How Meditation Stops Me Drinking Alcohol

I feel happy and fresh this morning. My head is clear from negative thoughts and my confidence is higher than a YouTube life coach on steroids (Feel The Energy People!)

My sudden zest for life is not however due to high-fiving complete strangers in a conference hall having a mid-life crisis. It’s simply because I haven’t had an alcoholic drink for several days.

While I wouldn’t class myself as an alcoholic, I can say with complete honesty there have been many times when I know I’ve crossed the line. When you start convincing yourself three glasses of whiskey is just a ‘tipple’ and not really a problem; then it likely is a problem!

Without going into my extremely complex relationship with alcohol over the years, what I can now say with firm conviction is that I have learned how to control my intake reasonably well. And it's all down to meditation.

The type of meditation I use only takes twenty minutes each day. It really doesn't matter what time of the day I do it, as long as it gets done. After all, if I can find twenty minutes to drink a glass of whiskey most days, there is no excuse not to meditate every day too!

If you have never meditated before, or are one of those people that say ‘meditation’s just not for me. I just can’t seem to focus!’ then please give it another try. While the theme of this article is alcohol reduction, it works just as well for other habits too; Chocolate. Coffee. Cheese. Biscuits. Netflix. Gaming. Sex (actually, scrap the last one. The more the better!)

The way this meditation works is to ‘un-focus’ your mind on those continuous random thoughts coming into your head. A great way of achieving this is to think of a specific object (not a whiskey bottle or chocolate bar!) then every time a random thought or image appears, just picture your chosen object to help block out the thought.

Your chosen object will have the effect of pushing the random thought away and clearing your mind until the next one starts. Then you just reapeat.

So what exactly has any of this got to do with not drinking alcohol?

Well, everything actually!

What you are really doing when you meditate, is training your brain to remove all thoughts. It doesn’t matter if they are good ones, bad ones, or even naughty ones! What matters here is that your brain is learning how to remove them systematically. It is essentially forming it’s own unconscious habit of mind clearing.

It is hard to explain exactly how this works due to it’s abstract nature. But please trust me on this. If you practice it regularly, starting with just ten minutes a day, you will suddenly find yourself putting that chocolate bar back in the cupboard, cheese back in the fridge, and that bottle of scotch back in it’s special anniversary tin.

So please find a quiet space where you won’t be disturbed. Settle yourself into a comfortable position. Take three big deep breaths in (don’t forget to breathe out!), then close your eyes gently and start removing those random thoughts. It might just change your life.

Thanks for reading

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Originally published at https://medium.com/never-stop-writing/how-meditation-stops-me-drinking-alcohol-6ee17a6e6014