Try this Dax Shepard trick to quit alcohol

When you’re trying to quit alcohol, routines can be your best friend. Just ask actor and director Dax Shepard.

Shepard, who also hosts the Armchair Expert podcast and speaks frequently about his sobriety journey as a way to encourage and inspire others, recently touched on a daily habit he leans on to maintain his own sobriety from drugs.

That habit is journaling, and it’s one I use daily as well.

Clearing your mind

There’s something deeply calming and soothing about getting those constantly spinning, crackling thoughts and feelings out of your brain and onto the page.

Once they’re out of your body, it’s a lot easier to process them, control them, and see them for what they are, rather than having them subconsciously control you.

Shepard uses his journal as a way to remind himself that he has the extra challenge of being an addict and to remind himself why he’s staying clean.

For ADHD folks like myself and, I assume, restless, creative people like Shepard, too, it also frees up a ton of mental bandwidth to take on more positive activities.

Capturing good ideas but also clearing away the junk rolling around in your head at the beginning of the day makes it a lot easier to focus and drum up energy to tackle creative tasks (like writing this article for example!).

I can speak personally to the value in getting those spinning thoughts out of your head and onto the page.

So can Shepard.

‘When I stop writing in it, guess when I relapsed?’

Speaking with the actress Constance Wu (and quoted by Today) last week, he said:

“I haven’t missed a day in 18 years. That’s a lie though,” Shepard said before correcting himself to take into account a brief relapse he had with painkillers after a motorcycle accident.

“I had a two year period after a movie I directed where I wasn’t writing in it regularly, and then my life went off the rails, and so I haven’t missed a day in years.

“But I had, uninterrupted, probably 14 years of never missing one day.

“That’s because of sobriety. I got superstitious that if I missed a day, I would relapse. It just became a rule I established early on, so I think because it had that weight and commitment behind it. It really was no big deal.

“And then, lo and behold, when I stop writing in it, guess when I relapsed?”

Shepard elaborated on this practice in a separate interview with Gwyneth Paltrow, which was recounted by Us Weekly here:

“I had this thought that if I can’t commit 20 minutes to remembering I’m an addict each morning, I’m going to end up blowing nine hours a day as an addict.

“I have to be able to say, minimally, this is your commitment. You’ve got to acknowledge you’re an addict every day, first thing, right when you wake up, you write a page. It doesn’t even have to be about being an addict.

“It’s just this physical activity there to remind myself, ‘I have a thing that I’ll never not have.”

Find your format

Journaling can take many forms and be completed in various digital and analog formats.

For me, the gold standard is the Morning Pages routine created by author and creativity expert Julia Cameron.

Cameron, who wrote the book The Artist’s Way (affiliate link), was also addicted to alcohol and cocaine in her youth.

As I detailed in this article, How the Queen of Creativity’s strategy helped me ditch alcohol, Cameron partied so hard that even Hunter S. Thompson suggested she pump the brakes.

Morning Pages was one of the tools she used to kick her bad habits for good.

She is now 44 years sober.

For the uninitiated, here’s how Cameron describes Morning Pages in her book:

“Morning Pages are three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning. *There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages* they are not high art.

“They are not even “writing.” They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind– and they are for your eyes only.

“Morning Pages provoke, clarify, comfort, cajole, prioritize and synchronize the day at hand. Do not over-think Morning Pages: just put three pages of anything on the page…and then do three more pages tomorrow.”

As I described here, I tweaked Morning Pages slightly to add a gratitude component called the 4–2–1 journal that I first discovered via my favourite quit alcohol guru, Craig Beck.

I use one of the three pages as a 4–2–1 journal, listing:

• 4 things I’m grateful for
• 2 people I’m sending love to
• 1 manifestation request

This allows me to not only shed my unhelpful thoughts, but bring my focus to a more positive place to start the day.

Whatever format you choose, whether it’s Morning Pages or Shepard’s 20 minutes of writing, the practice is deeply beneficial.

Whether you’re trying to quit a bad habit like drugs or alcohol or just want to bring some peace to your mind and body, I can’t recommend some form of journaling highly enough.

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