Episode #12

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Kevin: Welcome everyone to another episode of the Reframeable podcast. The podcast that brings you people's stories and ideas about how we can work to reframe our relationship, not just with alcohol, but with stress, anxiety, relationships, enjoyment, and so much more. Because changing our relationship with alcohol is about so much more than changing the contents of our glass.

This podcast is brought to you by the Reframe app. Reframe is the number one iOS app to help you cut back or quit drinking alcohol. It uses neuroscience to reframe your relationship with alcohol and unlock the healthiest, happiest you. My name is Kevin Bellack. I'm a certified professional recovery coach and the head of coaching at the Reframe app.

In today's episode, we're going to do something slightly different, and that is to answer a question sent by one of our Reframe users. This question is related to ideas on resisting the urge for the post-work drink, as well as dealing with the temptation to stock up on [00:01:00] alcohol when you're at the grocery store.

I wanted to share some ideas and tools that we can use to get through these situations. I'm going to broaden the scope a little bit as well, and just answer the general question of ways to get through a craving, whether after work on a day off or just any time we may have an urge to grab a drink when we don't want to.

So whether you're going alcohol free or just cutting back, I wanna focus on the common theme that alcohol is showing up in a way that we don't want it to. How can we get past that? So let's work to find some better tools. And you know, this podcast is not gonna be an exhaustive list, uh, but just some things to get you started.

As always, be sure to check with your healthcare provider before trying any of these techniques that may adversely impact your health. Um, just, just thinking about mostly the ones surrounding exercise, cold exposure and things like that. But just be safe.

First I do recommend [00:02:00] going back to episode number seven, which talks about the habit loop and listening to that and going through the exercise that I gave you there to recognize your cues and where our cravings kick off from, but also focus on the reward.

What is that reward that our bodies and minds are seeking? When we are craving a drink, what feeling are we trying to satisfy with a drink? If we're looking to, if we're looking at this question in particular in relation to the post-work drink, then it's probably going to be something like stress relief.

We want to unwind, relax, and transition out of work mode. Identifying what it is that you're trying to do is going to lead you to a possible solution for that challenge that's coming up. So asking yourself, how else can I unwind, relax, and transition out of work mode? So identifying what alcohol is trying to solve for in that moment is going to be important and then think of other options to satisfy that craving.

So let's talk about a few tools that can help us along the way. The first thing I wanna [00:03:00] bring up, which is an extremely useful acronym to have handy, is the HALT technique. HALT stands for hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. So in this case, we should stop or halt and ask ourselves if we are hungry, angry, lonely, or tired.

These are four big triggers that can cause us to want to reach for alcohol in order to feel better. Or to solve for those problems.

And I like to expand this as well to include a few similar things. So asking, am I hungry or am I thirsty? Am I angry or stressed? Am I lonely or isolated? And am I tired or am I just bored? Um, but hunger, stress, anger, not having a connection with somebody in that moment, and being tired and maybe overwhelmed, can all be reasons that alcohol can sneak into our night.

So by telling yourself to, all right, stop, halt, and, and questioning whether am I hungry, angry, lonely, or tired right now, and solving for these four [00:04:00] problems, this can go a long way to removing a craving for alcohol.

So if you eat lunch at noon and you're leaving the office at let's say five or six o'clock, and you haven't eaten anything all afternoon and it's been a long day, right off the bat, you're gonna be hungry and tired. But remember, this can be used at any time as well, not just when we're clocking out from work. So when in doubt, HALT, and put some distance between the thought, which is that craving and follow through on it by trying to solve for one of these potential triggers.

All right. The next acronym I'm gonna throw at you is TIPP, T -I- P- P, and that stands for temperature intense exercise paced breathing, and paired muscle relaxation. So, Now these are four things you can do to get through a craving. They help you change the state that your mind and body is in, just like alcohol is trying to do.

So first up is temperature. Cold temperatures are believed to slow our [00:05:00] body's heart rate and include a calming response. So whether that's stepping outside on a cold day, holding an ice cube or ice pack to your face, splashing some cold water on your face and neck, or a cold shower, things like that are going to allow your parasympathetic nervous system to kick in

and as a result, our heart rate drops, our stress hormones can stop pumping and we can feel more calm. And this is one place where I'll add in to check with a medical professional on this one, uh, to see if this is something that you could or should, do or not do, you know, related to cold water plunges and cold showers and things like that, just so there's no adverse effects on your body giving all your own unique health situations.

So just disclaimer to be careful there. Um, It can be very helpful, you know, even if it's splashing cold water on your face.

So next up is intense exercise. So this is going to release endorphins, dopamine, it can help counteract the stress hormones in our body. Physical exertion of any kind, even if [00:06:00] only for a few minutes, can move that stagnant kind of negative energy out of our bodies.

And I know this says intense exercise, but I would say anything, even getting outside for a walk or stretching and moving your body in some way can be very helpful.

So now onto the two Ps in this acronym, which are paced breathing and paired muscle relaxation. So intentional breathing allows us to activate the parasympathetic nervous system as well, and there are so many ways you could do this one. I like to do box breathing myself with a four second count, which is inhale for four, hold that breath for four seconds, exhale for four seconds, and then hold that breath out for four seconds and repeat several times to calm my body down and slow my heart rate a little bit. There are many different techniques out there, so to try, so be sure to find the one that works for you.

Then you can combine that with this paired muscle relaxation. So you can pair it, your breathing, preferred breathing exercise, [00:07:00] uh, with this muscle relaxation, which you can do in several different ways as well. You can try to tense all the muscles in your body at once while inhaling, and then slowly release them as you exhale.

So do almost a full body squeeze in this case. And then release, uh, I prefer to do it where I focus on deep breathing. And then I start at my toes and I curl my toes and flex them. And then I release them with my breath and then my feet, I tense and release, and then I move up to my ankles. Focus on that tense the muscles around the ankles. Release. Go up to my calves, work my way up my body, hitting every single part and feeling my muscles squeeze, and then relax, squeeze, and then relax all the way up to the crown of my head. And this is something you could do anywhere. You can sit in your car when you get outta work and before you start driving, do some deep breathing, do this muscle relaxation.

And this can give you a deeper awareness of your body, allows more oxygen to flow throughout your [00:08:00] system as well.

So we've gone over HALT and TIPP. Hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Temperature, intense exercise pace, breathing, impaired muscle relaxation as ways to identify what our bodies are feeling, what our body needs, and to help us get out of our head and into our body. So let's keep going.

One of my favorite tools at any point in time on my journey was to "play the tape forward". This is where you stop and think, okay, what's going to happen if I give into this urge? What is my night going to look like? My mind is telling me that I'm only going to have one drink, but what is my history telling me in a case like this, does it tell me I usually have one drink stop, or do I keep drinking?

Then I think about how I will feel in the morning. What other ramifications could happen as a result of this? So we can play this tape forward and think through the chain of events that will occur if you continue down this road with this thought pattern. [00:09:00] Then I also like to add in the opposite where I think through how my night will go and how I will feel in the morning if I don't give into this urge to drink or to drink more than I want to, depending on if I'm moderating or cutting out.

Think about how you can feel going to bed tonight. Think about what tools you can add in to help you. Are you going to do some breathing and muscle relaxation? How about going for a walk or just getting some food in you and hitting the bed early tonight. Visualize what your night could look like and how you'll feel in the morning.

Picture yourself waking up with energy and happy that you stuck to your plan and worked through your urge. Just bringing this to the forefront of your mind can be very helpful to get through an urge.

So speaking of getting through an urge, Another very helpful tool is what's known as urge surfing. This is where we picture our craving as a wave, which is going to build and grow and grow and get to an apex, and then eventually [00:10:00] crest and fall and go to shore.

This is very much how cravings can hit us as waves, and every craving will fall eventually. I like to visualize myself surfing a wave and for context I have never surfed in my life, and I always pictured it as this hilarious thing that I found myself doing to get through this craving. But pictured my picturing myself riding this wave as it grows and picturing myself riding it to shore, falling off and getting back up and riding it again and kind of got me outta my head a little bit, made me chuckle, and I found laughter was usually something that helped me as well, which is why it was useful here.

But ultimately, one of the biggest things we can do to get through a craving is just to do something different. If we always drive home the same way past the same liquor store that we always stop at, how can we go a different route? How can we do something different on our way home? I would always use my commutes to listen to audio books or podcasts like Quit Lit or a podcast that would, uh, kind of reinforce [00:11:00] what I was working on surrounding alcohol.

So when I left work, And I had these thoughts that I'm so stressed and I want to drink. It was almost like a little miniature meeting that I was able to attend. That was just for me. Also, another good idea is if you time it up with one of our Reframe community meetings, that's a great idea too.

But I was able to listen to someone else talk about their story. I was able to get outta my own head and listen to other people share similar things that I was feeling. That was really helpful to get me through my normal routine of wanting to unwind with a drink at home. Do what works for you though?

Sometimes that wasn't enough for me. Sometimes I had to put the windows down in February in Cleveland and blast my music and sing at the top of my lungs. Sometimes I needed to call my wife and just say, Hey, how's it going? How was your day? What's for dinner? And get outta my own head. And talk with someone else.

Other times when I called her, I told her, Hey, I really want to have a drink right now, and I'm just talking to you to talk myself through it on my way home so that I'm in a [00:12:00] better head space. But like I said a little bit ago, just do something different. Find the things that work for you and use them.

Finally, I wanted to address the question related to stocking up. When you go to the grocery store, again, troubleshoot this with your particular set of circumstances, but some ideas that come to mind are to order your groceries ahead of time and pick them up already packed and ready if your store offers that.

What about choosing a better time to go grocery shopping like early in the morning when you might not be craving alcohol? Do you need groceries for dinner tonight? How about just ordering some takeout or delivery instead if you're feeling tempted to drink?

Ultimately, if we want to get through these urges that come up in our daily lives, we typically need to work on doing something different.

We need to figure out where our triggers are and put something else in its place. We need to do something else to get out of our head. Be sure to shift and move things around as needed in your schedule, because if we want to change [00:13:00] the way we go about things, we have to change the way we go about things, and it's not always easy.

I also recommend going back and re-listening to episode seven, as I said earlier, and think about that reward that you're seeking with alcohol. Alcohol is rarely the reward. It just provides us with something that our bodies and minds are craving. So keep thinking about how you can give yourself what you're looking for in a different way.

How can you make these changes to help you get through an urge to drink?

And I'll leave you with, uh, this week's journaling exercise, which is to write down all the ideas you had while listening today that you wanna try out. Also, write down any tools you use now, which ones work best, and why? Keep this list handy and add to it as you continue to work on yourself.

I know my list changed a lot over the years and included most of the things above, as well as journaling out my thoughts, distracting myself with a funny show, and just having some sugar [00:14:00] now and then. Not all cravings are created equal, so it's helpful to have a variety of ways to tackle them.

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Reframeable podcast.

We will be back in July with new episodes, so be sure to stay tuned for a great lineup of guests coming your way. As always, this podcast is brought to you by the Reframe app. Reframe is the number one iOS app to help you cut back or quit drinking alcohol. It uses neuroscience to reframe your relationship with alcohol and unlock the healthiest, happiest you.

If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe and share with those that you feel may benefit from it. I wanna thank you again for listening, and I hope you have a great day.