Willpower Won't Work

Whether you're wrestling with alcohol (as I did) or some kind of drug addiction, you can't rely on willpower forever. Why? Because it's a war against yourself that is unwinnable in the long term. Even if you win, you will never be at peace white-knuckling your sobriety for the rest of your life.

So, what is the answer? You need to convince yourself there is nothing to be gained from indulging in your substance of choice. NOTHING. If you believe there are no advantages, you don't need willpower because you won't want to do it. It simply won't occur as a solution to anything anymore—and then you are free.

The "Pros" and Cons of Alcohol

Pros (Or So I Thought)

• Calms me down. True early on, but once every binge was a race to blackout it actually made me angrier than I'd ever been in my life.
• Makes me happy. As above. Actually treating depression with a depressant is about the worst approach imaginable.
• Makes me more social/less anxious. Again, early in my drinking career, but as alcoholism worsened, I'd either embarrass myself in social outings or just stay at home drinking alone to avoid being judged by others.
• Hey! At least it's not crack/heroin/meth. Yep. Despite ruining my life as bad as others have done with those, a lot of alcoholics felt superior to other addicts. I get it. Alcohol is the legal one. That other stuff is for junkies and criminals; right? We're not like "them."

Cons

• Takes you out of the present and erases your past. You spend the bulk of your drunk time either reliving a past you can't change or dreading a future you can't predict. Meanwhile you are losing all of the NOW and life is nothing but an infinite succession of NOWs that are unique, unrepeatable and unreclaimable when they are past. The WORST thing about my years as an alcoholic is there are huge chunks of time I can't account for. I was trying so hard to avoid feeling bad, that I also erased the good times with it. I threw the baby out with the bath water. There are enormous chunks of my life I can't itemize or get back. Even the unpleasant times are part of your allotted time here, whatever that is - if you're not living them, you're not living.
• Lowers your frustration tolerance. All the feelings I thought I couldn't stand to feel, I drowned. But the fact is, I didn't know I couldn't stand them. I'd never tried. But with practice, legitimately bad feelings are still bad, but they are phenomenally less intense. Learning to sit with your feelings. Realizing that being anxious can't kill you. Trying to observe them objectively in a Buddhist way almost as if in the third person.
• Keeps you from your ideal weight. Either due to the massive intake of empty calories from alcohol that can cause you to binge eat on top of binge drinking OR if you're bad enough off INSTEAD of calories from real food so you end up shedding weight.
• Legal consequences. My shenanigans behind the wheel finally peaked when I racked up 3 DUIs in 2 years, leading to mandatory 364 days in county jail. At the time, I was livid as I felt these were victimless crimes as I'd done no harm to people or property, but the potential is still there. A vehicle is a weapon and we often forget that our stupidity might kill someone other than or in addition to ourselves every time we turn the key. Beyond selfish.

The Real Solution

You only need willpower to resist doing things you want to do. Stop wanting it, and it requires no effort.

You will continue to want it as long as you still believe it does anything beneficial for you. But does it? When you finally accept that alcohol gives you nothing but consequences, willpower becomes irrelevant. The craving disappears.

And that’s real freedom.