By Molly Watts

During Zero Proof, as you take a 30-day break from drinking, you’ll discover (or rediscover) Moderation Management’s fundamental strategies. Taking an extended break from drinking is beneficial for many physical reasons which you will automatically experience by not drinking. 

To encourage long-term, sustainable change, you can also use this break to change your thinking around alcohol–which only happens if you work at it. 

Look for a new Brain Lesson every week to help.

Our beautiful brilliant human brains: I’m going to share a lot with you this month about why I’m so passionate about neuroscience and learning (to some extent) about how your brain works. 

“Wait,” you’re saying, “this is supposed to be a Zero Proof email. Where’s the tip? Where’s the how-to information?” 

You want help to “not drink” during Zero Proof–is that it? I promise, figuring out which part of your brain is talking to you is going to help with all of it. 

When I first started working on changing my drinking habits, I simultaneously started educating myself on neuroscience. I wanted to understand why my decades-long daily drinking habit felt so much different. A big part of me believed that my brain was just genetically predetermined to desire alcohol more due to my alcoholic genes. My mother battled alcohol use disorder most of her life and ultimately died as the result of an alcoholic binge at the age of 81. Believing that my genes were responsible for my desire to drink seemed logical and left me feeling helpless to change. What I learned about the brain helped me see that I wasn’t powerless to change. My beautiful, brilliant human brain was the answer. 

While the brain is very complex, I’d like to offer you a simple way of understanding how the brain works in terms of your drinking habits. You see, there isn’t just one brain involved, there are two: the lower and the higher. Some psychologists have labeled them the toddler brain and the adult brain, which seems pretty appropriate. 

Your lower (toddler) brain is motivated by three things: to avoid pain, to seek pleasure, and to conserve energy. Sounds like a toddler, right? The lower brain is not logical. It doesn’t consider future consequences. It reacts in a primitive way that helped ensure the survival of our prehistoric ancestors. But our day-to-day survival no longer depends on our lower brain, yet it’s still acting like it does. 

The good news? Our brains kept evolving to include our higher (adult) brain. Our higher brain is what makes us uniquely human. It gives us the ability to plan, to observe our own thinking, and to literally create our feelings. 

If you’re asking yourself what this has to do with your drinking habit, I’ll be back next week to dive in a little deeper. Until then, I want you to ask yourself this question: which part of your brain do you think is talking to you when you feel the urge to drink? 

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Molly Watts is an MM member, Dryuary alumni, author, coach and host of the Alcohol Minimalist podcast. Despite being an adult child of an alcoholic who hated what alcohol had meant in her life, Molly developed her own unbreakable daily drinking habit that persisted for decades. After transforming her relationship with alcohol, she now helps others do the same. www.mollywatts.com