Annie Grace, author of This Naked Mind is answering reader's questions live. Today she answers, How long does it take for miserable cravings to go away? You can start reading This Naked Mind free at: thisnakedmind.com.
Why Is It?
How long does it take for the miserable cravings to go away? I know intellectually that it could be a couple of years. At three to four months of alcohol free living, I'm having dealing with stress and cravings crashing down on me. You mentioned that for you it was also difficult. Somehow I need to hear from folks who had difficult times, but pushed through it. I've had a very difficult week and right now all I want is a large glass of wine. Ugh. Go away, alcohol voice.
Types of Cravings
There's a few different aspects of cravings. There's the physical craving, which at three to four months off alcohol, it's almost certainly not a physical craving. Then there's the mental and emotional craving. I'm definitely not a doctor, but the research I've done it says it takes up to ten days in some instances for alcohol to fully leave your body. You could absolutely have physical cravings during those times and physical cravings would be clearly very physical. Personally I experienced anxiety and just kind of restlessness and sleeplessness and stuff like that. They do go away over time. I think that the craving that can be much more difficult is the psychological and emotional craving and there's all sorts of things that go into a psychological and emotional craving.
Where Cravings Come From
Most often a craving happens of that nature that's triggered by something that you've associated for a long time with alcohol and with the benefits of drinking. For many of us stress and cravings go together. We've talked about this before, but you have a lot of different senses, you have your sense of smell, your sense of sight. You also have this sense that's called the hedonic sense. Dr. Kevin McCauley really discusses this. The hedonic sense is a sense of pleasure. Many times the hedonic sense can counteract stress as pleasure can counteract stress. Stress is obviously an incredibly toxic thing. It's responsible for all sorts of diseases and untold kind of mental damage and whatnot. Your body under stress is not a happy place.
Stress and Cravings
My theory is that actually you have these very deeply ingrained unconscious beliefs that alcohol is key to relaxation, it's key to enjoyment. It has a lot of benefits and these beliefs are below your conscious awareness so they're not something you can easily access. So even though you completely consciously know that alcohol is just stressing you out that your levels of use aren't doing you any favors, you retain this unconscious belief. The thing about your unconscious mind is that that's where your desires originate from. We don't often consciously choose who to go fall in love with or things like that because your desires originate from this unconscious part of your brain. If you retain this deeply unconscious desire for alcohol and these deeply unconscious beliefs that it's key to relaxing, key to enjoyment, key to having a good time, you suddenly have this conflict between what your conscious mind is telling you and your unconscious mind is telling you and this conflict is cognitive dissonance and it's almost like you're arguing with yourself or fighting with yourself. That's why stress and cravings tend to go together.
Keep Listening
To learn more about the relationship between stress and cravings and the role cognitive dissonance plays in it all listen to the complete video!