STOP

OVERDRINKING

THE
COMPLETE
PROGRAM

With
Master Coach Instructor
Brooke Castillo
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Introduction
Who Am I, and Why Should You Listen to Me About Overdrinking?
Hello, I’m Brooke Castillo, Master Coach Instructor. I’m excited to invite you along on this
journey with me.
My story starts with just wanting to cut back on my drinking.
I grew up in an alcoholic family. I had a father who was an alcoholic, and he really struggled
with it tremendously. It literally ended up killing him—he died of cirrhosis of the liver.
I had a brother who was addicted to cocaine all through my childhood. I went to many
AA and Al-Anon meetings with him and watched him suffer through rehab several times,
eventually dying of an overdose himself.
I’ve had a lot of exposure to addiction and addiction therapy, and what I was struggling
with was not that.
I knew that I wanted to drink less and I knew that there were reasons why I was drinking
more than other people, but I couldn’t reconcile the two thoughts.
I tried several remedies, many of them that helped, but I always felt a pull to
drink more than I genuinely wanted. I had a challenging time trying to cut
back. I looked for resources, but couldn’t find any.
My solution was either to admit that I was an alcoholic, that I
was completely out of control and completely powerless, and go
I knew that
I wanted to
to meetings three times a week, or just to identify as a normal drink less and
drinker who had no problem. So, of course, my choice was to I knew that
identify as a normal drinker who had no problem! there were
reasons why I
I was constantly feeling competing desires within me to drink was drinking
more and also to drink less, which created a lot of anxiety and more than
stress. I ended up getting fed up with the way I was feeling. other people.
As I got older and my hormones changed, the alcohol in my system
would wake me up in the middle of the night. It really affected how
foggy I felt during the day, and it created a lot of cravings and desire for me
to drink earlier and earlier in the day. Plus, it was annoying to have all that chatter
going on in my brain.

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I was extremely frustrated with the lack of help. I had no interest in calling myself an
alcoholic. I had no interest in recovery. I had no interest in sobriety. I had no interest in
abstinence. I didn’t see that as the solution to my very mild struggle, but the available
programs all operated on that premise.
In my career as a coach, I don’t work with people who have bulimia or anorexia or binge-
eating disorder, but I do work with people who overeat emotionally. That’s how I approach
this work I do with people who overdrink. I don’t work with alcoholics. I don’t work with
the twelve steps. I don’t work with people who want to go into recovery. There are many
solutions for those people out there. I want to work with people who just want to stop
overdrinking.
They want to drink normally.
Or maybe they want to quit drinking, but not in a way where they have to say they’re an
alcoholic or have to go to meetings.
This program won’t be for everyone. It’s for you if you’re like me, if you don’t identify as an
alcoholic, if you don’t feel like you’re non-functioning in the world, but you still struggle
to drink less.

The Light Bulb Goes Off

I introduced a course last year called the Stop Overeating Master Class. Many of the
examples I used were about my fondness for Chardonnay. I had worked through my
emotional eating issues several years before, and I didn’t have a lot of current examples
to share with them about that. So I applied all the same tools that I used in my Stop
Overeating Master Class to my desire to overdrink Chardonnay. As I applied those tools to
Chardonnay as my students were doing with food, I completely lost my desire to drink. And
that is as miraculous as anything that has ever happened to me in my life—the same as
my desire to stop overeating.
I completely lost my desire to overeat. I completely lost my desire to overdrink by using
the same method. I was as astounded as I could be. I was mostly astounded that I had never
thought to apply my own tools to alcohol. It seemed like a totally different beast.
I think part of it is the way we’re conditioned. If you have any tiny problem with drinking,
you must be an alcoholic. We go into a state of denial which, of course, perpetuates the
problem we have—the inability to bring to consciousness why we have the desire to drink in the
first place.

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My Results with Stopping Overdrinking

I have not had anything alcoholic to drink in several months.
I’m not counting days. I’m not counting sobriety, I don’t even use the word “sobriety.” If
I want to drink in the future, I will, but I don’t have any desire to drink. I go out to bars
all the time with my friends, I go out to dinner all the time, and they’re pouring wine all
around me. I have completely lost my desire to drink, which to me is a miracle.
I used to say all the time, “I want to not want it,” and now I genuinely don’t want it. I have
come to understand that my brain created my desire for alcohol, and my brain is what
uncreated my desire for alcohol.
Alcohol is not powerful if it doesn’t enter my brain—it just sits there. My brain has always
been the most powerful thing, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with my brain. My
brain and its desire for alcohol are very indicative of the healthy and natural process that
happens in our brains and the way that we have evolved.
I never had to claim that there was something wrong with me, and I never had to do
the twelve steps. Those programs are great for people who identify as alcoholics, but this
program is for a completely different audience.

Stop Overdrinking Might Be for You If…

This is for a group of people who are highly functioning while drinking alcohol, but want
to drink less of it. You may decide never to drink again, which I will teach you how to do.
Or you may just decide that you want to cut back, which I will also teach you how to do.
My story is not remarkable in the sense that once I understood the skill of mental
management, it was simply a matter of practicing it until I changed my desire.
People will say to me, “I can’t stop drinking. I can’t cut back. There’s something wrong with
me.” The only reason I couldn’t cut back before is that I didn’t know how. It was a skill set
I didn’t have.
I may not know how to ride a unicycle, but that doesn’t mean I can’t learn how. That’s
equally true when it comes to alcohol. You may not be able to cut back right now, but that’s
just because you haven’t learned how. It’s not because you have some spiritual, moral, or
genetic problem. For most of us, it’s simply understanding how the brain works.

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When you have competing desires, and one is “You want to drink” and the other is “You
don’t want to drink,” you’re always going to pick the drink because of the way your brain is
designed and the way it was set up to evolve, and the nature of alcohol.
That’s why so many of us have this gentle struggle with it, which is how I felt about it. I
didn’t feel like it was such a problem that I needed to identify myself as an alcoholic, but
I did feel like it was an annoying problem I wanted to solve. If you feel that describes you,
please pay attention to the rest of this booklet, where I’m going to talk about:
y Why we like alcohol
y Why it’s so difficult to quit
y How to actually quit
I’m excited that you are here, and I hope you’ll find the information in this booklet as
informative and valuable as I did when I first discovered the keys to stop overdrinking.

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PART ONE

WHY WE
DESIRE
TO DRINK

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Why We Desire It
So, Why Do We Drink?
As a society, we drink.
y When you go to a restaurant, you’re asked if you want a cocktail.
y When you watch TV, you see lots of beer and wine commercials.
y When you go to a wedding, people are going to be drinking out of glamorous
wine glasses.
y There’s wine tasting everywhere.
y There’s alcohol at all the sporting events.
We drink as a culture. The question is, why? What is it about alcohol that we have come
to embrace in our society and to enjoy as individuals? We have all grown up with the
idea that alcohol is something we do. Kids go to parties and drink beer. It’s just part of
growing up.
The question we have to ask is: why do we desire it?
Before I begin to answer that question, I want to address the concept of desire in
and of itself.

What Is Desire?
Desire is something that we learn.
Most of us think desire is innate, that it isn’t a choice, that it’s either
something we have or we don’t, and there’s nothing we can do about
it. We either desire our husband or we don’t. We don’t have control
over it.
Desire is Desire is one of those unconsciously programmed things that
something we seem to experience involuntarily because of the way the
that we brain works.
learn and When we learn something and repeat it many times, the brain
repeat. recognizes that it’s a pattern and takes it out of the prefrontal
cortex, where it takes a lot of energy to think about it, and puts it
back in the midbrain so it can be automatic.

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Habits and things we do regularly don’t require conscious thought. Picking up a glass,
brushing your teeth, driving your car—in the beginning, it took effort to learn how to
do these things. With practice, they became automatic, something that went on in the
background.
Desire is the same thing. Desire is something that we learn and repeat.
We learn languages through repetition until we can speak that language without even
thinking about what we’re trying to say.
It’s the same with desire. You practice it enough times and you get rewarded enough
times that it becomes natural and habitual.
When you see a glass of wine, your desire for it feels like it’s coming from your
subconscious, as though it’s involuntary. Just as if someone were to ask you a question
in Spanish, you would automatically, if you knew Spanish, answer in Spanish instead of
in English.

You’re Not Out of Control—You’re Just Programmed to Desire

This knowledge in and of itself is life-altering—desire can be scary for someone like you
and me who feels this kind of involuntary, unconscious type of craving for alcohol.
It can be frightening if we don’t understand where it’s coming from. We can wonder:
y “Oh, my gosh. Am I an alcoholic?”
y “Where is this coming from?”
y “Why do I feel so out of control?”
y “Why did I drink so much more than I wanted to?”
y “Why did I drink when I told myself I wasn’t going to?”
It can feel like something’s taking you over.
When you understand desire, you’ll understand that nothing is taking you over. You have
just unconsciously programmed your brain to desire automatically.
You are the one who trained your brain to do that.
If you are the one who created it, you are the one who can “uncreate”’ it, even if it
feels overwhelming.

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Reward Is The Key to Desire

Your desire feels intense because of the reward associated with it.
Desire is about programming something until it becomes automatic, but it’s not going to
be an intense desire unless there’s a reward.
Our desire to brush our teeth is something we’ve programmed. It’s something we’ve
practiced. It’s something we’ve repeated often enough that we automatically do
it, but we aren’t compelled to do it because we don’t have a strong enough
reward associated with it. The reward hasn’t perpetuated the desire.
When you learn something, if there’s a reward associated with it, the
Desire habit becomes even more intense as an involuntary desire.
is about There are two pieces to this. The first piece is that we desire
programming something because we have practiced it with enough repetition
something to have it become automatic.
until it The second piece that I want to talk about is what creates an
becomes emotion.
automatic. If you’ve studied my work, you’ll know that all of our emotions, all
of our feelings, come from our thinking.
When we think about something, we create that emotion.

Let me repeat that: When we think about something, we create that emotion.

How Your Thoughts Create Emotions, Which Create Desire

One of the most powerful thoughts we have is, “I want that.”
y “I want a glass of Chardonnay.”
y “I want a beer.”
y “I want a cocktail.”
y “I want a drink.”
It seems like such an innocent little thought, but even just a little thought like that
perpetuates a feeling of desire. Why? Because we’ve programmed it into our brains
and repeated it so many times that it’s going on underneath our conscious awareness,
underneath the supervision of the prefrontal cortex.

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The Human Brain vs. the Animal Brain

The prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain that makes you human. I call it the “human
brain.” It can think about what it’s thinking about. It can think about the future in
relation to the past and in relation to the present. This is something animals can’t do.
But we like to use our lower brain, the same brain animals have, because it’s efficient, and
our brain wants to be efficient.
The brain is like a factory. The prefrontal cortex is like R&D, or research and development.
This is where we learn everything new, which can be intense, hard work. It can be slow, it
can be time-consuming, and it can involve trial and error, thinking and planning.
The lower brain, on the other hand, is like the manufacturing department, which is
very efficient. It doesn’t question anything. It doesn’t argue. It doesn’t think logically.
All it does is produce a repeating program that you’ve programmed it to do, essentially,
“I want to drink. Desire, drinking. I want to drink. Desire, drinking. I want to drink.
Desire, drinking.”

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Dopamine, the Neurotransmitter of Desire

Programmed Thoughts & Rewards = the Perfect Storm
We have many thoughts associated with drinking:
y It provides relief.
y It’s relaxing.
y It’s sophisticated.
y Normal people who are in control can drink.
y It’s fun.
y It’s celebratory.
y It relieves stress.
y It turns off my brain.
We’ve learned these thoughts from all the people around us, from our environment, and
from the commercials we’ve seen. We’re constantly thinking these thoughts
and then drinking in a never-ending cycle that we created. On top of that,
we’ve associated a huge brain reward with it, and that’s what makes it
so intense.
We’ve If you look at all the psychological research on learning, you’ll
associated see that reward perpetuates the speed and the intensity of that
a huge brain activity. That’s the perfect storm when it comes to alcohol, and
dopamine is the perfect reward.
reward with
it, and that’s Your Brain Is Functioning Just the Way It’s
what makes Supposed To
it so intense.
If you’re walking down a hallway and your sibling jumps out and
scares you, you’re going to be scared. It’s someone you know and
they’re laughing hysterically, but you’re still filled with fear because your
brain is functioning normally.
It’s because of the way we’ve evolved.
All of the brain processes that have gotten us to this point are the exact same brain
processes that we’re going to have to overcome to evolve to the next level.

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As primitive humans, being afraid all the time served us well. Now being afraid all
the time, worried all the time, is killing us, so we need to evolve past those survival
mechanisms that got us here. The same is true when it comes to desire.

Your Brain Is Rigged for Survival

Our brains evolved to provide us with rewards when we did things that perpetuated our
survival.
The things that keep us alive are:
y eating
y warmth
y sex
y accomplishment
y connection
Each time we did those things, we’d get a little dopamine in our brain. We’d get rewarded.
Our brain used that as a feedback loop.
When we ate, that was good for us—it kept us alive.
When we had sex, that was good for us—it perpetuated our
species.
Our brains
When we were warm, that was good for us—we didn’t freeze to evolved to
death.
provide us
All those pleasures provided a little bit of dopamine to our with rewards
brains. The whole motivation pathway for neural desire for when we did
reward kept us alive. When we don’t do those things, our brains things that
get a little upset with us and create a craving for that thing. perpetuated
our survival.
If a Little Dopamine Is Good, a Lot of Dopamine
Is Better, Right?
All those rewards that kept us alive have now become a problem because
we’ve taken those little rewards and concentrated them.

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Think about:
y cocaine
y heroin
y alcohol
y sugar
y porn
y shopping
All of those things that we have now in modern times involve taking the experiences that
would have given us a subtle dopamine reward and completely concentrating that pleasure.
Instead of having sex with one person one time and getting a small dopamine release,
now we can watch an hour’s worth of porn and get a huge dopamine release. Or instead
of eating something like a beet that has a little bit of sugar in it, or a berry, now we can
have a spoonful of table sugar and get a complete domination of dopamine rewards. The
brain now associates that reward with survival.
If a little is good, a lot must be better. The brain doesn’t understand the difference between
useful desire and harmful desire, and so every time we reward ourselves with that much
intensity, the desire is intensified.
Your brain is healthy. It’s responding to reward.
What isn’t healthy, what your brain hasn’t evolved to accommodate yet, is the
intense and concentrated dopamine release.
When you drink a lot of alcohol, your brain starts trying to adapt so it doesn’t get
completely overloaded. It downregulates the dopamine receptors, but it doesn’t
downregulate the desire. It takes even more alcohol to get the same effect.
The more you drink, the stronger the desire gets until it becomes the only thing that
matters. Your brain prioritizes that above everything else, and that’s when you’re into
complete addiction.

Why You Give in to Your Lower Brain’s Desire for Alcohol

I want to remind you—the desire is not involuntary.
It’s learned, and you taught yourself, maybe unknowingly, to repeat it until you’ve
increased that desire so much that it seems involuntary.
You may be feeling a competing desire with your human brain. “I want to drink less. I

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don’t like feeling foggy. I don’t like feeling hung over.”

You also have a primitive desire. “We have to do this or we’re going to die.”
The prefrontal cortex is very good at planning and making
decisions for the long term. But in that moment, when
somebody places alcohol in front of you, the lower brain will That desire will
win every single time. be so much
stronger in the
You may have thought, “Oh, I don’t think I’ll drink this week,” lower brain
but then you are presented with alcohol. That desire will be so than it is in
much stronger in the lower brain than it is in the prefrontal the prefrontal
cortex that you will drink every single time. cortex that you
That’s what feels so out of control. will drink every
single time.
The truth is, you’re never out of control.
You are always making the decision to pick up the alcohol. You are
always making the decision to drink it, but you’re doing it because that
desire is so strong.
If you don’t honor that desire, if you don’t fulfill that loop, there will be some level of
suffering.
There will be some level of deprivation. You don’t want to experience that. You’d rather
just have the glass of Chardonnay. It makes sense, but it’s something you can “uncreate.”
I’m going to show you exactly how to do it.

Your Lower Brain Is Nothing Compared to Your Human Brain

You have positive thoughts that are associated with wanting to drink. You also have
thoughts about not wanting to stop drinking, which you may not even be aware of. They
could include:
y “It’s boring not to drink.”
y “It’ll be dull.”
y “It’s unsophisticated.”
y “What am I going to order—a Diet Coke, cranberry juice?”
I used to think:
y “It’s not as fun.”
y “It’s hard.”

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y “It’s not fair that I don’t get to drink.”

y “It must mean I have a problem.”
y “It must mean I’m an alcoholic.”
y “It’s a struggle that requires willpower, and I just don’t have the energy to do it.”
y “It’s awkward, tedious, annoying, and embarrassing not to drink.”
y “Without it, I’ll feel deprived.”
y “I’ll be stigmatized and have to justify why I’m not drinking. I’ll always feel like I want
it, and I’ll always have to fight against that desire.”
If you have any of these feelings, you are absolutely normal.
Don’t hide in shame—I completely understand where you’re coming from.
If we didn’t have those rewards, we might just sit around and not go get food,
and not procreate, and not build a house, or not build a fire to keep us
warm. Our motivation comes from the desire to seek pleasure and to
avoid pain and to expend as little energy as possible in doing that.
There’s That is the perfect combination for creating an illogical desire for
nothing substances that have become concentrated pleasures.
the lower
brain can Scientists have done studies on rats where they stimulate the
do without reward center of their brains, and those little rats will sit there
and hit that lever at the expense of everything else in their lives.
the consent
of the They won’t take care of their babies. They won’t take care of their
prefrontal health. They won’t drink water and they won’t eat because that
cortex. part of the brain has decided that dopamine is the most important
thing to their survival.
If you feel this way toward alcohol, please know that it’s because of the
way you’ve evolved, because of the way your brain is.
Here’s the magic—you have a prefrontal cortex. No matter how efficient your lower brain
is, no matter how well it has practiced, it’s nothing compared to your human brain.
It’s powerless compared to your ability to change what you believe, what you think, and
how you respond.
There’s nothing the lower brain can do without the consent of the prefrontal cortex. You
may not have learned how to use the prefrontal cortex yet, but it doesn’t mean you can’t.
I can teach you.

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Summary
In this segment, we covered the basics Part 2: Dopamine Is the
about desire and why our desire for Neurotransmitter of Desire
alcohol seems to be so strong that we
think it’s controlling us. 1. Concentrated pleasures (alcohol,
drugs) create artificial dopamine
We covered some important points: responses.
Part 1: Why We Desire It y Desire is intensified by rewards—
1. Desire is learned. dopamine released in our brains.
y Concentrated pleasures lead to bigger
y We are the ones who have trained our dopamine rewards, which lead to more
brains to desire. intense desire.
y We have created the desire, and we can
uncreate it. 2. Our primitive brains prioritize
activities that create dopamine
2. Learning requires repetition responses.
and reward.
y Our brains evolved to believe
y Desire is something we learn dopamine rewards are tied to our
and repeat. survival.

3. Repetition allows the learning to 3. Our motivation triad is to seek

become unconscious. pleasure, avoid pain, and conserve
y Our brains evolved so that anything energy.
we repeat gets delegated to the y The lower brain is faster than our
lower brain, where our actions are prefrontal cortex (human brain) and
programmed subconsciously. will always win the race to drink.
y Our human brain is more powerful
[Link] create desire. than our lower brain.
y Our thoughts and emotions create the
rewards, which create the desire.

The bottom line?

Our desire for alcohol is perfectly normal. In fact, we’ve programmed ourselves to want it.
But we can also un-program ourselves.
Armed with this knowledge, the keys to stop overdrinking are just within reach.

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PART TWO

WHY WE
WANT TO CUT
BACK AND
CAN’T

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WHY WE WANT TO CUT BACK

AND CAN’T
When we learn how to overcome our animal brain with our human brain, we will succeed.
We will be able to stop overdrinking. But we can’t succeed by doing the same things that
didn’t work for us in the past.
What has evolved us this far will not continue to evolve us…unless we change it and use
the power of our brain to become more conscious in order to evolve to the next level.
We will cover a lot of concepts in this section:
We can’t stop overdrinking using willpower alone.
We can’t stop overdrinking by using resistance alone.
Deprivation and withdrawal will keep us stuck in the vicious cycle of deprivation and
drinking not to feel deprived.
On top of this vicious cycle, many of us use alcohol to make our lives more “bearable” and
more “fun,” even though this is an illusion, and alcohol just makes life seem more bearable
and fun.
But if you know how your brain works, you can stop overdrinking.

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My Story…and Yours
My story is probably very similar to yours.
I wanted to cut back because I felt like there was a part of me that was out of control.
I’m kind of a control freak, and so the idea of being out of control scared me. I never liked
the point after three glasses where I genuinely didn’t feel in control of myself.
As I previously mentioned, when I hit my forties and started having hormone changes,
I started feeling terrible when I drank. I would wake up in the middle of the night and
wasn’t able to go back to sleep. What used to be a horrible hangover after lots of drinking
and a night of partying became how I felt after two drinks. I felt foggy, and I just couldn’t
quite get back on my game.
Yet in the evenings, I found myself really looking forward to having a drink. These
conflicting desires didn’t make any sense to me.
I wanted to get to the bottom of it.
I also wanted to quit overdrinking because I had handled my own compulsive eating
issues, and my overdrinking issue was starting to feel very similar to that.
I really wanted to reduce my drinking. I didn’t like feeling drunk. I didn’t like not being
able to drive. I didn’t like the feeling of regret. I didn’t like having anxiety about what had
happened the night before, about what I might have said that I wouldn’t have said had I
not been drinking.
I was also noticing my anxiety about drinking. I went to a restaurant, and the waiter was
taking forever to come around for our drink orders. I remember thinking, “I’m just going
to go to the bar and get a drink.”
I couldn’t wait, and that made me nervous. What was going on that I was in such a hurry
to have a cocktail?
I heard myself saying more and more often, “Hey, let’s go get a drink,” and I was curious
about why. That was one of the reasons why I decided that I wanted to stop overdrinking.
The other reason? When I did try, I wasn’t successful.
I’m pretty successful at almost everything I do, so that was challenging for me.
I would make a plan to drink less or I’d make a plan not to drink at all…and I wasn’t
successful. It was like I had an override going on in my brain. That really is what I had
going on, but I didn’t realize it at the time. It made me feel like I was out of control.

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The Vicious Cycle

Many people who struggle with this go into a spiral where they start feeling like they
can’t cut back and they can’t quit.
Then they make that mean something very negative about themselves, which of course
perpetuates the idea of needing relief and feeling more anxiety and wanting more
alcohol.
It actually compounds the problem.

Our Options Seem to Be Very Limited

There are few options for people who are willing because they’re afraid of being labeled—
they’re afraid of being stigmatized.
So many people hide this from each other, from their friends, and from their family. Or
they glamorize it—they call it “Mommy juice” or “the pretty addiction.”
There are lots of jokes about drinking—we’ve made it funny so we feel
like we have camaraderie.

Resistance Leads to Anxiety Leads to Drinking If you go to

Another reason why we attempt and then give up on trying to bat against
cut down is that we don’t understand the difference between the desire,
the struggle against that desire and the actual retraining you’re
and managing of that desire. If you go to bat against the always going
desire, you’re always going to lose that battle because it’s your
immediate brain over your long-term brain.
to lose that
battle.
The immediate brain is always going to win in that moment if
you don’t know how to manage it. That struggle we feel against it
creates anxiety, and it gives us even more reasons to want to drink.
We see alcohol, we resist it for a moment, we use our willpower, we
struggle against it, and that creates anxiety.
Most often, we then give in to that desire to drink and solve the anxiety we’ve created
with alcohol. We’ve actually created another neural pathway that’s supporting our drinking.
We already have the neural pathway that tells us that alcohol equals reward, and
dopamine creates that desire and perpetuates it. In our attempt to quit, we actually
create a second neural pathway, which creates an additional desire to drink.

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It’s so messed up.

In our attempt to quit, we’re actually training our brains to want it more because we give
in to that desire after the struggle…and perpetuate the idea that alcohol provides
relief.
If you’re one of those people who has tried to quit and you find yourself just drinking
more, that’s one of the reasons why. You’ve created an additional neural pathway of desire.
We do this inadvertently, and we intensify our own desire unknowingly, and then most
of us believe that means something is wrong with us.
Really, we’ve just added desire to desire unknowingly.

When We Try to Stop, The Desire Intensifies

The more we drink, the more those dopamine receptors downregulate so we require even
more substance to feel the same effect. Here’s what’s interesting. The desire intensifies.
When we resist, the deprivation intensifies. When we try to say no to our desire, the
deprivation increases, which perpetuates the idea that we’re unhappy and that we’re
uncomfortable and that we need alcohol.
y The thing that’s creating the desire is the alcohol.
y The thing that’s solving the desire is the alcohol.
It’s creating a desire for itself. That’s why people think it’s so powerful.
But it’s not.
It’s not powerful at all unless you add it to your brain.
Once you do that, it creates a reaction that makes your brain think that it’s more
important than it is. Alcohol is not important at all. It’s really not.
y It’s not important for our survival.
y It’s not important for our well-being.
y It’s not important for our evolution.
It’s only the brain’s reaction that makes you believe it’s important.

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Being Able to Drink Isn’t Normal…and Not Being Able to

Isn’t Abnormal
I find it utterly fascinating that in our society, the ability to drink alcohol without getting
addicted is classified as normal, as if alcohol is part of our lives, and if you’re unable to
drink it without getting addicted, you somehow have a disease.
People who are able to drink alcohol and not get addicted or don’t have a preference for it
are amazing, but I don’t think people who can’t do it are abnormal.
We weren’t meant to concentrate alcohol the way that we have and use in the
way we have.
I certainly don’t think people who can’t tolerate it are diseased.
I’ve done a lot of research in this area. I don’t think drinking alcohol
is a normal part of life or should be considered something that we
should be able to do, and that there’s something terribly wrong
with us if we can’t do it. We weren’t
meant to
That’s just my opinion. concentrate
alcohol the
Back to the Vicious Cycle way that we
y We try to quit drinking. have and use
y In the process, we create deprivation.
in the way
we have.
y We create anxiety.
y We create the idea that there’s something wrong with us.
y We create the idea that we’re completely out of control.
y Which, of course, leads us to drink more and more and more.
y Which perpetuates the idea that there’s something wrong with us.
y Which leads us to seek more relief in alcohol.
You can see how this problem is perpetuated. That’s true even just on the small scale,
going from drinking two glasses of wine, to three, to maybe four. It can increase quickly,
and it’s the same with food. When we start depriving ourselves of sugar, we go through
sugar withdrawal. Then we want it even more, and then we eat it even more, and then we
want it even more.
It’s the same with many of the drugs that we have taken and concentrated and created
that we derive intense pleasure experience from.

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We Compound the Problem by Justifying It

The smarter we are, the better we are at justifying, and we create thoughts that make
drinking and overdrinking okay. We’re providing even more evidence for the desire to
drink.
We’ll say:
y “Oh, it was just one.”
y “It doesn’t matter.”
y “You’re totally fine.”
y “Everybody drinks.”
y “Everyone gets hung over sometimes.”
y “It’s funny when you’re hung over.”
Justification makes it easier to perpetuate the cycle.

Willpower Is Not in Unlimited Supply

The problem with trying to use willpower is that willpower will deplete itself.
We have a limited amount of willpower, and we decide to fight against this
desire. We’re trying to resist it. We’re feeling deprived. We’re feeling
terrible. All we want is relief.
Now we feel worse than we did before, and once our willpower
The problem depletes, we give in and drink, and then we’ve perpetuated
with trying it again.
to use If you’ve tried to use willpower, if you’ve tried to talk yourself
willpower out of it, if you’ve justified yourself, that has all made the desire to
is that drink even stronger.
willpower
will deplete We don’t even realize we’re perpetuating this desire that’s creating
itself. the problem in the first place. We’re doing it unknowingly. We’re
doing it with the best of intentions. We’re trying to take care of
ourselves, but we’re creating the exact opposite results.

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If You Can Train Yourself to Drink, You Can Untrain Yourself

Training yourself to desire alcohol is something you’ve done unknowingly.
But knowing that you’ve trained yourself will help you recognize that you can train
yourself to undo it.
The desire to drink is completely harmless.
When you don’t recognize that’s a desire you’ve trained yourself to obey, and you obey it,
that’s when it becomes harmful.
That’s why you can turn this around so quickly—you can coexist with that desire as long
you’re not trying to resist it.
When you resist, that’s when you create anxiety, which increases the desire for alcohol.
You can coexist with that harmless desire without a problem.

Cognitive Dissonance = When You Disagree with Yourself

Let’s talk about this concept, which also perpetuates the desire to drink. You have what
we call cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance is when you disagree with yourself.
You have a desire to stop drinking, and you have a desire to drink.
That’s why
It’s important to make room for both those desires, to you can turn
understand where they’re coming from, and to give them both this around so
their due. quickly—you
can coexist
We Are Just Like Pavlov’s Dogs with that desire
My undergraduate studies were in psychology, and we learned as long you’re
about Pavlov’s dogs. not trying to
resist it.
Physiologist Ivan Pavlov and his assistants did an experiment
where every time they were about to feed the dogs, they rang a bell,
and the dogs would start drooling. Initially, it wasn’t even a bell—
the women who fed them wore clogs, and when the dogs heard the clogs
coming, they would drool. Then they began ringing a bell at mealtime and noticed
the same thing.
The dogs had an association with the reward that was coming.

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It’s so important for you to understand that you’re having an automatic Pavlovian
response. If you try to extinguish it, you’re not going to be able to do it.
It’s kind of like putting the drool back in the dog’s mouth. The more you try, the more
they’re going to want to eat.
In order to stop this response, you would have the women walk down the hall in their
clogs, but then not feed the dogs. They will lose the expectation, and they will stop
drooling in anticipation.
I’m going to teach you to do this with your own brain when it comes to alcohol.

Anxiety and Withdrawal

When you have cognitive dissonance, you’re creating your own anxiety because you’re
trying to let one of those thoughts win.
I want to drink. I don’t want to drink. I want to drink. I don’t want to drink.
They’re at battle within you.
Remember, increased anxiety increases the desire to drink and
Increased to get relief from that anxiety. That cognitive dissonance, those
anxiety conflicting thoughts, when played against each other, create a
increases problem.
the desire to When you allow them to coexist with understanding, they are
drink. no longer a problem. You can unlearn the desire to drink just as
easily as you have learned the desire to drink.
I promise you that.
Now, here’s the other thing. When you stop drinking, you create
withdrawal.
This is true even for those of us who only drink a couple glasses of wine a night.
We create an emotional withdrawal because we’re not feeding our programming. We’re
not closing the loop on that neural pathway. We also go through withdrawal from the
dopamine.

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The Alcohol Is Causing the Withdrawal … and Solving the

Withdrawal
There’s no way out of that loop.
In order for you to feel normal and to avoid withdrawal, you have
to consume the exact substance that is causing it. In order for you
Can you see the perpetuation there? That’s why drinking feels so to feel normal
powerful to so many people … because the very thing that and to avoid
causes the withdrawal solves it. withdrawal,
you have to
We Think Alcohol Makes Everything Better consume
the exact
A lot of people don’t want to quit drinking because they think substance that
alcohol makes an experience better. I’ve recognized that’s not true. is causing it.
Alcohol dulls your senses, and so it makes the experience seem
better than it is.
I’m sure you’ve heard the old joke—the more you drink, the more
attractive your date gets. They’re not actually more attractive—they just seem more
attractive. The experience isn’t actually better. It just seems better. That distinction is
everything.
When you think, “I don’t want to go to this wedding because it won’t be any fun without
alcohol,” what you’re really saying is, “The wedding won’t be fun. I need to buffer myself.”

Are You Buffering Your Life with Alcohol?

Many of the things I needed to change to make my life better weren’t getting changed
because I was buffering them with alcohol.
There were certain relationships, certain experiences that I was making tolerable by
drinking wine. Otherwise, they would not have been tolerable, and I wouldn’t have had
them in my life.
The question becomes, “Do I want a life that’s only sustainable if I’m drinking? Or do I
want to change my life so I actually don’t need to drink to make it sustainable?”
The key is that you don’t have to change your life first in order to stop drinking.
If you stop drinking first, you’ll really see what’s true. It will reveal the truth about an
experience for you.

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What makes an experience good? Is it food or is it alcohol? Or is it the experience itself

and how you show up and interpret it?
Drinking made me think that friends, activities, parties, jobs, and relationships were
much better than they were. Buffering with alcohol prevented me from changing what I
needed to change in my life.
I’m so happy now to have the truth about my life so I can make conscious decisions
about it.

Wouldn’t It Be Better If Your Life Just Didn’t Suck?

Maybe you aren’t feeling deprived because you aren’t drinking. Maybe you’re feeling
deprived because the experience isn’t what you desire.
People think their lives will be dull without drinking, but if your enjoyment
of life comes from what you make of it and how you create it, you won’t
rely on alcohol to provide you with that enjoyment.

Many of the You may think, “Well, it doesn’t matter that my life sucks because I
things I needed have alcohol.”
to change to Wouldn’t it be better if your life just didn’t suck?
make my life
better weren’t
getting changed Figure out Why You Overdrink … and It Will Be
because I was Easier to Stop
buffering them
Make a list of all the reasons why you overdrink.
with alcohol.
What are you trying to solve with alcohol? Do you like these
reasons? Are they worth it?
Question everything.
I’m not suggesting that you have to give up alcohol completely.
I’m suggesting that you look at the reasons why you’re drinking.
Are you drinking because alcohol has perpetuated the desire for itself?
Are you drinking because of unconscious programming?
Are you drinking because you’re trying to buffer a life that’s unacceptable to you?

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Knowing the truth about why you’re drinking will make it much easier for you to cut
back or quit.
You need to decide consciously what you believe. You need to decide
consciously what you want to train your brain to do, what you want
to train your brain to desire. You have done it unconsciously
so far.
Our goal is to
How do you want to feel about drinking less? Do you want to work on that
feel excited about it, or do you want to feel bummed about it? piece of desire
If you want to feel excited about it, you have to release that so it’s not
desire. overriding your
Here’s what I want you to think about: other desire,
which is to
If you really want something and I tell you that you can’t have it, drink less.
you’re going to be very bummed.
If you don’t really want it and I tell you that you can’t have it, you’re
not really going to care.
Our goal is to work on that piece of desire so it’s not overriding your other
desire, which is to drink less.
There’s a way to reprogram your brain and to unlearn the Pavlovian response of wanting
to drink. I’m going to introduce you to all the tools I used personally to completely
reverse and unlearn my desire.
I absolutely have no desire for alcohol now.
I genuinely prefer not to drink it anymore.
If that’s something you want, if you just want to prefer it less, stick around. You’ve
already learned the key concepts about why it’s usually so hard to quit. All you need now
are the tools to succeed.

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Summary
In this segment, we discussed the basics 6. Willpower depletes.
of why we want to cut back on drinking
y Willpower is required for resisting, but
and can’t.
not for allowing emotion.
We covered some important points:
1. Trying on our own doesn’t 7. You have cognitive dissonance
work because we don’t when you disagree with
understand our brains. yourself about drinking.
y Options for help are stigmatizing.
8. We create withdrawal when we
y We try to use willpower and stop drinking.
resistance, which undermines our self-
esteem when it doesn’t work. y When we understand this, we can
manage it.
2. We create a vicious cycle—
alcohol-resist deprivation- 9. Alcohol makes us think
struggle-drink-relief—which experiences are more enjoyable
compounds the problem. than they are.

3. Dopamine receptors 10. We “buffer” with alcohol.

downregulate, which lessens y If your life isn’t sustainable without
the pleasure of drinking and buffering, you need to work on your
demands more alcohol to get life.
the same pleasure.
11. Find out why you overdrink,
4. When we stop drinking, and you can unlearn it.
dopamine drops below The bottom line?
baseline, and so we think
we need alcohol just to feel The usual methods of quitting (using
normal. willpower, white-knuckling it, trying to
resist the desire to drink) just perpetuate
the desire.
5. We’re determined not to
experience deprivation, so we In order to stop overdrinking, you will
have to retrain your brain.
justify drinking.
It can be done. I can teach you how.
y The smarter we are, the better we
are at it.

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PART THREE

HOW TO
CONTROL
YOUR
DRINKING

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HOW TO CONTROL YOUR DRINKING

Now I’m going to give you the tools you need to start changing your overdrinking from
an automatic, conditioned response that leaves you feeling out of control to something
you fully control.
I will teach you how to:
1. Allow the urge.
2. Get conscious about your thinking around alcohol.
3. Use your prefrontal cortex to make drinking conscious by planning ahead.
These tools will require practice. And more practice.
Until they become automatic.
Your lower brain will fight you, especially in the beginning. But if you use these tools and
keep practicing them, you can stop overdrinking.

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Revisiting Pavlov’s Dogs

If you recall, Pavlov’s dogs drooled whenever they heard their dinner coming. The
same thing has happened to us with desire—our thoughts have created a conditioned
response.
Our triggers may be in the evenings, going to bars, or our thoughts about the end of the
day. A lot of us don’t have trouble drinking in the morning or during the day because we
don’t have those times associated with drinking. We have a lot of associations
in the evenings.

How to Unlearn a Conditioned Response

If you recall, Pavlov taught his dogs not to drool by withholding Our triggers
the reward. When he rang the bell and did not feed them, it may be in the
reversed that conditioned response. evenings,
going to
Our desire is our conditioned response. That’s why it feels out of
bars, or our
control.
thoughts
The dogs couldn’t think about their desire in that way, but we about the end
can. of the day.
The way that you unlearn anything on purpose is by using
your prefrontal cortex.
All the mental skills I’m going to teach in this booklet (and go into in
greater depth in my membership) are about using the higher part of your brain to
manage the lower part of your brain.
I like to call that lower part of our brain “the toddler with a knife.” It’s very innocent, but
it can cause a lot of damage if it’s not supervised, so you’re going to supervise it.

How Quickly Can You Undo Desire?

Teaching yourself not to desire is actually relatively easy. For many people, it’s taken
them twenty years to create this desire for overdrinking, but you can undo this desire
literally in the span of a few hours.

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The Way to Interrupt a Neural Pathway

You’re going to interrupt that neural pathway just as they did with Pavlov’s dogs. What
are your triggers for desire?
It might be the drive home from work, or it may be walking into a bar, going to a party,
or seeing a certain friend. You experience a circumstantial trigger and you have a thought
that might be as simple as, “I want a drink.”
Once you trigger that desire, you will typically act on it, and that will perpetuate the
desire. It’s just like the clogs or the bell, the drool, the feeding. The alcohol, the thought,
the desire, the drinking.
We’re going to learn how to experience the trigger, to still have the desire, but we’re not
going to drink.

Three Ways to Handle the Urge to Overdrink

There are three things you can do with the urge to drink.
The first thing you can do is drink, and you’ll satisfy that urge.
The second thing you can do—and this is what most of you have been trying to do and
failing—is resist that urge.
Push against it. Create a bunch of anxiety. Create problems for yourself. For most of you,
that ends up with drinking because that ultimately relieves the urge.
The third option is to allow that urge to be there.
You do not engage with it. You do not negotiate with it. You do not
try to make it go away.
We’re going
to learn how That urge is the drool. That urge caused by the bell, which is your
to experience brain, is the drool.
the trigger, You can’t stop the drool with force. You can’t stop that
to still have conditioned urge response with force. You have to allow it to be
the desire, there.
but we’re
The only way we make the drool go away, the only way we stop
not going to that conditioned response, is by not rewarding it with the alcohol. By
drink. not providing it with the dopamine rush that comes from drinking
the alcohol.

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By not putting the alcohol in our brain.

This won’t be difficult if you’ll approach it this way, if you approach
it from the stance that you’re going to allow the urge to be there
and you’re not going to answer it.
The only way we
make the drool
Practice Makes Perfect go away, the
Being able to go through this process is a skill. You may tell only way we stop
yourself you can’t do it, but that’s because you don’t know that conditioned
how, and you don’t know how because you haven’t practiced.
response, is by
not rewarding it
If you’re having trouble not resisting the urge, you are with the alcohol.
conditioned to resist, but only because you haven’t learned how
not to.
If you find yourself reacting to that urge and constantly drinking
every time you have it, you just haven’t learned how to allow it to be there.
That is a skill you can learn.
It’s not intolerable, and when you learn how to allow an urge to be there, you’ll realize it’s
completely harmless. The only time it become a problem is when you give in to it or you
resist it.

The Skill of Being Able to Watch Yourself Think

The skill of being able to watch yourself think, to watch yourself feel and not react, is
only available to humans. When you associate with your prefrontal cortex, when you go
into the space where you are witnessing yourself think, witnessing yourself feel, you’ll
find tremendous relief in doing that.
Instead being in your body, feeling like you’re being affected by this urge, it’s almost like
you’re the witness watching yourself have an urge.
You may not be able to do this the first time you try, but you will learn how to do it, maybe
in just hours. It’s a matter of practice.
Being able to practice yourself, watching yourself have an urge, watching yourself have
desire and not acting on it is very different from resisting it, pushing against it and
fighting it.

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Tool #1: Allowing the Urge

Here are three things you can do with the urge. You can drink, you can struggle
against it, or you can allow it to be there.
Think about noticing, allowing, and paying attention to all the
thoughts that are creating that desire.
Allow the
urge to Allow the urge to be there without fighting with it and without
be there reacting to it. If you fail at it one hundred times, it doesn’t
without matter—keep practicing. Keep trying.
fighting It takes twelve hours to learn to ride a unicycle. Up until that
with it and moment where you actually riding it, all twelve hours is failure.
without That’s what I want you to think about with this urge.
reacting to it. Then watch the thoughts that create the urge. Watch yourself
think. Allow those thoughts to be there. You’re not going to like
them all. Some are going to be illogical. Some of them aren’t going to
make any sense.
It’s totally fine.
Just allow them to be there.
Write them down and be the witness. Understand that you are having thought errors.
The more you’re able to witness your thoughts, feel that urge, and not drink, the less and
less that desire will show up in your life.
If you’re able to do it twenty times, the desire will probably be down by half.
This is not the same as saying, “I’m not going to drink for twenty days” and then using
sheer willpower.
That will have no effect on lessening your desire. In fact, it will probably increase it.
Do not try to white-knuckle it. That’s not the skill I’m teaching you.
I’m teaching you how to allow that itch to be there without scratching it and to be at
peace with it.
It’s not difficult. but it does require practice.

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Tool #2: Paying Close Attention to the Thoughts That Create

the Desire
Notice the sentences in your brain and how your brain comes up with more and more
sentences trying to increase your desire to drink.
It’s only doing this because it thinks it will die otherwise.
If you can observe it with your prefrontal cortex, you’ll be able to do it from a place of
peace, and interest, and curiosity, and fascination, and you won’t get wrapped up in the
drama.
When you allow these sentences to be there, this will create desire, but that desire is
completely harmless.
Desire is completely harmless unless you react to it or try and fight it.
Practice allowing it.
Don’t be alarmed, upset, annoyed, or frustrated by the sentences creating that desire.
Allow them to be there and witness them from a place of peace. Your brain is not trying
to hurt you. In fact, it’s trying to save you.

Tool #3: Planning Your Drinking Ahead of Time

The first thing you’re going to do is allow an urge to be there. Not fight it—not react to it.
The second thing is to pay close attention to all of those thoughts that are causing that
desire. You’re going to be a witness. You want to become conscious of those sentences in
your mind.
Those sentences are powerful. Those sentences are the clogs coming down the hall. Those
sentences are the bells ringing—you want to know what they are so you can expect them.
The third thing I want you to do is use the prefrontal cortex’s ability for planning and
making decisions ahead of time—humans are the only creatures with this ability.
Some of you may say, “I’ve tried to decide ahead of time that I wasn’t going to drink, and
it didn’t work,” but that’s before you had Tool #1 and Tool #2.
Now you’ll be able, with the tools that allow your urges to be there, to make your
decisions ahead of time.

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If you want to stop overdrinking, under no circumstance should you ever take a drink that
isn’t planned.
All drinking has to come from the prefrontal cortex.
You cannot let any of your drinking come from the sound of clogs or the bell ringing
because that will perpetuate the unwanted desire.
First and foremost, I teach my students to plan their drinking. You can plan as much
drinking as you want.
I am going to drink on Tuesday, and I’m going to drink two bottles of wine.
Fine. Plan it ahead of time.
I have a worksheet that I have my clients use. It asks, “What do I want to drink? Why do I
want to drink it? What will be the consequences? What will be the obstacles?” Anticipate
and plan in a really deliberate way what you’re going to drink and why.
For example, you might be going to a wine tasting. Plan how many glasses of wine you
want to have. Don’t limit yourself. If you want to taste twenty glasses of wine, that’s fine.
You just have to plan it.

Your Prefrontal Cortex Has to Be in Charge

Your prefrontal is in charge—none of this “responding in the moment” or “reacting to
that unconscious desire.”
We don’t ever want to have our conditioning driving our actions.
We always want to be driven by the prefrontal when it comes to anything that involves
concentrated pleasure.
That includes shopping, achievement, gambling, pornography, alcohol, drugs,
cigarettes—anything.
From now on, whenever you want to drink, you have to plan it 24 hours in advance.
Ask yourself those worksheet questions. You need to plan what you will drink. You need
to plan how much you will drink.
Make that decision from a place of a clean mind. That decision has to be rock solid. You
have to commit to it 100%.
Don’t underestimate how much you want to drink. You don’t want to get in a position
where you’re letting your lower brain take over because then you’re creating more drool.

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You’re creating more conditioned response.

You have to stay in charge. If you say three drinks, that’s it. If you say fifteen drinks,
that’s it. You’re the one managing that from your prefrontal cortex.
It’s always 24 hours ahead of time, and it’s always decided.

If It Isn’t Planned, Don’t Drink It

If you have an urge to drink that isn’t planned from your prefrontal cortex, do not, under
any circumstances, drink.
Don’t resist that urge. Just allow it to be there.
Your prefrontal cortex can help you with this even when your brain is
inebriated.
You will come to the point where you will lose control. Figure out
how many drinks you can have before that happens so you can
always stay in prefrontal control. All decisions have to be made
All decisions
ahead of time, and then you must honor them. have to be
made ahead
This will be more successful than your other attempts of time, and
because you’re using your prefrontal cortex to allow those
urges to be there without giving in to them.
then you
must honor
Decide what you want your regular drinking life to be. How them.
often do you want to drink? What do you want to drink and
why?
Make those decisions from a belief that you do have control.

How to Have Those Conversations When You Don’t Want to

Drink
I have another worksheet my clients use for challenging situations where they don’t want
to drink.
Let’s say you’ve decided not to drink and you’re going to an event. How will you handle
all the conversations you’re going to need to have?
I find it fascinating that we have to justify not drinking. It’s the same with sugar.
If someone says, “Hey, do you want some champagne?” and you say “No,” people ask,
“Why not?”

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Nobody says that when they offer you water, but when you’re not having alcohol, people
want you to explain yourself.
My answer is simply, “I just prefer not to. Thanks.”
It’s really important to have plans for challenging situations. Decide
ahead of time. Anticipate the obstacles you’re going to face.

I find it Yes, This Is Going to Take A Little Work

fascinating Some of you are thinking, “This is so tedious. This is going to
that we have take so much work.”
to justify That’s part of the problem because the brain wants to be
not drinking. efficient. The last thing it wants to do is expend all this energy
planning. It wants to delegate to the lower brain.
But you know what happens when you delegate. You get that
automatic Pavlovian response of drinking, drinking, drinking that
makes you feel completely out of control.
I want to acknowledge that yes, this will take effort, especially in the beginning.
But once you unlearn the desire, it’s effortless.
I want to promise you that this practice is absolutely worth it.
There’s no such thing as having to start all over again if you slip.
But I will say that in the beginning, the more you can deny that automatic response, the
easier it is to unlearn. The only time you’ll want a drink is when you’ve planned it ahead
of time with the prefrontal cortex.

So, What Happens If You Make a Mistake?

Any time you make a mistake, take deliberate time to study:
y Exactly what happened.
y How you can prevent that from happening next time.
y What went on with your brain.
y What went on with your prefrontal cortex versus your lower brain.
This is an amazing opportunity for you to learn.
A lot of people will say, “Oh, I just fell off the wagon. It’s no big deal.”

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Don’t do that.
Don’t just blow it off because that’s exactly what your lower brain wants you to do—not
pay attention, not be conscious.
You want to use your prefrontal cortex to pay attention, to be conscious, to dissect every
little second of every little thing that went on.
y What were the triggers that happened in the situation?
y What were the thoughts that happened in your brain?
y What was the desire?
y Why did you have a hard time allowing it?
y Why did you fight it, or why did you give in to it?
I have a whole worksheet on how you can unravel those thoughts. The more time you
spend doing that, the more desire you’re going to unlearn.
As you bring it to your conscious brain, you can evaluate it and change it and unlearn it
and decide on purpose.
That’s when you’re going to feel in control.
The longer you leave it in the unconscious brain, the more it’s going
to feel like it’s out of your control.

But Don’t Beat Yourself Up I want to

We’re not ever going to do anything punitive. encourage
I want to encourage you never to beat yourself up. Never
you never
bring up negative emotions. Never tell yourself you’re out of to beat
control. Never say, “This was too good to be true.” Don’t hang yourself up.
around anyone who doubts your ability. You are not powerless
over this. You are completely powerful.
You know why?
You have a prefrontal cortex.
Your primitive brain has no chance. This is a skill you need to learn, but once you learn it,
it will be effortless.

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Once You’ve Learned, the Lack of Desire Becomes Automatic

Ironically, once you unlearn desire, you delegate that lack of desire to your lower brain.
The very thing that was creating all of that desire will now create the opposite for you—
just as efficiently, just as effortlessly as it currently creates desire.
It’s just like driving a car. At first, you were trying to figure out how to drive. Now it’s
completely delegated to that lower brain and happens automatically.
That’s how we do it.
y We bring up what’s happening automatically in that lower brain area.
y We make it conscious.
y We change it by unlearning it, by allowing it, paying attention to it, “un-Pavlov-ing” it.
y And then we re-delegate the lack of desire for alcohol.
It doesn’t mean we never drink. We can drink, but we only drink according to the
prefrontal decision. We never drink as a reflex or as a reaction.
You can plan it ahead of time, as many drinks as you want, but you have to do it from a
clean, sober mind. You have to do it from a place of deliberateness where you anticipate
the obstacles, you anticipate any kind of negative response you’re going to
have, and then you officially decide you want to do it anyway.
You will never make a decision that will lead you into harm’s way
You can when you make those decisions from your prefrontal strategic
have it, but brain.
you have
to wait 24 Your lower brain will inadvertently make decisions that will
harm you—not because it wants to harm you, but it literally
hours so your
believes that your survival depends on it.
prefrontal
brain is
How to Handle Your Lower Brain
making the
decision. Picture a toddler who literally thinks they’re going to die if they
don’t get a candy bar. They roll on the floor. They scream. You know
they’re not going to die. It’s all going to be fine. So you allow the
tantrum and don’t make a big deal out of it.
That’s what you have to do with your lower brain.
Let it have its fit. Let that urge be there, and then you move on.

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If you find yourself in a situation where you have a tremendous urge to drink, all you
have to tell yourself is, “You can have that in 24 hours.”
You can have it, but you have to wait 24 hours so your prefrontal brain is making the
[Link] can’t make any decisions based on our lower brain.
That’s been a huge relief for people and prevented them from drinking in the moment.
Remember, desire is learned. You have taught yourself to desire alcohol, and you can
teach yourself to desire it less or not at all.
I promise you, if you apply these tools and practice them, you can learn what I have
learned.
You have a powerful brain. There is nothing that even comes close to it. You can utilize it
if you apply this skill.

If You’re Ready, There’s an Amazing Membership Waiting For You

I want to encourage you to join me in my membership, Self Coaching Scholars, at
[Link]/join/.
We go through the process of unlearning desire.
The membership includes a series of videos that go into detail about every single one of
these tools.
The membership also includes the downloadable worksheets that you can then print off
on your printer or keep on your computer. You fill them in to unlearn this process and
manage how much you want to drink.
Every month, there will be calls where you will be able to be coached, ask questions, share
what you’re being challenged with, and discuss any situation bothering you.
I’ll show you how to manage your brain. If you don’t believe this is possible, if you have a
lot of thoughts getting in your way, I’ll help you with all of it.
Simply go to [Link]/join/, sign up, and let’s do this.
I believe in you.

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Summary
In this segment, we covered the basics 3. Prefrontal Planning: Make
about how we can control our drinking decisions ahead of time.
using the tools I’ve given you.
y NEVER drink unless you have made
We covered some important points: a decision ahead of time with your
1. Unlearn desire. prefrontal.
y Your human brain can overcome
a. Put the prefrontal in charge and
your automatic brain, but only with
interrupt the neural pathway:
forethought.
y Allow the thought y You are able to follow through with
y Allow the desire plans when you write them down and
y Don’t drink learn the skill of allowing urges.
y Repeat
4. Stop beating yourself up for
b. Three things you can do with any reason.
an urge:
y All mistakes need to be analyzed and
y Drink
understood.
y Struggle and resist, try and use
y Use curiosity and fascination.
willpower
y Do not undermine your attempts by
y Allow, watch, don’t react
getting angry with yourself.
y Be patient.
2. Watch yourself think.
y Make all your drinking thoughts The bottom line?
conscious.
There are tools you can use to regain
y Notice the sentences in your brain control of your drinking.
that produce desire.
y Label them as “thought errors” and
They work because your prefrontal cortex
is stronger than your lower brain.
“neurological junk.”
y Don’t get frustrated with patterned If you use the tools, you can train your
thinking. brain so the lack of desire for alcohol
becomes just as automatic as the
overdrinking once was.
It can be done. I can teach you how.

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with Brooke Castillo

Are You Ready to Stop Overdrinking?

If you are someone who enjoys drinking but has tried to cut back, you are most likely
frustrated and discouraged.
First, there’s nothing wrong with you.
Overdrinking is caused by disordered learning. It becomes automatic to
drink more, making it seem like it’s out of our moment-by-moment
control.
Once you understand how this repetitive reinforcement works,
you will understand why you overdrink and how to learn the Overdrinking
is caused by
skills to change it.
disordered learning.
You don’t have to quit drinking to gain more control over it. It becomes
automatic to drink
If you do want to quit, I can show you how with a four-step more, making it
quick start process. seem like it’s out
of our moment-by-
Either way, I will teach you HOW to do it. Join me. moment control.

Learn the Skill of Drinking Less

When you join the membership at [Link]/join/,
you get immediate access to the Quick Start Skills.
This is a series of four short videos teaching you how to:
1. Manage Urges
2. Use the Drink Plan
3. Evaluate Your Drinking Thinking
4. Change Judgment to Curiosity
You will get clear directions on how to APPLY these skills so you can start changing your
life. It’s not enough to understand what you need to do—you must actually do it and
repeat it so drinking less becomes effortless.
You will also get access to the call schedule where you will be able to jump on the line and
ask any questions.
You don’t have to use your real name if you don’t want, but you can if you do! All
recordings will be available if you can’t attend live.

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It’s as simple as that.

y You listen to the FOUR SKILLS and you start applying them right away.
y You practice them until you start to unlearn your desire to overdrink.
y Then you attend the monthly calls or listen to recordings, and you will literally want to
drink less.

What Is Included in The Membership?

I teach you how to drink less without subjecting you to a life of deprivation. The work in
the beginning is challenging, but once you learn the skill, it becomes effortless.

A Letter from One of

Our Happy Members:
Brooke,
I cannot even begin to express how much I You will also
appreciate you for bringing Stop Overdrinking get access to
into the world! I have struggled with judgment
and my own thoughts on drinking for about additional
four years now and haven’t been able to find resources that
the resources to help me. Just like your story, I
knew I wasn’t an alcoholic. I was sick of making pertain to the
deals with myself over it. I was sick of thinking neuroscience
about it. I was sick of letting myself down over
it. We probably could have been great drinking around
buddies! Your story is so spot on for me! overdrinking
Anyway, I just became a member and have been
devouring all of the material you have available. and the learned
I just want you to know how much I appreciate urges that make
you for creating this program.
it so hard to
THANK YOU! quit.
– Nikki

Who This Membership Is Not For

This membership is not for alcoholics.
If you define yourself as an alcoholic and believe you need medical assistance, please
email us directly and we will offer you some very effective resources.

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with Brooke Castillo

If You Feel You Are Ready to Be Free, Join Us

There is absolutely no reason why you should struggle over
your drinking.
Once you learn these skills, you will be free from the struggle.
If you’re ready, just go to [Link]/join
and click on the “Join Now” button.

An amazing group of people—and an awesome future—are waiting

for you there.
If you have any questions, email
Kim@[Link]

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