Our brain steers us to the path of least resistance, so once our brain’s neural pathways are paved with a pattern of walking in the door, drinking, walking in the door, drinking, over and over, if you keep everything the same, then walk in the door, and just tell yourself “don’t drink!” you will have a much harder time. Even if you resist, you’ll likely be battling a craving or an urge to drink. That was me around 6 or 7 pm. If I carried on my day in exactly the same way, and just said to myself, “don’t drink!” or “stay hard!” it was like trying to stop myself from going down a greased slide. And then I’d berate myself for finding myself at the bottom of the slide again and again.

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You don’t lack the strength; you lack the system. You need to start a practice that helps rewire your brain. Wherever you are, you can try these simple steps on your own in 10-15 minutes. Before you go home from work, or before you head to that conference cocktail hour, take 10-15 minutes and try this. There is a science-backed reason for each and you need only spend 3-5 minutes on each.

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Begin this practice by intervening before habit brain/auto pilot takes over. If you’ve been living on a drinking rhythm, you are dealing with some well-worn pathways in the brain that take over at a certain point of the day. Let’s say it’s 6 pm. Then start this around 5:30. Set an alarm on your phone, put a calendar invite in your outlook calendar, a recurring event every day for a couple of weeks, about 15-30 min before your habit brain kicks in.

Once your alarm or reminder goes off, set a timer for 3-5 minutes, and then repeat two times. After just 10-15 minutes, you’ll have disrupted the habit brain.

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First, breathing. It will keep you mindful and keep your nervous system in a calmer state. Any kind of mindful breathing will do. You can try box breathing, which is when you inhale for 4 seconds, hold for four seconds, exhale for four seconds, hold for four seconds. Or try 4-7-8 breathing; inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 7 seconds, exhale for 8 seconds. That long slow exhale helps the body relax. A third method is the double inhale breathing, which is a little like a yawn. Slow inhale, quick inhale at the top, and then slow exhale. Any of these three will work to calm you down. They are all standard relaxation breathing techniques. Studies have shown just five minutes of breath work per day will lower blood pressure, improve your mood, reduce your anxiety.

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Second, 3-5 minutes of writing. This doesn’t have to be “journaling.” You can jot something down in a notebook, write an email to yourself, jot down notes in a notes app on your phone. Bullet points are fine. Keep it simple and easy, just get your thoughts down.

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Your writing should take two forms. You can draw a line down the middle of a piece of paper or just do this in two sections. In one section write down an honest reflection of what you dislike about drinking—the harm it caused you, your self image, your mental or physical health, your relationships, whatever has been harmed by drinking. Write it down. It can be as simple as “I hate that drinking makes me lethargic in the evenings.” Why do we do this?  

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As drinkers we are often on a mental see saw of denial and distraction from our problem and honest writing, even very brief bullet writing, helps offload the negative emotions and create clarity and focus on what our situation is and what we really want.  

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The first time you do this,  you might find that a list of negatives comes pouring out and it might feel cathartic or emotional to write these down if you’ve kept them inside. Of course you can write longer. But write down at least 2 or 3 negatives.

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What goes in the other section of the paper? Something positive. Specifically, assume you have quit drinking, and think about what your life looks like, how it has improved. Write down how good things could be if you stopped drinking. Fast forward to the version of yourself 90 days alcohol free or one year alcohol free.

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Picture this version of yourself as you go about a day—how rested you feel when you wake up in the morning, how you spend your morning, how you interact more attentively with your family and colleagues, how you approach your work with renewed focus, how you arrive home, how your home looks, how you look and react to yourself in the mirror. How do you spend a weekend morning? What might you be doing that you don’t currently do?

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Then write down a few things you like best about that version of your life, or what you look forward to doing now that you are no longer drinking. Again, it’s fine to write down just 2-3 sentences to start, because you want to keep it short enough that you can do this consistently each day for a few minutes.

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If you do this night after night in the beginning, you will notice that you start to expand your thinking. At first you might think simply “I will be thinner” or “I will be more rested and have more energy,” but you will start to see more and more things to enjoy and look forward to, and to widen your lens on your life and set new goals. After a while, you will likely be able to skip the negative section of writing and just expand on the positive possibilities.

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Third, visualize the positive that you just wrote down. It will be much easier to have detailed visualization if you’ve already written down the details. Let’s say you wrote down something about your new routine, what your evenings look like, how you come home and go for a run, or play music, or have a spontaneous dance party with your kids. Visualize that step by step, coming in the door, taking a deep breath, changing your clothes, doing whatever it is you would do in the evenings if you were living the healthy and productive life you envision without drinking.

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If you run short on time, you don’t even need the full five minutes, and you shouldn’t go longer than five minutes because you’re likely to start daydreaming. You want focused, intentional visualization because it helps create new neural pathways, priming the body and brain for a new habit. And the more detailed the visualization, the more you are primed to repeat those actions in real life. The brain treats these visualizations as a course of action already underway, rather than a farfetched wish that it may resist as novel and scary.

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And that’s it! You have tools that will serve you on your own, anywhere. Try it and see how you feel.