3 . Disrupt the pattern
Drinking a lot sometimes is better than drinking lots all the time , but binge drinking is still harmful .
Caroline actually drank less at weekends , because it had become a private pattern and on weekends her husband was around more . But for many , the weekend is the time where no rules apply . Stealing from Peter to pay Paul means no real progress happens .
Self-deception , rationalisation , and justification are the foot soldiers of selfsabotage . And that doesn ' t just go for wine drinking . We might need to explore this with our over-drinking clients . We can simply point out that damage done in the short term can equal or surpass damage spread out over time .
But we also need to respect , even protect , one very important role that evening wine drinking plays for our clients .
3 . Disrupt the pattern
Caroline , like most of us , likes demarcation , ways to delineate between ' then ' and ' now '. We all have ways to ' shift gear ' from work mode to evening mode , whether it ' s changing clothes or going to the gym . We like to punctuate our day , and often after work there needs to be a full stop .
Here ' s an often little-understood truth when it comes to the addiction of outof-control evening wine drinking :
It ' s not always the wine itself we become addicted to , but the ritual of shifting gear . And this still needs to happen , albeit in a healthier way . Look closely at your client ' s ritual ' gear change '. What time do they normally start on the wine ? Give them the task of using that time to take a warm shower , or take a walk down the lane , or listen to a self-hypnosis audio , or meditate for 20 minutes . At first I didn ' t even directly suggest Caroline stop or diminish the wine drinking . Why ? Because I wanted a weakening of the wine ' s iron grip to be a natural consequence of changing other parts of her daily pattern .
I simply asked Caroline to keep a log of her drinking quantity and delay the time she ' d normally start drinking by having a shower for 10 minutes then meditating for another 5 minutes . She wasn ' t to make any effort to reduce her drinking – all she had to do was add this simple ' punctuation '.