How Self-Compassion Helped Me Quit Drinking

A student asked his master, must I give up my bad habits to walk the path?

The master replied, if you walk sincerely with awareness and self-compassion, your bad habits may abandon you.

I never thought I could give up alcohol because I believed I needed it to relax, to feel connected, to quiet my mind for a while. Then I came across that teaching and I started to see everything a little differently.

You see, most people think healing happens through force, discipline, restriction, fighting yourself every day. But what if real change happens differently? What if the habit simply leaves when the version of you that needed it begins to heal?

That’s what slowly happened to me with alcohol. The more I meditated, the more honest I became with myself, the more I learned how to sit with discomfort. Let it flow through me. Let me understand it. Forgive everything and everyone instead of trying to escape it.

Things started shifting big time.

There’s a Buddhist technique sometimes called urge surfing. Instead of obeying a craving immediately, you pause, you breathe, you delay. You observe the sensation without becoming it.

What’s even more fascinating is an alcohol habit can be fueled by a spiritual surge. But sadly, it clogs the very awareness that we need to find ourselves in that surge.

Awareness changes the pattern. Compassion softens the nervous system. Both together create freedom. Over time, your inner state begins to rise naturally because peace starts feeling safer than escape.

And this happens best on the subconscious level. Science says our subconscious mind controls around 90% of our behavior.

And I’ve done other meditations to help people with their subconscious to reach abundance or achieve their ideal weight. And so somebody reached out to ask me if I would do one to help them break the chain of alcohol addiction. And so by request, I created the freedom from alcohol guided meditation.

It’s part of a bigger course that includes these walk and talks and some ancient exercises that help us not only feel amazing, but cleanse out the toxic emotions and negativity that might be holding us back and pushing us to do things like drink.

And so this is not through force, but through transformation. Because sometimes the goal isn’t to fight the habit forever. Sometimes it’s simply to become the version of yourself the habit can no longer keep up with. And if you’re interested, simply click here.