No matter where you are in your alcohol addiction journey, you’re bound to experience some alcohol cravings. However, they’re the strongest at the start of addiction recovery, when withdrawal symptoms, life stressors, and external triggers can cause a wave of cravings. But cravings aren’t just limited to people trying to prevent relapse while fighting addiction – maybe you just want to cut down on how frequently you drink.
Cravings can become less intense the longer you go without drinking. Nevertheless, they can still be difficult to manage, no matter when you stop drinking. While managing alcohol cravings is a constant process, it’s still possible. We’ll discuss why you experience cravings and the different ways you can deal with them.
What Are Alcohol Cravings?
It’s an overwhelming urge to consume alcohol that arises because of psychological, physiological, and environmental triggers. Knowing what influences your alcohol cravings is important for building strategies that help you overcome them.
What Causes Cravings?
Ever wonder why alcohol cravings can feel so strong? Regularly consuming alcohol changes your brain chemistry and reversing that change isn’t easy once you become dependent on it. Specifically, alcohol affects the level of neurotransmitters in your brain.
Alcohol Alters Brain Chemistry
It enhances the effect of GABA. which calms the brain, and reduces the effect of glutamate, which stimulates your brain. Most notably, alcohol increases the release of dopamine and serotonin, which create feelings of well-being. However, continued drinking requires you to drink more to have a similar effect.
It also means that you experience negative symptoms like anxiety when you don’t drink. This makes it much more challenging to avoid relapsing during addiction recovery.
Drinking Becomes a Habit
Drinking excessively can become a habit because of the positive feelings it invokes. As it gives a sense of euphoria, drinking alcohol becomes rewarding, reinforcing the desire to drink.
External and Internal Triggers
Internal and external triggers play a major role in influencing your urge to drink alcohol. Your internal triggers include emotions, thoughts, and memories that can make you feel anxious, uncomfortable, sad, or even angry. External triggers are things like places, people, or situations like arguing with your spouse, going tp a bar, or attending a party.
Strategies To Cope With Cravings
Even when you know your triggers, it’s not possible to avoid all of them. That’s why you need strategies to cope with urges when they come up. Some of your these include:
Keep a Reminder
When you started seeking treatment for alcohol addiction and decided to go sober, it’s likely that you had a reason to change. Maybe it’s because of the toll alcohol is taking on your health or how it’s impacting your relationship. Or, you want to be a better role model for your children. Keeping a reminder of that reason in your wallet, phone, or in any place you can access easily is a great way to deal with cravings when you can’t avoid them.
Distract Yourself
Another coping strategy is to distract yourself with a different activity. These can be short, like watching a quick video online to take your mind off cravings, or longer, like calling someone. There are also long-form activities like taking a walk, showering, or exercising, that you can try to curb your alcohol cravings.
Talk About It
When the alcohol cravings feel overwhelming, don’t hesitate to reach out and talk about it to someone. It helps to have someone you trust, who you can talk to about the challenges of staying sober. You can give them a call in difficult situations or bring them along to places you may feel tempted to drink.
Face The Urge
The urge to drink alcohol can come crashing in like a wave, but instead of fighting it, you should accept it as temporary and normal. Remember that just like an ocean wave, the urge will pass, and you won’t feel it as strongly anymore.
Leave The Situation
Sometimes, the only way to cope with alcohol cravings is to leave the situation. Always plan out how you’ll leave a situation if the urge to drink becomes too intense.
Long-Term Solutions For Cravings
While the above-mentioned strategies are helpful for short-term urges and cravings, building long-term solutions is recommended, as well. These can build your physiological, psychological, and physical resilience against alcohol cravings.
Increase Physical Activity
There’s evidence that improving your physical wellness, which includes getting enough sleep and exercising everyday, can reduce cravings for alcohol. In one study, participants were divided into a control, exercise, and distraction group. Those who exercised reported feeling fewer cravings compared to the distraction and control group. These effects can be attributed to exercise’s ability to improve mood and reduce anxiety.
Get Enough Sleep
Research has pointed to a relationship between sleep quality and treatment outcomes. The results in one study indicated that participants reported greater cravings on days of lower sleep quality. This link could explain why holistic addiction treatment emphasizes getting enough sleep as a way to curb cravings over time.
Balanced Nutrition
The holistic approach to addiction treatment focuses on balanced nutrition because of its positive effects on your liver and alcohol cravings. One study involving people with alcohol use disorder found that increasing levels of ghrelin (the hormone responsible for regulating hunger) led to increased alcohol cravings. It’s why experts recommend a diet of lean protein, dairy, leafy greens, nuts, and whole grains while recovering from alcoholism.
These foods are effective at stabilising blood sugar levels and keeping you full for longer, reducing alcohol cravings. Additionally, foods like lean proteins, seeds, nuts, and lentils are linked to neurotransmitter health and an improved feeling of wellbeing.
Speaking To a Professional
Seeing an addiction therapist about your treatment journey so far can help you curb cravings. They can assist you in identifying and changing thought patterns that fuel your cravings.
Cognitive behavioural therapy involves identifying and understanding situations and feelings that trigger alcohol cravings. It teaches you how to cope with distressing situations and manage stress levels to curb the urge to have a drink. Meanwhile, mindfulness therapy uses meditation to keep you focused on the present moment instead of reacting to situations habitually.
Other therapy options include trauma-informed therapies or eye movement desensitization reprocessing, which allow you to process the traumatic events that caused your addiction.
Detox and Medication-Assisted Treatment
Another long-term strategy to cope with alcohol cravings is to undergo detox and medication-assisted treatment. This is a process that requires stopping all alcohol consumption and taking medication to help with withdrawal symptoms. In medication-assisted treatment, you’re prescribed medication to reduce drinking and prevent a relapse. These include medicines like naltrexone, acamprosate, and disulfiram.
These medications are non-addictive and are proven to work in the treatment of alcohol use disorder. Naltrexone works by binding to endorphin receptors in the body, blocking the effects of alcohol. This mechanism reduces alcohol cravings and once you stop drinking, naltrexone can help you stay sober.
How To Stay Sober With Lifestyle Changes
Once you stop taking alcohol, introducing certain lifestyle changes can help you stay sober.
- Have an Alcohol-Free Home and Routine
- Try Meaningful Activities
- Avoid High-Risk Situations
Best Way to Detox From Alcohol
How to Wean Off Alcohol Safely
If you suspect that you’ve developed a tolerance for alcohol and are becoming dependent on it, you may want to wean off alcohol. However, it can be very dangerous to stop drinking suddenly if you experience withdrawal symptoms like shaking, nausea, or sweating when you go several hours without a drink. These symptoms are indicative of a dependence and can be fatal if you try to quit taking alcohol.
If you haven’t started treatment and are looking to wean off alcohol, you should start by limiting your intake. This is possible by spacing out drinks to manage withdrawal symptoms. The benefits of weaning off alcohol slowly reduce the damage that alcohol does to your body and curbs the risk of experiencing untreated withdrawal symptoms. Here’s how you can do that:
- Keep a drinking diary to know how much you’re drinking every day
- Measure the units of alcohol in each drink
- Space out your drinks in the middle of the day, while stabilising your drinking habits at the start and end of the day
After you’ve stabilised your daily alcohol intake for one week, slowly cut down on no more than 10 percent of your total units each day. The safest way to wean off alcohol is to cut down 10 percent of your daily units every four days.
If you feel withdrawal symptoms, it means you’re cutting down on alcohol too quickly and should cut down by 5 to 10 percent every week.
Try Alcohol Detox at Home
While weaning off alcohol is an option, it can be very challenging for people with a dependence. To reduce the risk of untreated withdrawal, it’s recommended that you try alcohol detox at home. It’s a detailed program that evaluates your suitability for detox at home before starting the process. You undergo a detailed medical check and nominate an accountability partner who stays with you and makes sure you take your medication. Alcohol detox at home also provides telephone support so you can speak with addiction specialists if you’re dealing with cravings.
Compared to inpatient programs, an at-home detox allows you to continue going to work or handling other responsibilities, all while preventing withdrawal symptoms.
