Dr Jeevan on why the best time to make a difficult decision is before the difficult moment arrives.
Most people who are trying to change their drinking have clear intentions. They know which situations tend to be difficult. They want to handle them differently. But when the moment arrives, what they intended to do and what they actually do in the moment are often quite different. This is not a character problem. This is completely normal for everyone, and is one of the most well-documented patterns in behaviour change research. But we can still do something about it.
When we are in the middle of a stressful situation, surrounded by people who are drinking, or tired at the end of a long day, there is much less energy available for the brain's decision-making system to work properly. But the habits that have been reinforced over years are still as strong as they were. In those moments, it is natural to automatically fall back into our old drinking habits even if we plan to do the opposite.
A general intention to do something different, just saying you want to change, without a specific plan behind it, is not enough to overcome your habits in those difficult moments. We need a clear plan for what to do in those moments, organised in advance, so you aren’t making another decision in the moment.
A large body of research has looked at what happens when people think in advance and form specific plans that link a situation to a response. The structure is simple: when this situation happens, I will do this. For example “when I get a craving, I will go for a walk” or “when I get a craving, I will drink a 0% beer”. Studies consistently show that people who make this kind of plan are much more likely to follow through with their choices compared to people with the same general motivation but no specific plan. The reason is straightforward: the decision gets made at a time when you have the most mental energy available, before the pressure of the moment arrives.
There is also evidence that thinking through a situation in detail before it happens changes how the brain responds to it when it actually arrives.
When we mentally rehearse a difficult moment and what we will do, the brain begins to treat the planned response as familiar.
For example, if you mentally rehearse a scenario where you get a craving to drink but you go for a walk instead, it will be easier to do that when the real scenario happens. When the real situation occurs, the planned response is already more ready in the brain and it requires less effort to actually do what you planned. The more you mentally rehearse to go for a walk when you get a craving, the easier it is to go on that walk in the real scenario.
This is particularly useful for situations that have felt most difficult in the past, because those are exactly the ones where having a pre-planned response makes the biggest difference. For example, if you remember a time where it was very difficult to say no to drinking when everyone else was drinking, mentally rehearse what you would do in that scenario if it happened again.
Planning ahead does not guarantee a perfect outcome. But it shifts the balance. The response you actually want to have becomes a little more easy to do, and the automatic habit becomes a little less dominant. Over time, that shift adds up. You are what you practice, and every step you take in the right direction makes it easier to take the next one.
