What Happens After You Quit Drinking? Timeline Of Alcohol Cravings. Why AA Doesn't Help.
- chphurst
- Nov 29
- 7 min read
When one initiates the battle against alcoholism, it isn’t the alcohol itself but the craving for it with the cessation of its use. The human body is an interesting machine. It consumes things that are bad for it then develops an addiction to those very things, which becomes a vicious cycle of slowly destroying itself. Alcohol isn’t the only substance in this species of toxins. Giving up smoking is no great thrill either. It would have made far better sense if the Magic Elf, who created us, had just granted us repulsion for these unhealthy substances from the get-go. But we love them and sometimes that affair results in the divorce court from the addiction. And there is alimony to be paid.
Most people fail recovery from alcoholism not because they want to go back to a life of waking up hungover every day. They aren’t seeking to have ultra-high blood pressure which will end them early in the guise of a heart attack or stroke. They just finally succumb to the cravings. They don’t realize that the cravings will fade with time if they take action to physically and emotionally reinvent their lives. They think they are going to be in this state of alcohol craving for the rest of their days. And one day they give in to that outstretched hand of John Barleycorn, who is always ready to reignite broken friendships.
They tell themselves this time they will just drink moderately. They will even develop a schedule. I know because I did it many times before I gave up the hops for good. And it seems to initially work. I started a program more than once when I stated to Self that I would have two large Weizen beers Monday through Thursday evening, four on Friday night, since after all it is Friday night, then let myself have six in front of the television on Saturday. That routine certainly wouldn’t kill me.
And it wouldn’t have—if I had kept my sworn oath, which usually I did for only a week and a half at best. That’s the thing with cravings when you are an alcoholic. You don’t crave a little alcohol. You crave a whole case of it. Maintenance drinking is a sleight of hand that Johnny pulls on you. Because he knows every time you descend off that maintenance program, you will be more entrenched than before.
After the initial sickness of detox passed, the cravings hit like a spike wheeled freight train. I could not comprehend at the end of day five that I would never have another beer or gin and tonic or glass of wine ever again. That is the word—incomprehensible. I envisioned myself at seventeen, before I had ever had a beer or gin and tonic or glass of wine, minus the sips stolen at the Thanksgiving table. That was seventeen years of my life I lived without alcohol. There was no law that said I couldn’t return to that state.
The reason most don’t make it past six months sobriety, many toppling off the wagon at month one or two is because of those intense, nonstop cravings. That first thirty or forty days after detox they exist almost every minute of the waking hours. If the recently sober were educated about the timeline of these cravings post detox, perhaps a great many more would stay sober than the stats reveal today from the rooms. For one does a lot better on anything that is difficult if they know that the darkness in the tunnel will one day show a dim light that will evolve into a bright one when you emerge and step back into the sunshine.
The most asked question with the newly sober is: Will I always have cravings? They also ask: When will the cravings fade? I can answer these inquiries with not just a glimmer of hope but a certainty that the day will come when you rarely think about alcohol at all. I contend, however, that going to AA meetings will impede this progression.
I have stated that the rooms would be a good idea in that first few months of sobriety. Their methods of indoctrination would need to be changed, their philosophy altered and the twelve steps abolished, but it might not be a bad thought in the beginning to hear a few stories that let you know you were an alcoholic for sure as those tales will mimic your own. After second phase, however, which I mark at day forty-five, one needs to reinvent his life on all planes, not sit in a circle regurgitating his past one.
I say to forty-five days because this is where the real battle for your soul clashes its swords. This is where the cravings are continuous and intense. And you are surrounded by triggers that remind you of your former addiction. You may have to isolate yourself from the world until this phase passes and if your friends don’t get that, then they don’t. In this fight for survival during this time, I’m ok with using caffeine, sugar or what have you to get through this second stage turmoil. Trying to live a clean life at this point won’t keep the cravings down. They are going to be charging at the gate no matter what. You just have to get through it.
What I tell people to do is what we all do in the military; something all of us learned in basic training, which most will remember was no barrel of laughs. You start a short time calendar. You’ve already cleared five days in initial detox. You have forty more check marks to go. You even can divide the days into segments. You make it to noon, small slash. Then six o’clock comes and another tic mark. When you go to bed, you make a large slash. Forty of those gets you through second phase. You have to hang on to the day that the intense cravings will start fading somewhere between thirty and forty-five days. Some get away with thirty days. For myself, day forty-five was the first day I felt good since I threw those last three beers away.
At phase three from forty-five days to six months, the cravings are more on and off. And that is a hell of a lot better than continuous. You just gained fortitude from beating back John Barleycorn’s hand in second phase. Now you’ll have cravings, but you’ll also have times when you won’t. You ride the cravings like a wave—it comes, you go over it, and it passes. And the days sober keep checking off.
Here is where I break from Alcoholics Anonymous. At this point after second phase, you need to return to fitness or begin fitness if you have never exercised. That program should mainly be cardio oriented in nature although I extend my time with lifting weights as well. And you add a fifteen-minute meditative program. You minimize sugar and caffeine. You don’t have to be a body Nazi, just keep it minimal. You lose the smoking. These activities will reduce cravings now. The more they are reduced, the easier they are to beat back and the days and weeks sober keep stacking. AA will have you eating sugar cookies and guzzling too much coffee and this actually induces cravings. Then the negativity of the circle story time every night induces them even more.
My cravings were minimal at the six-month mark. They were a few a day, lasting maybe thirty minutes to an hour. By the one-year mark they were very infrequent. Today, months go by before I have one and it is a mild annoyance that lasts a few minutes. But in the rooms, many people have cravings all the time at the one-year mark and beyond. Because the AA method actually causes them to continue to pop their heads out from the inferno. I am thoroughly convinced this is why AA has such a high failure rate. Their own program is so friendly to cravings that eventually most people just give in to them because they don’t see a future where these demons aren’t a part of their daily lives.
Every once in a great while, even if you follow my program, something will trigger a gigantic craving. At almost five years sober, my thoughts of alcohol and its past were minimal. I was training in Thai boxing, my long-time art, in the motherland itself. After I cornered for one of our fighters, a craving hit so hard, as we sat in a pub after the bout, that I thought I was back at week three sober. During my own long past days of fighting in school run bouts in America, I was advancing my alcoholism so this trigger of the fight makes complete sense. It lasted about four hours and then vanished with the sun. How did I beat it? Well, I have beaten so many that I rode it like that wave I described. I just waited it out. And yes, you have to have discipline to do that. But you have the fortitude of knowing you can do it because you have done it so many times in the past.
But mostly I don’t have cravings at all and haven’t since the end of year two sober. And, as I stated, they were infrequent by year one sober. If you keep yourself on a holistic program of physical fitness, emotional meditative work, clean diet with lots of fruits and vegetables as well as spend your off time in nature oriented activities while advancing yourself in various hobbies or career, you will have few cravings once you step past six months and definitely by one year. AA offers the opposite. They offer emotional distress in the circle and poor physical health with influx of caffeine, sugar and those cigarettes at the breaks. A program that keeps cravings at their maximum potential.
I do not have cravings for alcohol ninety-nine percent of the time now and the rare occurrences are so minor and transient they aren’t worth noting at all. The war against alcoholism is really a war against cravings for the substance. But you must remember, all wars eventually end. If you concentrate on the reinvention of all of your planes in this new, sober life, one day the smoke will clear and you will gaze on peaceful terrain where you will exist for the rest of your days.
And to reinvent all of your planes to progress forward check out:
John Barleycorn: taken from Jack London's memoir of his alcoholism. John Barleycorn: First published, 1913
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