Dryuary 2025 Day 7: Why Do My Cravings Sound Like a Three-year-old Having a Meltdown?

by 3733, Moderation Management Forum Member

It’s 3 p.m. or 4 p.m. The light is already slanting away, and it will be getting dark soon (because: January). I’m sitting at my desk, knowing I’ve got at least a few more hours to go. The daylight has graced us with its presence for what feels like about 5 hours before it’s started to get dark again (bcs: January).  And it’s 42 degrees and raining again (January). And this week has lasted at least a month, and it’s, like, Tuesday. (And because January.) And because I signed up for stupid Dryuary, I can’t even go out at the end of the day and enjoy a tasty sumpin’ in a brightly-lit bar. Or drink a nice glass of red, cozied up in my house…

I WANT A TREAT! Wahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!

Honestly, that’s what it sounds like in my head. It’s one big, childish tantrum after another as the month drags on. It’s tiring for her (the three-year old) and for me.

We talk about a variety of strategies to manage cravings and urges to drink in here: urge surfing, finding some good substitutes for alcohol, serving them with plenty of ice, and/or in the good wineglass or rocks or cocktail glass, heading out for a walk or a workout. 

Those are all pretty good solutions to the end-of-day crash, but another step I find helpful is to take a moment to check in with the inner three-year-old. To give her that attention she’s craving and ask her what she really wants.

Without going all therapisty in here (I am not a licensed therapist!), I do think that three-year-old is real. She is me, me at that age, which means that: she is too short to see a lot of things grownups can see, she is often frustrated by a world that doesn’t pay attention to her as much as she’d like it to, she is often scared —the world and much of its contents are big and sort of loom over her, and things show up that she didn’t see coming. She is scared, too, of emotions and inner feelings, which grow like wildfire inside her, and can be so hard to contain. 

When I’m having alcohol cravings during Dryuary, or during any extended period of abstinence, I get a good, clear view of that little person who lives inside grownup me, 24/7, day in, day out. Man, is life fatiguing to her! It is *really* hard to be her, trying to keep up with the life that grownup me lives and drags her through! 

Which means, I guess, that even in my oh-so-fortunate life, it is, on some level, hard to be me.

ALL the qualifiers here: I have shelter, food, warm clothes, a good job, friends, love, music, books, a full life. 

BUT. We were all three, right? 

For me, the power of just sitting down with that little three-year-old and attending to her for a minute or two is surprisingly, completely transformative. It releases emotions of compassion and relief inside me that are hard to describe, but I hope you give this strategy a try. And I hope it does the same for you. 

1. I stop what I am doing and turn inside myself (sometimes I find myself rotating my body a little, as I would if I were physically turning my attention to a little kid in the room). “Hey there, little friend. What’s up right now? What’s bothering you?” 

2. It might take a minute, but she usually answers, and she usually calms down. And if I sit with her for a bit, just listening to what her feelings and frustrations are, she can often be redirected. 

3. I need to be the grownup in this situation. I don’t join into a pity party, or struggle with the tantrum. Instead, I’m the same compassionate, loving grownup with her that I am with, for example, my little niece or nephew. When I’ve listened a bit, I explain that we’re not drinking this month, but that there are some other things we might do together. We might go take a walk to a café and get an indulgent hot drink. We might take the long way back to the office, circling by the park. We might call it quits and duck out to the gym. We might go out to dinner and order the fancy item on the menu…or we might get takeout and then take a long, hot bath… All these solutions get a lot more workable and, in fact, work better to satisfy or redirect cravings when I’ve talked them over with my inner three-year-old first. 

If you give it a try, let me know how it goes! I hang out in the MM Forum, and I’m curious to know whether this strategy (which admittedly is a little woo-woo…) works for anyone else.

Good luck, everyone!

by 3733  MM Forum Member