If you’re looking for information on how to stop drinking alcohol, this post is going to be the opposite of what everybody else is telling you to do.
I haven’t drunk alcohol for 2 full years, and I did it without AA, willpower, or rehab. But, back in the day, I had a pretty bad drinking problem.
When you read this post, and you understand how to stop drinking alcohol the right way, the penny drops. You won’t need willpower, you won’t need meetings and you won’t need to “change the habit”.
At this point, you may believe that you need all of these things.
You may believe you need willpower. You may believe you have to attend meetings forever. And, you may believe you have to call yourself an alcoholic.
Some people are fine doing that, but I tried it and it didn’t work for me. I listened to what everybody else told me I should be doing for 10-years, and nothing worked.
Sure, it might have lasted for varying degrees of time – but I always felt like I was missing out. I was sober but miserable.
There is another way. And, it starts with reading this blog post in full.
We’re going to break down a number of things that will help you shift your mindset when you are thinking about how to stop drinking alcohol.
It starts with using First Principles Thinking. It’s the key to breaking free from the misery.
So, let’s get stuck in and look at how to stop drinking alcohol in 3 simple steps.
Ignore Everybody Else – They’re Under a Giant Illusion
This sounds counter intuitive – but when you’re about to embark on this journey, you need to ignore almost everybody.
And I’m not just talking about drinkers. Most of the time, you have to ignore (almost) every other person that is also sober.
In particular, you have to ignore anybody that thinks there is a genuine pleasure to drinking alcohol. I know people that have been sober for 10 years, and they still feel miserable. These are the people you must ignore.
Unless someone has gone through First Principles Thinking and understands the truth, you must ignore them.
I’m going to explain why, but it might make you feel a bit awkward if you haven’t already removed the conditioning.
We’ll talk about the conditioning a bit later on, but let’s dive deeper into the giant illusion.
90% of the adult population believe that drinking alcohol provides some kind of benefit to their life. And, if you ask most people why they drink alcohol, they’ll all say a similar thing:
I enjoy it
I like the taste
I drink to have a good time
And a whole host of other “reasons”.
Really, they’re addicted to a drug and these are justifications that need dismantling through First Principles Thinking, but that’s outside of the scope of this blog post…
So, let’s say you have a friend who’s a “normal drinker”. This friend drinks a few nights a week after work. This friend also goes drinking more heavily at the weekends.
You meet up with this friend for a mid-week dinner. You get to the restaurant and order a lime & soda. They order a large glass of wine.
You’re having a conversation about work. Everything is normal. You’re just chit-chatting away.
All of a sudden, your friend asks you what you’re drinking.
“Oh, it’s just a lime & soda” you respond. “I’ve stopped drinking for 2 weeks now.”
Your friend gives you a stark look…
“You’re not going to have a drink?” they respond.
Just for the record, there are a lot of people who will congratulate you at this point. However, a huge percentage of drinkers will start to feel uncomfortable.
Extremely uncomfortable.
Most drinkers don’t enjoy being the only drinker in a social situation. Drinkers know they’re doing something completely ridiculous (drinking poison) and will feel the need to defend their position.
Now, they’ll do this 2 ways.
The first thing they may do is encourage you to drink. If you end up drinking, the drinker no longer needs to question their own behavior.
They’ll say things like “just have one” or “go on, it’s not like you’re an alcoholic or something”.
Or, they’ll start justifying all their reasons for drinking an addictive poison. (And, they’ll usually do it without a prompt.)
“Ahh, I only drink to relax in the evenings. It helps me wind down”.
Bla, bla, bla.
Either way, this drinker thinks that they receive genuine pleasure from drinking alcohol.
This might sound strange, but you have to ignore what these drinkers are saying. These people are under an illusion. They believe that alcohol gives them something. They think that there is a benefit to consuming poison.
If they understood the truth about alcohol, they simply wouldn’t drink it. It would be a logical decision for them to stop.
But, 90% of adults have fallen for the illusion, and they’ve fallen for the conditioning.
If you want to know how to stop drinking alcohol, ignoring almost everybody and their opinion on alcohol is critical.
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How To Use First Principles Thinking To Get Control Of Your Drinking
Remove The Societal Conditioning
The next step is to totally remove the conditioning.
If you want to learn how to stop drinking alcohol, this step is arguably the most important one.
You’re probably wondering what exactly I mean by “the conditioning”?
The conditioning is what we’ve been subjected to since birth. We’ve been conditioned, through sheer repetition, to believe that alcohol gives us something.
The movies, the TV series, the celebrities, the sponsorships, the endorsements at sporting games, ad infinitum…
Almost everything in our adult life has painted alcohol in a glamorous light.
And when it comes to learning how to stop drinking alcohol, we have to remove this conditioning.
Removing the conditioning isn’t a straightforward process. It’s essentially unlearning everything you thought you knew about alcohol and rebuilding from the ground-up.
This is the process I went through when I was figuring out how to stop drinking alcohol, and it made the process of stopping simple. I never feel like I’m missing out on something.
I did it through a mental model called First Principles Thinking, and you can learn more about this mental model by clicking here.
What you essentially do, break down all the beliefs and all of the conditioning that has been happening your entire adult life. You then rebuild those beliefs with a new level of awareness, to form a new, logical conclusion.
You essentially build a totally new worldview. You end up understanding alcohol exactly for what it is.
It’s very straightforward, but it requires a lot of introspection and work.
This makes me some people feel uncomfortable whilst they study it. However, feeling uncomfortable for a few days is much better than a lifetime of misery.
I promise you one thing – if you stop drinking without doing this, you will feel deprived for the rest of your life. If you successfully get to the end of this process, you won’t.
Imagine stopping drinking and still thinking that stopping alcohol was a genuine sacrifice.
You have to remove the conditioning. And then, once you’ve done, that you have to get in the right frame of mind.
Get into the right frame of mind
Because 90% of drinkers believe they are making a genuine sacrifice, they all start their approach the same way.
They feel a sense of doom and gloom. They look to the future and it looks bleak. They are starting their journey with a negative mindset.
They think they’re about to take on a big challenge. Something that’s going to be difficult and hard work.
This is the wrong way to go about things. You have to feel good about your decision.
It’s not hard to do this – it just takes some repetition and changes in the way you think about your situation.
You can be happy about your decision, providing you have broken down all of the reasons you think you drank alcohol for.
What you have to realize is that you’re about to do something miraculous. You’re about to do something that will change your life forever.
And, if you follow the approach we talk about on the Soberclear blog, and the YouTube channel, you start immediately going towards a better life.
And providing you have gone through the First Principles approach, your mindset around stopping should be positive.
It’s what I did, and it’s what all the Soberclear members have done as well.
Tl;dr
When you want to learn how to stop drinking alcohol, you can do this in 3 steps.
The first step is to ignore everybody else and realize they’re all under a giant illusion.
The next step is to remove the lifelong societal conditioning around alcohol.
The final step is to get into the right frame of mind – and start going towards a better quality of life.
Let me know your thoughts down below – which of these steps helped you the most on your journey?
Leon
