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Good_Burning_Plastic comments on Stupid Questions March 2015 - Less Wrong
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One way to control my daily alcohol habit was to switch to beer only, since there is a long standing human experience that more diluted drinks are easier to control. And as my after-work fluid intake is mostly beer, I realized that now my brain cannot tell the difference between thirst and alcohol cravings. Literally, I just managed to train my brain to thirst -> want a beer and cravings -> want a beer and now it does not know the difference.
One idea would be thirst-like feeling -> drink water -> re-examine, but water is not a very good thirst quencher. Cold, fizzy things quench it better, and sour, bitter things quench it better, so beer is in and of itself close but I even trained by brain to feel better thirst-quenching from beer because it also works on the alcohol cravings. Well, now that feels colossally stupid.
I am toying with the idea to alternate alcoholic and non-alcoholic beer in the evenings to de-train the association, but I wanted to ask it before because maybe that would be even worse. One thing I know is that intermittent rewards lead to worse addictions than constant ones: that is why gambling is so addictive, because it only rewards occasionally, not all the time, and this fires the "anxiously expectant, nail-gnawing" dopamine routines which lead to strong addictions. And intemittent rewarding of alcohol cravings (when they come hand in hand with thirst) by sometimes with alcoholic beer sometimes with non-alcoholic beer could be thus a very bad idea.
Maybe I should stick to non-A beer for a while completely and that would de-train the association better?
Does your at-work brain confuse thirst with alcohol cravings too?
So test this by drinking something that isn't beer or water but matches your other criteria for good thirst quenchers. Carbonated water with lemon or lime juice in it will meet the criteria that you listed, but actually staying hydrated with water will just prevent you from getting thirsty in the first place. Seriously - ginger ale, lemon-lime or orange soda, etc.
What? You're suggesting that you should train yourself to associate the taste of beer with satisfying your craving for hydration here, so the association that you're trying to de-train is the one between beer and satisfying alcohol cravings? That's crazy, dude. Look at how much energy you've put into thinking about ways to keep drinking beer while avoiding satisfying alcohol cravings and put the same amount into thinking about ways to not drink beer. That will be an easier way to decouple the satisfaction of your cravings for hydration alcohol.
I'm an alcoholic and have been sober for about 7 years now so take that into account. My advice is that you quickly try all the ways you can think of to control your drinking. Make notes about what you're trying and how well it works. Track stuff like servings of alcohol consumed, etc. so that you can look at how well your control mechanisms work. Spend some time with no control mechanism in place and just track your consumption for a baseline if necessary (maybe even do this for a week or two in between trials to see if your baseline fluctuates). Make notes about things that trigger cravings. If something works, tweak it or stick with it. If none of them work, consider that you'll either need to abstain entirely from alcohol (and avoid things that trigger cravings for a little while) or that you're just going to slide further into alcoholism and make the necessary adjustments in your life to do those things. Gather information and be honest with yourself.
That can make it hard to tell thirst from sugar cravings, though.
True enough. Tea or water would definitely be better choices.
Thirst from caffeine cravings!
Okay, I'll stop now.