workers drinking nonstop, our communities and these environments will most certainly dull our awareness of this behavior.
The punch line is clear: people who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through. - JC
It’s well known that writing out goals, tracking, and taking actionable steps to create a habit all lead to better outcomes. Motivation alone is not something we should rely on. We’ve all been there. We said we would do something, and then we didn’t because we didn’t feel like it. More than likely, we didn’t plan for it, nor did we devise a plan in the event our motivation diminished (which it will, all the time!).
I cannot tell you how many times throughout my drinking career that I proclaimed (to myself and others) that I wasn’t going to drink or I was going to have just one (or two, or just beer, or just wine, or or or…), only to be right back in my party shoes the following weekend.
It wasn’t until after I quit that I started counting my days and pre-planning other ways to spend my time (does anyone remember when I bought a SUP and took racing lessons? Ha!). That kind of proactiveness set me up for success. I wasn’t just free-willing my days and nights. I knew my goal, and I had a plan, and I knew how to implement and stick to them when I lost motivation, which was the most essential part.
HABIT STACKING
No behavior happens in isolation. Each action becomes a cue that triggers the next behavior. - JC
I am positive we can all think of some cues that caused us to drink alcohol. Bad day at work? Drink. Good day at work? Drink. It’s Friday? Drink. It’s Tuesday night? Drink. Sister is getting married? Drink. Sister is getting divorced? Drink. It’s a sunny day in NYC! Drink! (personal favorite). And so on, and so on.
What cues could cause your behavior to change from drinking to not drinking?
Sign up for a race early in the morning.
Call friends who don’t drink every weeknight at your regular happy hour.
Start tracking and watch your non-drinking days add up and up.
Create an accountability group. You have to check in and tell your group whether you drank or not.
Be like Mr. Rogers. When you get home from work, change into a workout outfit and sneakers, and get back outdoors.
Instead of a traditional nightcap, make yourself a decadent adaptogenic mushroom tea to calm your nerves.
Indulge in your favorite mind-rotting TV show - for me, that’s Bravo TV. The level of brain rot is exactly what I need sometimes to mentally turn off completely. Zero shame!
You get the idea. How can you habit stack not drinking?
Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior. - JC
Anyone in the medical field knows the amount of sugar lying around is beyond comprehension. Where I work, it’s like Christmas morning every single day. I have a sweet tooth, but I don't crave sweets on any given day when I am not working. We rarely order dessert when dining out, and seldom have it in our home. So when I walk into work, I have become so accustomed to eating sugar there that I automatically start craving it. There are very few days that I leave work without having consumed some ungodly amount of sugar. It’s a thing. And it’s 100% because of that environment.
The same goes for alcohol. It’s easier to avoid temptation than to fight it.
Of course, it will be hard to quit drinking or even take a night off if you are constantly surrounded by it. And yes, there are outliers. I never had an issue going into a bar to meet up with friends or having alcohol in our home. But I see and understand how it could affect someone - ie, my sugar consumption at work.
I also had to permanently delete my Facebook account because I wanted to keep a good relationship with my family and keep my nervous system in check—two things that I couldn’t do if I continued to have access to Facebook (circa 2020). It wasn’t working, and so I changed that environment.
How is your environment keeping you from living an alcohol-free lifestyle? Are you constantly putting yourself into tempting situations? How can you change your environment to encourage not drinking?
And for anyone who has quit drinking years and years ago and may just be feeling dull or bored with this lifestyle, use these examples and ask yourself how you can create an environment that reignites the spirit and the charm of living life without alcohol.
To Summarize
We can only change our behavior once we recognize it and understand why.
Habit stack. Find a way to incorporate not drinking with another daily habit that nourishes you.
Prepare, plan, repeat. Take the time to set yourself up for success. Quitting drinking will probably take a hell of a lot more than just declaring “I quit drinking.”
Consider your environment and who and what you surround yourself with.
Remove as much resistance as you can.
