Cognitive dissonance means that giving up alcohol is hard.

Imagine you’re on a diet. You’ve been good all day and have every intention of staying that way. But then someone at work brings in a plate of home-baked cookies. And before you even realize it, you’re scarfing one down. 

This is an example of cognitive dissonance – when your conscious and unconscious brain are in conflict with each other. Consciously, you know you should step away from the cookie tray. But some unconscious part of you just can’t resist. 

And your brain, clever as it is, does a great job of justifying your actions. You mentally make a firm commitment: that was the last cookie you’ll ever eat. Or you comfort yourself: Don’t we all deserve a treat now and then? 

The key message here is: Cognitive dissonance means that giving up alcohol is hard. 

As with cookies, so with alcohol.

Perhaps you’re tired of waking up hungover. Maybe you know that alcohol is adding to your waistline, and taking away from your wallet. Faced with this information, your conscious mind knows that it’d be good to cut down on drinking or quit altogether. But, even so, you end up in the bar after work because your unconscious mind – the part that controls your emotions and desires – is packed with information that just doesn't agree. 

Years of experience have told your unconscious brain that alcohol is good. For example, it helps you relax. You know this because you’ve seen your parents, or characters in movies, come home after a hard day to crack open a beer with a satisfied sigh. So as much as you might be consciously aware that alcohol isn’t always a good thing, your unconscious mind tends to urge you to drink. 

Lots of people try to stop drinking through good old willpower. But as we saw in the cookie example, that’s not really a solution. Willpower is a kind of energy. Eventually, it runs out. And if you need your willpower for one thing – like staying focused during a stressful workweek – you’ll have less of it remaining when you need to turn down that tempting beer. 

The good thing is, there’s a solution. In the following blinks, we’ll see how reassessing your beliefs about booze can shut down that unconscious desire for a drink altogether.