Fast Food and I have always gotten along. When I am hungry, I don’t want to sit down and wait for a meal to be prepared. I don’t want to go to the story to buy the ingredients needed to cook my lunch and spend the time preparing it. I’m hungry, and I want to eat NOW! I hear the advice of others, “pack your lunch so that you can have it with you when you get those hunger pangs”. Great idea, but when I am rushing to get out the door and head off to work, I am not thinking about future feelings of hunger that I am not feeling at the time. I address the NOW, and I’ll worry about the craving for food when it happens. It’s too far off and not an issue at the moment, so I typically focus on the issue at hand, not something that doesn’t even exist yet. And when it does? Two words provide the solution….FAST FOOD! It’s easy to get, it’s ready to go, it’s pretty inexpensive, and it provides what I crave most…..INSTANT GRATIFICATION!
There's a lot of self-help remedies that people talk about to assist in sobriety. There's yoga, meditation, oils, incense, knitting and woodworking, and those all might help with sobriety, but none of them work as fast or as effectively as alcohol. I have always been a person that seeks instant gratification. I've never liked working for something when I can get it handed to me immediately. Maybe I'm just lazy but when I want something or need something, I want it now.
I'm starting to learn why I've struggled with all the home remedies that are available to assist in sobriety, especially early sobriety. For the most part, they all take time, and why I've had a need for alcohol or a desire for alcohol, the one thing I did not have it was time. When the craving head regardless of the situation, weather at be a bad day, an argument with a loved one, or even a happy occasion and quick reason to celebrate, my first choice for immediate gratification has never been to sit down and read a book on sobriety listen to a podcast, or attend a meeting. As I learn about myself, I realize that my solutions or always prioritized with immediate and impactful instant relief qualities.
If I want to avoid using instant gratification I need to use those tools that were mentioned above in a pre-active manner. Like a squirrel saving nuts for the winter before it arrives I have to do the meditation, exercise, yoga and attend meetings before the craving hits. I If I can do those things pre-actively, then they have a chance of working. If my choice to use them or act alcohol is in a reactive situation, I will assuredly choose the solution that is quickest, most instantly impactful and readily available at most convenience stores wherever I find myself. Being re-active to cravings is a losing battle for me, I have always been an instant gratification person, and I will always favor the quickest and most impactful immediate solution available.
At the moment of craving, choosing the smartest solution rarely makes it to the top of my list of options! My success is dependent upon being pre active with the tools at my disposal so that I can fix the problems before they occur.