true for you. There are two steps here.
First, you turn the initial belief around and find as many ways as you can that the opposite of your initial belief is true. For example, if your belief is “alcohol relaxes me” the opposite becomes “alcohol does not relax me” or “alcohol stresses me out.”
Now that you’ve stated the opposite, come up with as many reasons as you can that the opposite is as true as or truer than the original belief. Examples might include
• Alcohol stresses my body out; a hangover is evidence of that.
• Alcohol prevents me from taking the action necessary to truly relieve my stress, so in that case it does not relax me.
• When I drink, I am more likely to get in an argument with my spouse, and fighting is stressful.
• When I drink, I beat myself up about it the next day, and that is stressful.
Once you’ve done that, the final step is simply to decide if this belief still holds true for you and if it is serving you or if you would be better off letting it go.
ACT: Awareness. Clarity. Turnaround. It’s an effective, scientific way to shine a light into your subconscious and figure out what’s actually causing your behavior. And you can find a guided worksheet in the back of this book to apply this process to any belief that comes up about alcohol, or about anything else in your life.
The important thing to remember is that there is no wrong answer! You are not messing up if you go through this process and still feel the belief is true for you. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but trust me on this—this process is about presenting your subconscious mind with information, facts, and logic. It’s about shifting your mind-set. And while that can often happen quickly by simply reading through the ACT chapters, it can also happen more slowly over time. Again, there are no wrong answers.
Now you know there’s something deeper at work here, and there’s something you can do about it, I hope you’re excited about this experiment! My ACT technique works. You can use it to enact change in so many areas of your life. It’s so empowering. You can use it to lose weight, start exercising, stop procrastinating, and be a better parent. For now, though, let’s focus on your drinking.
Often we don’t think about how much we drink or why we drink—like we’re doing in this experiment—until drinking is no longer an option. We don’t know if we drink because there’s chaos in our lives, or if there’s chaos because we drink. Suddenly, when the option to escape through drinking isn’t there, we’re forced to take a look at what’s going on in our lives and what might be triggering us. What are we trying to distract ourselves from? Sometimes the answer is obvious. Work is stressful. The boss yelled again. But other times there doesn’t seem to be an obvious trigger. Sometimes we drink to avoid anything unpleasant or stressful. This experiment offers us the option to switch from seeing stress as a reason to drink to seeing it as an opportunity to be creative and find other ways to deal with our problems. Maybe addressing the source of the stress is a good idea. Maybe blowing off steam on the driving range or at a boxing gym would be equally satisfying, and you could get a healthy workout in as a bonus.
As adults, we develop all sorts of coping mechanisms to handle stress. Maybe you like to read a book, meditate, knit, watch TV, or exercise. When I was in New York, I used to go for a long run at the end of the day. Then when I was encouraged to attend all sorts of boozy work events, from happy hours to networking meetings, that healthy habit got replaced by alcohol. Over time, all my healthy coping mechanisms were replaced with alcohol, and my life was thrown completely out of balance. What I’ve learned is that when we’re tired, stressed out, cranky, or upset, we don’t need alcohol. What we need is to change our emotional state. We need to do something to go from tired to energized, from cranky to happy. And we turn to alcohol.
You are going to experience stress over the next 30 days, I can pretty much guarantee it. But rather than saying, “Screw it!” and giving up, stop and think through it. If you have a drink now, how will that make you feel later? It might make you feel better temporarily, but you’ll probably feel even worse the next morning when you realize you broke your promise to yourself. But here is the thing—every day that you read a chapter, you are learning, and so I strongly encourage you to pick up right where you left off and keep going. If you make it 30 days with just a few drinks, that is a huge improvement, and you will have learned so much. This experiment is about getting through all the information and staying curious about your behavior, whatever it is. I recommend keeping a journal (you can even jot down your thoughts in the notes app on your phone) or a video diary to record your thoughts each day. Notice how your body feels physically and emotionally. You might be surprised by the changes you see from day to day.
I’m not here to tell you to stop drinking. Or to keep drinking. I’m simply here to provide you with a framework to discover your truth through logical reasoning based on scientific information. At the end of the day, you are the only one who can make the choice. My only goal is to challenge some of the beliefs that might be holding you back. It’s a terrible feeling to want something new or different and feeling like you’re stuck, unable to move toward it in any meaningful way. One way or another, you’ll be able to make a move by the end of this experiment. Your job is simple. Observe and become aware for 30 alcohol-free days. Be a reporter. Just the facts, ma’am.
If you’re used to beating yourself up over your drinking, give yourself a break during the experiment. And if you slip up, give yourself a break then, too. The goal is not to be perfect. The goal is simply to test out a new way of thinking and behaving to see how it feels. To see if it moves you closer to those desires you have for a new life. In fact, imperfection can be a wonderful tool to help you see yourself even more clearly.
What I ask of you now, for the next 30 days, is to keep an open mind. Consider the possibilities presented in each day’s reading. Is it possible that you could have the facts all wrong? For example, could anxiety be a heavy influence on your drinking? Is it possible that there is more going on with marketing and the profit engine of the alcohol industry than you currently realize? Is there something going on within the brain that makes alcohol seem more attractive than it truly is? Again, all I ask is that you keep an open mind. At the end, you might decide to keep drinking, and maybe you’ll naturally cut down on the amount you drink. Or you might decide to stop altogether because you feel so good. It’s your body, your mind, and your choice.
One of the most interesting things I’ve found in my years of research is just how many people want to change their drinking. I thought I was alone. I thought I was the only one who was questioning my drinking habits. Nothing could be further from the truth! It’s not that we are alone. In our society, questioning our relationship with alcohol is a taboo, even among our closest friends. An honest conversation around drinking seems to invite judgment. Yet the statistics are staggering. Eighty percent of Americans drink alcohol, and a huge majority drink it regularly. And think about this: Out of the people you know who drink alcohol regularly, how many of them have said something like “I overdid it last night” or “After last night I am never drinking again” at one time or another? Most of them, right? Almost everyone I know, and certainly everyone I drank with, has told me that they wanted to change their drinking at some point, to some degree.
So you are not alone in wondering about this topic. You are in the vast majority.
Another thing I’ve realized after reaching
