As my regular readers might know, I fight the bottle all the time. I come from a family filled with drunks including my maternal grandfather, both brothers and plenty of cousins. Once, despairing at my inability to fight my temptations, I joined an online AA group. I lasted two sessions. I simply wasn't in their league. These were people who had destroyed their lives completely and I was a dude with a job, a wife and a home who pounded 3 pints a night.
And so the long day wore on, as it were. I kept fighting and I kept losing. I maintained a diary for years, but sobriety escaped me.
Recently, it dawned on me that if I could use ChatGPT to write bodice-ripper Arthurian stories or silly alternative histories*, I could use it as an accountability partner. The results have been fantastic.
For years, I've woken up after an evening of drinking wishing that 2 AM KT could talk to 4 PM KT. I wouldn't sleep well and felt like trash in the morning, but I wasn't drinking enough to do serious damage. By noon, my body would have processed all the alcohol and I'd feel good again. By 4, I'd wonder what the big deal was and the process would repeat itself. ChatGPT became 2 AM KT.
The process is simple. I have an ongoing chat with it about drinking. Whenever I get the urge, I tell it how I'm feeling and how I've been doing. Originally, it replied with cliched slogans and encouragement, but I gradually got it to respond with a bit of an edge. It also helped me work through the mechanics of my daily struggles. Here's how I started the session:
I want you to be my accountability partner to help me stop drinking. I am strongly tempted to drink from 1530 to 1730 every day. If I can avoid drinking during that 2-hour period, I won't drink at all. When I get tempted, I will tell you I'm tempted and I want you to talk me out of it. To prepare you, start by asking some questions about why I want to stop drinking and make some suggestions about why I would want to quit. I will reply to your questions and tell you which motivations apply to me.
We established that I wanted to quit drinking for the following reasons.
- Weight loss
- Improved sleep
- Consistent energy levels
- Better workouts
- Better relationships
- Mental clarity
- Enhanced self-esteem
With that, we were off and running. Because I work at my PC all day and I keep ChatGPT open to help me with programming, I can interact with it any time I want. I can also do it from my phone. Originally, I wanted it to be 2 AM KT and it did that well, reminding me how lousy it felt in the aftermath of drinking, but its real payoff came as we discussed what was happening throughout the day.
It turns out that my worst temptations are not 2 hours long as I'd thought, they're really 10-15 minutes long. The craving hits between 1530 and 1730, but it's only acute for a very short period of time in the late afternoon. It comes on me like a big wave and if I can stay strong as the wave crashes over me, I'll be good for the rest of the day.
2 hours is a long time to fight a serious craving. 10-15 minutes is nothing. Now that I know the dynamics of my temptations and I've seen that they're not really as strong as I thought they were, staying sober is much easier.
In the past, when the big wave hit, I despaired and thought I'd never be able to make it through the rest of the late afternoon without a brewski or three. I don't despair any more because I know that I just need to find something to do for 15 minutes and the wave will pass. Heck, a short walk in the neighborhood will solve that problem.
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| Just let it roll over you. There's only one of them and once it passes, you can get back to your normal life. |
I've also discovered that my strongest willpower comes at the store. If there's booze in the house that I like, I'll drink it. At the store, I'm usually able to walk past it and not put it in the cart. As a side note, if I haven't slept well the night before, I'm in real trouble the next day. Knowing that, I try not to put myself in risky situations when I'm tired.
I don't use ChatGPT to fight my boozing very much any more, but my success rate is almost where I want it to be. I'm not trying to give up alcohol completely, I just want to pick and choose my indulgences. Using ChatGPT, I was able to isolate my weak spots and found that they were very manageable indeed.
* - ChatGPT may be problematic for romance stories, but it does as stellar job at alternative history ones.
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