 Hi, this is Craig back from StopDrinkingExpert.com and good evening, currently 20 to 10 at night here in Cyprus and the reason I'm recording this at night because it's very specific to this time of the day. And I had an email in a few days ago from a member at StopDrinkingExpert.com asking a very common question and actually it's a really important subject this one. So this video is going to be a little bit longer than I would normally record for a video blog. But I'd ask you to stick with me because if you're in the process of trying to stop drinking, this one concept is going to make a massive difference to your success rate. Perhaps even as much as 60, 70% of the battle in giving up drinking is all around this subject. So stick with me because I need to give you a few secrets and tell you exactly what's going on to create a very big problem for people who are trying to stop drinking. Okay, so I won't mention the member's name but I got an email a few days ago from someone saying, okay, I'm trying to stop with your help. I have no problem in the daytime, I have no problem socializing, I can avoid it, I'll call it, it doesn't bother me. The big problem I got is when I get home from work, I want to drink and oh my god, I want to drink so bad that it's almost unbearable and I can, I just can't avoid it, I have to drink. Why is this happening? And more importantly, how do I stop it? All right, so there's, we're going to deal with this in two parts and the first bit we're going to do really quickly because it's not that important and the second part I'm going to spend a bit of time on because it's actually really important and if you can master the second part you're going to make life a lot easier for yourself. The first part depends on how long ago you drank because as you may know the actual kick from alcohol is two weeks. This is the chemical effect of the drug on your brain trying to force you to drink again. It's going to last for two weeks, the climax of this being after 24 hours. So 24 hours after you last had a drink, the drug is going to really try and push you to drink again. This is this maybe why you're drinking at the same time every day. But we're not going to talk about it too much because it's not really a problem. Once you get 14 days away from your last drink of alcohol then the problem goes away. So let's stay away from that and let's deal with the bigger reason why a lot of people have problems wanting to drink in an evening or at a very specific time. And this is down to Pavlovian conditioning. You probably heard about Pavlov and his dogs, the Russian scientist used to ring a bell when the dogs dinner was ready. The dogs would run and eat and eventually he wouldn't even have to put food down. He could just ring the bell and the dogs would come running, salivate and get very excited thinking that food was ready. We are animals just like dogs and we are subjective to Pavlovian conditioning. And this is what we have done to ourselves. For many years you have been conditioning your brain that when you get home from work or when you cook your evening meal or when you put your PJs on or whatever specific event has been the trigger for you to start drinking. You have been saying to your brain repeatedly for many years that when this happens we drink. When this happens we drink. Now the problem we have is that all things that happen regularly habits or just things that we do all the time like breathing, having our heartbeat, control the temperature of our body, these things happen all the time. And the subconscious mind knows that the conscious mind is very weak. It can only do one or two things at a time. And so there's no point leaving the program to beat your heart in the conscious mind because it means you wouldn't be able to do anything else. You'd have to spend all day going one, two, three, four, okay and counting your heartbeat. You wouldn't be able to live. So the subconscious takes that task and creates a subroutine in the subconscious. So you don't have to think about beating your heart. There's a program doing it for you. The conscious mind can do one or two things at a time. The subconscious can do millions of things at a time. And it's doing it right now. You're listening to this video, you're seeing this video, you're aware of your environment, you're beating your heart, you're breathing, and millions of other things. It's very powerful. So for example, if I lift my hand to my mouth like that, that takes about 57 different muscles or moving in a very precise specific order to just to do that, to do it consciously with my conscious mind, thinking every one of those 57 motions, it would probably take me about an hour to put my hand to my mouth with the subconscious running the program I can do in seconds. So what you have in your head now because if your years of drinking is a physical piece of meat, a bit of physical matter, you could cut it out of your head if you knew where it was and put it on a slide and say that's the drinking program. You have a drinking program in your head. And when you activate the trigger for it, it makes you want to drink. It's a bit like you also have a swimming program in your head. And when you jump into deep water, bang, the anchor is activated and you start swimming. If you don't start swimming, bad things happen. Okay, so the brain's going to put a lot of pressure on you to obey the anchor and start swimming. When you get home from work, when you cook your meal, when you put your PJs on, bang, the drinking anchor activates and you want to drink. And what does it feel like if you ignore this anchor? Well, it feels uncomfortable. It makes you feel anxious. Something's not quite right. It makes you feel stressful. And what does drinkers do when they feel stressed? They drink. All right. So this is why it's happening. You're activating a program in your head that says, drink. You're supposed to drink at this time, drink. And it very powerfully tries to persuade you to drink us. It's not right if you don't drink. You're you're disobeying the program. So the bigger question here, and I told you this was a bit of a longer video, the bigger question is, how do you stop the anchor? And the only way you can stop it is to do the opposite of what it wants you to do. Okay, repeatedly. So every time that anchor activates, do something else. Go and jog. Go for a run. Go swimming. Go for a dance class, learn a language. I don't know. Take the dog for a walk. Drink water. Do anything. But drink alcohol. And also, don't do nothing. Don't just sit there trying to use willpower to overcome this horrible feeling because you'll lose in the end. Willpower is very ineffective. So don't just do nothing and don't drink. Do something dramatically different. Go and dance. Go and do a pottery class. Do something at night school. Just do anything that's completely different than what you used to do. How long is this going to take? Well, look, how many times did you have to drink on cue to install that program? You didn't just drink one night and then the next night the program started. Did you? It was, it was maybe hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times before the subconscious said, okay, enough. We don't have to consciously think about this anymore. This is going to be something that's going to be a part of this guy's life. Let's create a program to make it happen. So it was hundreds of times. So to break the anchor, you're going to have to do the opposite hundreds of times. Maybe, maybe 100 times is enough for you. Maybe 200, maybe 10. Who knows? Everyone is different. But your challenge here is just to keep breaking the anchor every time it comes up. Every time you break the anchor, you make it 1% weaker. And eventually, it just won't work anymore. Okay. So here's what you have to do. When you get in from work and the anchor is triggered and your subconscious brain says, drink for the love of God, drink. First thing you're going to do is you're going to drink a freezing cold glass of water and you're going to make sure that you're not just thirsty. Okay. Then you're going to do something dramatically different than you would normally do. If you would normally slump in your armchair and put the TV on, you're going to take the dog for a five kilometer walk or something like that. Or you're going to sign up and you're going to go and do learn new language. You're going to do something dramatically different and you're going to force yourself to do it. Okay. Stick at it and you will notice that it just gets weaker and weaker. A weaker and eventually it will go completely. And at that point, you are free of the chemical addiction of alcohol and you are free of the psychological addiction of alcohol. You are free from the drug that is making you completely miserable, destroying your relationships and damaging your life. It's a really important concept. If you have any questions about it, please email me, ask and I'll try my best to help you. Thank you very much for watching. I'm Craig back from Stop Drinking Expert.com.