E339: “I Should Be Past This”: Understanding Alcohol Cravings

0:00You can be happy that you quit drinking and still have a moment when a drink sounds good. What can make that moment especially difficult is what you think it says about you. I thought I was past this. Why do I still want alcohol? Have I actually accepted sobriety? Will it always be like this? You may have expected that eventually being committed would mean that you would stop wanting it. So when a craving appears, it raises a bigger question. Am I going to spend the rest of my life thinking about this? That's a lot to conclude from one moment. If you've been using the absence of cravings as proof that you're doing well, having one can feel like evidence that something's wrong.

0:46Today, I want to look at how that happens when acknowledging a desire turns into bargaining and what responding differently actually accomplishes. I used to have one cat, Rudy, who you've probably heard meowing in the background of many of my episodes, and recently I adopted a tiny little orange cat named Liza. She's adorable and a little fresh, but I learned that going from one cat to two doesn't mean twice the litter box activity. It's more like four times. The whisker litter robot automatically cycles after every use so I don't have to scoop multiple times per day. It's one less repetitive chore sitting in the back of my mind, and that matters when I already have enough things to remember.

1:34The Whisker app also notifies me when a clean cycle is complete, shows me the litter and waste drawer levels, and lets me track Rudy and Liza's weight and bathroom usage. Whether you have one cat or five, Whisker has automatic litter box models for every family size, plus bundles that make it easy to get fully set up while saving money. Get the litter box off your mind with 10 % off a Whisker Litter Robot at whisker.com slash power. That's 10 % off at whisker.com slash power.

2:20Let's use Christmas dinner as an example here. Someone pours wine and you wish that you could have one or nine. You miss the taste, the buzz, or being part of that shared experience. You can want those things without having decided to drink. Wanting just describes what appeals to you. And if alcohol didn't appeal to you so much, you wouldn't have to be sober, right? So it makes perfect sense. But you might immediately think, I shouldn't still want this. So then you remind yourself how much better your life is without alcohol, and then check if the desire has gone away. It hasn't. And now you're wondering why remembering the benefits of sobriety didn't work.

3:07But what were you expecting it to do? Remembering why you quit can help you decide not to drink. It doesn't have to make the wine look unappealing to be useful. If you expect it to remove the desire to, then you may conclude that your reasons aren't strong enough simply because you still want something. So then you might try harder. You tell yourself to be grateful and you remind yourself how bad alcohol is for your health. You think about how long you've been sober and all the things that you've learned. And then you check again. Do I still want it? Meanwhile, you're barely listening to the conversation because you're waiting to feel the way that you think a committed sober person should be feeling You may be treating the fact that you still want a drink as a problem you have to solve when it's really not a problem Wanting it isn't the same thing as deciding to do it That's where I shouldn't want this can subtly morph into I can't handle wanting this you start to believe that you can't enjoy dinner while the desire is present you need it gone before you can relax or feel confident about your decision and when it doesn't disappear on demand the whole evening can start to feel like a test that you're failing there's a big difference between i'm disappointed that i can't have wine too and is this what my life is going to be like forever.

4:35The first describes something that's happening now. The second makes a prediction about your entire future. And a craving in the moment doesn't establish how often you're going to feel it, how long it'll last, or what every future holiday will be like for the rest of your life. You also don't need to promise yourself that it'll disappear in 5 or 10 minutes. You can keep the description accurate. I want wine right now, and I'm frustrated about that. or I wish that I could participate just like everybody else, and this is annoying. That gives you an experience to respond to instead of an assumption about the rest of your life.

5:16Some cravings go away quickly and others don't, but they all eventually go away as long as you don't drink. There are reasons that alcohol might come to mind in this type of setting. If wine was part of Christmas dinner for years, seeing it may remind you of what you usually did. Familiar routines can carry an expectation of drinking even after you've decided to stop and even after you have some sober time. A reminder could pass quickly or it could come with a stronger desire and a little bit of FOMO. Both are fine. Your current circumstances matter too. A 2025 study randomly assigned 121 adults with alcohol use disorder to a social stress task, a physical stress task, or a control condition, followed by alcohol cues.

6:09The researchers followed their everyday craving and drinking for over a year. People who reported a larger increase in stress during the lab tasks tended to experience stronger cravings during the experiment. They also reported greater craving during follow-up, and that doesn't mean that one stressful experience caused a year of cravings. It suggests that differences in how people respond to stress may help explain differences in craving. The useful question is, what's happening today? Is this a familiar drinking occasion? Was there a difficult interaction before you sat down, or maybe you're anticipating one after you sat down?

6:52Have you spent all afternoon feeling uncomfortable and trying to look fine? Those possibilities give you something more specific to consider than, I've been sober long enough that this shouldn't happen. Your sober date doesn't describe every situation that you've encountered or what you're dealing with now. You might feel comfortable with your ordinary routine and still find certain gatherings difficult. The skill here is to take that difficulty seriously without interpreting it as being behind. And taking it seriously includes telling someone, if you believe that a craving means you haven't made enough progress, you might hide it from the people who could support you.

7:37And then you're alone with the craving and trying to maintain the appearance that you're fine. You don't have to settle the question of whether you should feel this way before you can get support or before you can continue reinforcing your decision to not drink.

8:00The next thing to notice is whether you're describing the desire or trying to give yourself permission to act on it. So at dinner, the thought could start like, I miss drinking at Christmas, Which is fine. You can miss drinking at Christmas. But then it might shift to, it's only one day. I've proved I can stop. And then maybe a really sneaky one like, no one would know. Each thought has a different job. The first one just acknowledges something that you miss. The other ones are giving you reasons to make an exception. You haven't necessarily made the decision to drink yet, but you're beginning to build a case for drinking.

8:43You're trying to massage things in your head so that you don't feel too bad about moving forward with it. It's only one day makes the exception sound small. I've proved I can stop uses your time sober as an argument for drinking again. And no one would know shifts attention towards whether or not you could hide it. None of those statements answer the original feeling of disappointment or feeling left out. They're helping you justify a different action. This is why acknowledging that alcohol sounds appealing isn't the same as spending the evening entertaining every argument for it. You can be honest about how a drink would be nice right now without treating that desire as a reason to reconsider your commitment to sobriety.

9:36If you're looking for an exception, more private debate is probably going to give you enough time to find one. So this is a useful moment to interrupt what you're doing and involve your support system instead of trying to power through. And you may be thinking, what's someone going to tell me that I don't already know? Or I don't need support. That's for other people. That's for people who are really bad drinkers and can't do it on their own. But support isn't about new information. Someone can help you recognize the argument that you're building, decide whether or not to leave, or just keep you company for a couple minutes over text or in the comments of your post long enough where you can redirect and stop the bargaining.

10:23There's a difference between posting dinner's a little stressful versus saying I keep telling myself one night won't matter and I'm starting to believe it. Can you guys talk with me before I do anything? If you only tell them that you're stressed, they may suggest taking a break. They don't know that you're considering drinking. Being specific makes it possible to ask for the help that you actually need. Can we figure out what I'm going to do when I get home? I'm worried that I'll stop for wine or if I get home and I'm too bored I'm gonna convince myself to drink. Things like that. You're asking for help with your next action.

11:04Your support system doesn't need to make you dislike alcohol or convince you that Christmas dinner is just as enjoyable without it. You can still be disappointed and stay sober. A study of 181 adults receiving outpatient treatment for alcohol use disorder collected reports over 84 days. Participants had a pattern of drinking heavily in response to negative emotions. Higher daily craving was associated with a lower likelihood of abstinence and greater odds of heavy drinking. And greater use of adaptive coping was associated with better outcomes. Cut that out. The coping measures included talking to someone, waiting, remembering the benefits of quitting, choosing an alternative activity, and avoiding alcohol-related situations.

12:01What's useful here is to consider what an action does. If you move away from the wine, you're no longer sitting beside it staring at it. If you decline a drink, you've acted on your decision even if part of you wished you could accept the drink. If you tell your support system that you're tempted, they know that you need them instead of just assuming you're okay. And now compare that with staying at the table and repeatedly checking whether or not you still want to drink. Checking tells you about the feeling. Taking action can change your access to alcohol, the conversation that you're having, and whether or not you're managing this alone.

12:44And you don't have to leave every dinner because alcohol looks appealing to you. A brief, a drink would be nice type of thought can pass while you continue your conversation. That's normal. But if you're preoccupied, bargaining, or struggling to follow through, you can respond to that without waiting for it to become a crisis. Pattern that I see a lot of people get into is they do reach out for support when things are going well. And then when they're starting to struggle, they quietly drift away and then they come back and post another day one. The goal would be to not drift away and to reach out to your support system as you start struggling so that they can help you interrupt the loop instead of just following it to a drink and then hating yourself afterwards and then making the day one post.

13:40If your cravings are getting stronger, more frequent, or harder to handle, then that is really important to tell your support system and consider whether you need additional support. But if we go back to Christmas dinner, a useful outcome might be that you notice the craving, recognize the bargaining, and you told someone before you started acting on it. Maybe you stay, maybe you leave, you probably wish that that part of the evening was easier, but the change is that you haven't required yourself to stop wanting alcohol before choosing what to do. You've responded to the actual situation instead of spending it trying to prove that you shouldn't be feeling this way.

14:24So instead of getting stuck on you should be past this or you should be further along or that you feel behind or whatever, focus on what's going to actually get you through the moment. Judging yourself is not a productive thing to do. If this is your first sober holiday season then I really encourage you to begin thinking about what you have coming up so that you can make a plan to stay sober. Hoping that you'll get through it is not a sustainable strategy and even if it's your second or third or whatever holiday season and you're starting to feel weird and uncomfortable, make a plan. Get specific.

15:08Think about what you have to do over the next couple of months instead of just going into it the same way you have all the years in the past. Thank you for listening and I will talk to you next week.

15:31Thank you.