Willpower and Quitting Drinking

Willpower is a touchy subject because it often makes people feel like it means self-control and inner strength.

What is willpower?

In psychology, willpower is defined as:

"Willpower is the ability to delay gratification and resist short-term temptation, the ability to control your impulses, the ability to think things through instead of behaving emotionally, and it's a limited resource which can be depleted."

Quit drinking without willpower

It's not so much your ability to be strong and resist temptation, it's your ability to resist instant gratification and think about future you. Willpower isn't just for the newly sober either. People with more sober time can rely on willpower to get them through.

If you don't do the work to identify your triggers and learn to manage them, then it's going to be hard to stay sober. I've expressed a few times online that I have dealt with urges to drink and I get comments from people being critical that you should only feel urges in early sobriety and I need a program. It's normal to get upset and feel the urge to drink when you've struggled with alcohol in the past. Not everyone can be perfect at all times.

I think people who make comments like that just haven't experienced anything truly upsetting in their sobriety yet. Maybe they've had hard times, but they haven't had anything that goes beyond their window of tolerance. This is why doing the work and having a recovery plan is so important, because you never know when something hard is going to happen that creates an urge. If you don't have the tools and coping skills to handle it, then it's very easy to turn to alcohol, food, or something else self-destructive.

Tools include: meetings, therapy, friends and family you can trust, support groups, podcasts, hobbies, books, knowing what to do when you're upset (walks, journal, gym, vent to a friend, etc).

Learn more about willpower and quitting drinking in episode 105:

Gill discusses willpower and quitting drinking. A lot of us believe that we just need more willpower and then we’ll be able to stay sober, and maybe you’ve even shamed yourself for not having enough willpower to control your drinking. In this episode she defines what willpower is, because the definition is important for us to understand what it means to have willpower or not. You’ll learn why willpower works for some people and doesn’t work for others, what is going on in the brain for a person who struggles with instant gratification, and 3 important factors that influence whether or not you can resist temptation.

What to listen to next
E91: Do You Want to be Sober or Do You Want to Drink Without the Consequences?
E102: Alcohol and Your Dysregulated Nervous System With Beth Bowen, LMSW
E60: How Alcohol Affects Our Cognitive Abilities
E35: Emotional Sobriety

Quick start guide:
https://www.soberpowered.com/quick-start-to-sobriety

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Sources

1. Casey, B. J., et al. (2011). Behavioral and neural correlates of delay of gratification 40 years later. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108, 1498–5003.

2. Tangney, J., Baumeister, R., & Boone, A.L. (2004). High self-control predicts good adjustment, less pathology, better grades, and interpersonal success. Journal of Personality, 72, 271–324.

3. Baumeister, R., & Tierney, J. (2011) Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. New York: Penguin Press.

4. Metcalfe J., & Mischel, W. (1999). A hot/cool system analysis of delay of gratification: dynamics of willpower. Psychological Review, 106, 3–19.

5. Muraven, M., & Shmueli, D. (2006). The self-control costs of fighting the temptation to drink. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 20, 154–160.

6. Muraven, M., et al. (2005). Daily fluctuations in self-control demands and alcohol intake. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 19, 140–147.

7. Muraven, M., et al. (2002). Self-control and alcohol restraint: An initial application of the self-control strength model. Psychology of Additive Behaviors, 16, 113–120.

8. American Psychological Association. What you need to know about willpower: the psychological science of self-control. 2012

Cite this episode

Tietz, G. Episode 105: Do We Just Need More Willpower? Sober Powered. 2022.