Why Is It So Hard to Quit Drinking? It’s Not a One-Time Decision
Mar 24, 2026
In my drinking days, I searched for answers to these questions for years:
How do I quit drinking for good?
What can I do to break my drinking patterns once and for all?
Today, I find that clients come to me with the same questions.
Despite calling myself an empowered alcohol-free coach, the truth is I don’t have an answer to those. Because making changes in life rarely lies within a single decision. It often consists of many small decisions. What makes quitting alcohol hard is not a lack of discipline, but the fact that drinking often serves as a way to move away from discomfort in the moment.
In ACT, this is called a choice point, and it’s something I see show up again and again in how people relate to drinking. A choice point is a moment where we choose either to move towards what matters or away from discomfort.
A choice point exists everywhere in our lives. They are often moments that seem small and insignificant, like whether to pick up the phone, to put on the gym shoes, or turn on Netflix, or whether or not to pour that glass of wine out of habit.
Often, we make the choice without even being consciously aware of the two options we face: one is to move towards the person we want to be and the life we want to build, and the other is to move away from what seems scary, challenging, or uncomfortable in the moment. In the journey of changing one’s relationship with alcohol, one can encounter these choice points many times during the day.
Before we dive further into how to make choices align with your desire to drink less, let’s first talk about the pull to move away.
Pull to Move Away: Drinking as a Way to Avoid Discomfort
Most people don’t realize that beneath every choice of picking up the bottle, there is always something very human: the pull to move away — to move away from discomfort, from difficulties, or from what feels scary or overwhelming.
The pull is not a sign of weakness or a defective brain. Quite the opposite, it’s our system doing what it’s supposed to do: protecting us from perceived threats. Through our lives, each of us has learned a set of strategies that help us move away: for some, it’s avoidance; for others, it might be procrastination or people pleasing; and for many, that strategy becomes picking up a drink.
That’s why, in what I call the dependency loop—the cycle that keeps drinking in place—the first invisible force that drives our behavior is human needs.
Perhaps it’s after a long day, when things finally quiet down — and before the exhaustion or emptiness fully catches up, your hand is already reaching for the bottle.
Or maybe you’re watching your partner leave the dirty dish on the table for the tenth time, and you feel the annoyance rise in your chest — and almost without thinking, you take a big gulp of wine to take the edge off.
What often seems like drinking for “no reason” is actually our system trying to move us away from something we don’t want to feel. In other words, drinking is often less about the drink itself and more about moving away from what we feel in that moment.
The Choice of Move Towards: The Key to Breaking Old Drinking Patterns
What we haven’t yet realized is that the opposite of moving away is not denying the pull, but finding something to move towards instead. That’s what ACT and the choice point teach us: to find that thing you want to move towards.
So what is that thing?
The answer lies in our values. Instead of being driven by the pull to move away from discomfort, we allow ourselves to be guided towards who we want to become and the life we want to build. To put it simply, we move towards ourselves and what matters to us.
Embrace the Journey: One Choice a Time
More importantly, we recognize that the journey towards ourselves is never a straight line. Even the most committed ones among us might sometimes find themselves opting to move away from discomfort instead of towards value — it’s human.
But the beauty of choice points is that a new opportunity lies in every new choice that arises hundreds of times a day, big or small. We get to choose that for each moment, and each moment only, whether to move towards or move away. This might mean tonight, and tonight only, instead of reaching for the bottle, you pick up a book you’ve been meaning to read. When tomorrow comes, you get to choose again.
The secret power of moving towards is that it builds. Every time we choose an action that aligns with our deep values, we tell our brain who we want to be. Over time, our confidence grows, and our self-trust deepens. That’s how real change takes root. Our goal is not to eliminate the away moves, but to increase the number of toward moves.
Your Next Choice Point: How to Break the Drinking Pattern
When the next choice point about drinking comes, instead of acting on it right away, pause and ask yourself:
For this moment, and this moment only, what am I moving away from, and what do I want to move towards?
If this resonates, I share more insights like this in my weekly newsletter. You can learn more on my website.
TLDR? Here is a quick summary
- Drinking is often a way to move away from discomfort
- Change happens through small choice points throughout the day
- Lasting change comes from increasing “toward moves”, not eliminating “away moves”.
