When I first came into recovery I used to get frightened by other abstinent  alcoholics proclaim that they were so glad they did not get the “wet tongue” when they saw alcohol or people drinking alcohol.  I used to feel ashamed as I did have an instantaneous “wet tongue” or mild salivation (Pavlovian response) and still do  years later when I see people drinking alcohol. Is this a “craving” for alcohol, do I still want to drink? Do I still have an “alcoholic mind?“. Did I do my steps properly?

It used to churn me up, these so-called alcoholics who had no physiological response to alcohol-related “cues”.

Part me also thought it was linked to addiction severity, how bad or chronic one’s alcoholism become, how far down the line or how low your rock bottom was? There may some validity in that observation.

It was partly because of mixed messages from alcoholics and from various medical doctors that I decided to take matters into my own hands and do some research into my alcoholic brain.

What I have discovered is that I have an “alcoholic brain” and not a “alcoholic mind” and there is a huge difference. So if there are people out there relatively new to recovery, listen up. For chronic alcoholics there is an automatic physiological response when we see cues such as other people drinking. Mild salivation, quickening heart rate etc. These are automatic, habitual, it happens to us rather than us wanting or willing it to happen. It happens unconsciously without our say so!

If you get a “wet tongue” i.e. you mildly salivate, then this is what happens when you have crossed the line into chronic alcoholism. Loads of studies have shown there is this automatic response and have also shown there is also an attentional bias to alcohol cues. We notice alcohol cues in the environment before anything else. They have a heightened “noticeableness”.

Have ever been in a new town and counted the number of drinking establishments automatically or had a heightened awareness of half drunken bottles of alcohol lying in the street? This is an attentional bias, we notice alcohol related stuff before anything else.

Some researchers in science call this a craving. I disagree. I call this an physiological urge, distinct from craving. I think a craving is more akin to a “mental obsession” about alcohol. Alcohol has only had ‘luring’ effect on me while very emotional distressed or in the early days of recovery I was very scared that  I would drink but, looking back, I never had any desire to.

It is hugely important for recovering persons that we distinguish between urges and craving, in a clear manner that science seems to have been unable to do! Lives can depend on this. We are so vulnerable in early recover that we need sound direction on what is happening to us automatically and what we are encouraging to happen, consciously.

An urge for me is a physiological response to cues, external and internal (e.g. stress). A craving is different but interlinked.

Let me explain. If I have an urge and it becomes accompanied by automatic intrusive thoughts such as a drink would be nice, and maybe a suggestion on where to get this drink, this does not mean I want a drink. It is simply automatically prompted intrusive thoughts, the type of thought I used to get all the time and so became habitual, stored away in an automatized addiction schema or addiction action plan.

If I realize this and simply let these thoughts go, i.e. do not react to them, then they lessen and dissipate altogether.

This is not a craving. I have not consciously and emotionally engaged with these intrusive thoughts (although we often do in early recovery when they scare the life out of us!).

If I consciously engage, emotionally react, to these thoughts either because I want a drink (elaboration of these thoughts as in embellishing a desire state) or the thought scares the life out of me (averse reaction) I can end up in a mental obsession. If in recovery, we try to suppress these thoughts then they will come back stronger than before which will raise  already high stress levels and recruit a whole host of memories of why I should drink, with who, where, and how much I will enjoy it. They will also activate an Alcoholic Self Schema (different to the recovery self schema still being formed in early recovery).  Then I have a memory Hydra effect where attempting to suppress this terrible flowering of desire based memories or to cut off the heads of these thoughts and memories leads to them increasing and increasing.

 

Then there are lots of these memories driving you crazy and scaring the life out of you.  And this is in someone who does not want to drink but wants to remain in recovery!!? The other guy who is embellishing these thoughts is kinda thinking about drinking or toying with the possibility, so but again he is reacting cognitively and consciously to these intrusive thoughts. He is elaborating on them. He is using a different more cognitive part of the brain and a different memory system to those activated when he was simply having unconscious, habitual, automatic intrusive thoughts. He is now involved in this process rather than it simply happening to him.

So what I am saying is that there is no simple urge state that automatically leads to drink. We have to cognitively and emotionally react to it.

In my time in recovery, I have rarely heard of or witnessed  someone lured siren-like by a cue to a drink and when I have it is because he wanted to drink really, was testing their alcoholism, or e was in huge emotional distress and went “to hell with it!”

As we will see in later blogs, stress and cues certainly do not mix but again there is still a cognitive-emotional reaction which mediates between an urge and a relapse!