Exercise 2: Your drinking cues
Risky situations hold strong cues for drinking. These cues come from places, people or events round you – or from thoughts and feelings within you. Think about the cues and risky situations that have been factors in your drinking.
Identify outside cues
With the table from page 16 in mind, think back to times when you’ ve been drinking. Ask yourself where, when and with whom you usually drink or drank, and pinpoint those outside cues. Note these in columns a, b and c on page 20. If you’ re aware of any incidents or events( eg pay day or receiving a final demand for a bill) that tended to spark off a drinking session, note them in column d on page 21.
Identify inside cues
How did the incidents or events you noted in column d make you feel? Maybe an argument, a bereavement or a celebration generated certain thoughts and feelings in you, from happiness to anger to loneliness. Some of these thoughts and feelings are more likely to make you want to have a drink. If so, note these in column e.
Confidence to cope with cues
In the last column of the cues table, discover how confident you feel about not drinking in the situations you have identified, when they arise again in the future. The scale is from 1 to 10. If you’ re confident of not drinking, you might score as high as 9 or 10. If you’ re unsure one way or the other, you would score 5. If you think it would be hard for you not to drink, you would probably score 1 or 2 on the confidence scale. There are a couple of examples. Work out and write down the cues that you experience. You can then order them from not risky to highly risky.
Learn to cope with your cues
Avoid situations that would tempt you to start drinking again. Sooner or later, you will be in a situation where you might be tempted to drink again. Plan how to cope with these situations before they crop up unexpectedly. It will be easier to deal with your low-risk cues before your high-risk cues. Look back through your answers in the cues table. How would you deal with each of them without drinking? Discuss your ideas with one of your supporters. Write down a step-by-step plan. Starting with your lowest-risk cue, put your plan into practice. Each time you attempt to deal with a new cue, have help at hand to give you support in case the situation is more difficult than you expected.