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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, people 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 life changes rarely lies within a single decision. It often consists of many small decisions.

In acceptance and commitment therapy, this is called a choice point, and it’s something that shows up again and again in how people relate to drinking. A choice point is simply a given moment where we have the opportunity to choose either to move towards what matters to us or away from what discomforts us. Choice points exist 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 choose 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........

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