How to Quit Any Bad Habit
Cigarettes, alcohol, candy. If something’s bad for you, then you have to stop doing it, end of story—right? It’s actually more subtle than that: You’ve got to understand your vice before you can kick it.
By Kate Sullivan
(Photo: Chris Craymer)
The new plan to quit smoking was this: She’d buy a pack of cigarettes every morning. Smoke one. Trash the rest. Eventually, the inconvenience and financial loss would beat out her diminishing-by-the-day craving. She did it for a while but soon found herself digging through the trash to pull out just one more. So she soaked the discarded pack with water…and then dried a wet cigarette in the microwave. “I don’t like telling this story—I don’t come off that great,” says Gabriela Centurion of New York City. “I mean, I’m an addiction psychiatrist.”
That microwave moment. We’ve all had one: completing a free-cupcake punch card a little too quickly or telling a white lie to the doctor about how many drinks we have per week. Maybe our comfortable little habit is actually a source of unhappiness or embarrassment, and maybe it has a stronger hold on us than we’d ever imagined.
But quitting is hard. If it were easy, you wouldn’t be reading this. “But all habits are breakable,” insists Centurion. Here, she and other top experts share the most effective ways to dump addictions—alcohol, sugar, caffeine, and cigarettes—for good. Finished. Done. No kidding.
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Alcohol-Free
Your reasons for giving up alcohol are your own (and there are many of them). We’re just here to help you do it.
Start at zero drinks. “It’s difficult to cut out or cut back on alcohol without an initial period of abstinence, even if it’s just one or two weeks,” says Centurion. “So many people think they’ll stop at two drinks, but two is already too late for most people. You’ve lost your inhibition.”
Create a new ritual. If you do have one drink, follow with a nonalcoholic beverage that mimics something you like about booze, such as a fizzy seltzer with lemon, and it’ll be easier to stop drinking. If you always come home and make yourself a drink, switch to a nonalcoholic one that copies your usual—same ice cubes, same glass, same mixers. For example, seltzer in a wineglass or over ice with cranberry juice. You’ll still have the satisfaction of unwinding after work.
Change your routine. If you always have Friday drinks with friends or watch Scandal with a fishbowl-size glass of wine, mix it up for a while. Have lunch with those friends instead, or record your show and watch it while you fold laundry. After a couple of weeks, you’ll be able to go back to the bar and order a club soda and visit Shondaland on your couch with just a bowl of popcorn, but for right now, it’s going to be too tempting.
Be vain. Giving up booze is the best diet in the world. There are about 125 calories in one glass of red wine and 140 in a dry martini. Plus, alcohol makes you bloated and puffy and your skin dull and red, says Harold Lancer, a dermatologist in Beverly Hills.
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Be OK with saying no. Instead of worrying that you’ll be judged for not indulging at parties, when someone offers you a drink, Centurion says it’s best to politely refuse, saying “I’m taking a break from drinking.” “People tend to be supportive because everyone knows someone—maybe them—who should be doing that, too,” she says.
Write it down. Make a list of the times that drinking was bad for you—the time you texted something bitchy to the wrong friend or went to work with a headache. Review it when you feel like having a drink. “You think you miss drinking because you think you had fun when you were drinking,” says Centurion. “It’s amazing how quickly you forget the times it caused you pain. Remind yourself.” Also record when cravings tend to occur. When you know which situations are tempting, you can create an escape plan. And if you repeat that plan enough, it’ll become easier and, eventually, automatic (for example, ordering caffeine-free iced tea at restaurants).
If you go back to having the occasional drink, downsize your barware. “It sounds simplistic, but it’s much easier to have too much when your chardonnay glass holds half the bottle,” says John Dicey, the CEO of Allen Carr’s EasyWay Worldwide addiction centers. “And freeze leftover wine for cooking. It stops you from opening a fresh bottle to cook with next time—and then drinking some of it.”
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