How to Effectively Stop Alcohol Cravings

What causes alcohol cravings?

Cravings can strike at any time and with anything that pleases our brain, even when it’s a mixed pleasure or pain situation. We all know that feeling, you see something and want it in that primal way. Maybe you buy that velvet chocolate cake, fall back in with an old flame or even pick up a drink when you really don’t want to. But why do we crave things, and how can we take power back from these temptations?

Withdrawal Cravings

It’s important to know first that there is a difference between withdrawal and craving. Withdrawal isn’t just for alcohol. It can happen with sugar, smoking, caffeine and even love.

The two are linked, and withdrawal can cause cravings.

The biology of withdrawal

We get used to something that brings us pleasure or relaxes our mind. Alcohol is no different from anything else in this way. 

Our body recognises that we are doing this and adjusts to bring us back down to our regular level of dopamine (pleasure) or GABA (relaxation).

Stop drinking, binge eating or lose your love, and you will find yourself in withdrawal. If you were enjoying a dopamine overload, you might experience depression, anxiety and fatigue. When you are low in GABA, agitation, anxiety, and sleeplessness can hit you hard. 

Cravings are one of the symptoms of withdrawal. The idea that giving in to the craving for alcohol will offer relief from the withdrawal is a type of craving. 

Psychological Cravings 

Our brains are easy to condition when it comes to enjoying things. If we do something that makes us happy or relaxed, we are more likely to do it again and again. People are more likely to remember bad things about a place or time, but happy memories last longer than negative ones. 

This is where triggers come in. You walk into a bar or restaurant, and all the memories come flooding back. These might be good or bad memories, but the longer we go without drinking, the more the bad ones fade, and the good old days look more tempting. 

Your brain gets geared up for all the positive effects of drinking. This is what psychologists call stimuli. Your brain is stimulated to get ready for the pleasurable impact of alcohol, and when it doesn’t get that, it can send you on a downward spiral. This is what a craving is. 

Your body cries out for what it is anticipating, and when you don’t give in, your mood and even ability to relax and sleep can fail. 

What helps alcohol cravings?

What can we do then, when we come home from a long, hard day and the wine bottle is calling? 

Our body and brain are ready for a drink to provide that feel-good factor, but we know that an emotional rollercoaster, a morning full of anxiety and a weekend wrecking hangover come along with it.  

Ask yourself: Why do I need alcohol?

At the root of cravings is the association of alcohol with how we feel. This might be enjoying yourself, feeling relaxed or making it easier to talk to people.

It can be more sinister as well. Some people may use it to self-medicate and forget pain, trauma and difficult emotions. 

The craving chain

For a craving to happen, you need several factors. First, you must come across something that reminds you of how much you want alcohol, then your body must expect it and when you don’t drink you feel much worse. This low or stressful feeling is a craving.

Breaking the craving chain

So we feel a certain way, stressed, anxious or unhappy, and something triggers us to remember how alcohol made us feel better in the past. Anticipating the same feeling again, our body rewards us with that feeling in advance. Then, when we resist, we start to lose the reward, and that is a craving. 

We can break this chain of events at several points, but the last one is the hardest. It is also the least helpful in the long term. When your brain associates refusing alcohol with struggle and pain, it can lead to more problems and make giving in more likely. 

Breaking it at the trigger point is an option in the short term. This means avoiding places you associate with alcohol. Staying out of bars and avoiding lonely nights on the couch with a beer is a good idea when you are first quitting. 

The problem is triggers eventually will hit you, and it is nearly impossible to avoid any sign of alcohol forever. 

By far, the best option is to target the things that make you crave alcohol and work on those. If you use alcohol to sleep, for example, you must find a way to improve your natural ways of falling asleep instead. Say alcohol is the only way to ease your stress or anxiety, then improving your mood is the most important thing.

Warning Sign

“We should treat cravings as if they were warning signs. They mean you need alcohol to change how you feel or that you are putting yourself in situations where you want to drink.”

Desistal addiction counsellor John Miller.

As with any health problem, getting on top of cravings is mind over matter. You need to start taking positive steps towards getting better. 

How Desistal Works

We at Desistal believe in the power of happiness and personal motivation to reduce the need for alcohol. Our ingredients are all-natural and target the reasons people feel the need to drink leading to cravings. By improving your wellbeing and mental health you put yourself in a position to not need alcohol. This takes away alcohol’s power over you and leaves you in control.