Old habits die hard - in fact, they may never die

In an MIT study, researchers studied neuron behavior in rats when they associated cues with rewards. When the rewards were removed, the rats reverted to their previous behavior. But when they were returned, the patterns continued as though they had been there all along.

Ann Garbiel, the professor of neuroscience in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive science, stated that “it is as though, somehow, the brain retains a memory of the habit context, and this pattern can be triggered if the right habit cues come back.”

That’s great for good habits. It’s not so good for the bad ones.

Over the last several months, I’ve gone on trips that have reignited almost all my old vices. Smoking, beer, eating badly, alcohol in general. And when I got back home, all the urges that I spent time getting rid of individually (each for 3+ months) came back in force.

So I did a reset. For 31 days I’ve clicked away all urges. This was a test of 2 mechanisms:

How would tally clicking work for multiple habits?
How well would it work for resetting vice removal?

Here’s my data:

Qualitatively, it felt a lot harder. I had strong urges, mostly for alcohol. I think in part this was because I was retraining 4 different vices at once. It’s also been getting cold, and the urge to get out and have a beer at a warm bar is appealing. My monthly cheat fell smack dab in the middle of all this. And that cheat came right when Lydia came back from a work trip. The absence and return of a significant other seems to affect my mood and my cravings. I also still don’t think I have a good method of dealing with relaxation and getting out with regards to alcohol.

But those were all internal measurements. Externally, it worked just as well as any other time. At no point was I remotely close to breaking (outside of the official cheat). And I keep forgetting how difficult that would have been before for any one vice. I tend to look at the numbers and sigh, forgetting the the numbers are for urges, not indulging.

Happily the more salient problem isn’t knowing if the technique works, but knowing when I’m done with the reset.

I attempted 2 methods to get a feel for this:

First, I took the SRHI to determine whether the action was fully automatic. The action I assessed was “clicking my vices and watching them go past without indulging in them”.

The result: 76/84.

And the only reason it was this low was due to a few questions on not thinking about the action. Automatic behaviors are thoughtless. But the action I was assessing was about mindfully seeing an urge, so of course it was going to be artificially low. The other question that wasn’t perfect was one of identity - which is a complicated question. Am I person who “clicks away my vices”? Well…sometimes. Meanwhile, frequency, automaticity, and feeling weird NOT doing the task were all rated as high as possible.

Second, I tried seeing how low my clicks were at the end of my reset and compared them to individual vice removal clicks towards the end of my 3 months. Towards the end of the reset, I was getting anywhere from 10 - 20 clicks. Dividing by 4 vices, that’s 3.74. For the previous vices I have data on, the last 10 days were at:

Alcohol: 0-6
Food: 0-4
Beer: 0-4

I did a reset right after my first trip, and got it down to 0-6.

I do not know why this chart reflects a better reset than my most recent one, especially since halfway through I had an official cheat. And for the last 10 days I was actually cheating (one of my trips was during this time). Which is bizarre. And it’s something I’ve noticed before - actually cheating is bad and counter to the ends of this project, but it results in fewer urges.

This is all rather ad-hoc. There is an overlap between alcohol and beer. The older vices I removed returned quicker. But it did seem to be a more rapid return in general, lending a bit of personal creedance to the study that suggested we have patterns already formed, ready to switch over.

This entire process reminds me of how people talk about detoxing. I have a friend that does a one month food detox earlier in the year, and I know people who do a “dry January”.

But like challenges, I feel people do it in the wrong order. Challenges work better once you’ve established a solid habit. Using a challenge levels them up because when you go back down to your regular habit, you naturally tend to execute them at slightly elevated levels.

Perhaps this is the best way to use a detox - not to kickstart anything, but to get back to an already established level once you inevitably fall off the wagon.

And I’m glad I fell off. One of my trips was to Grand Rapids, Michigan, known for its beer, where I sampled the best I’ve ever had. Other vices contributed to great experiences of shared friendship and exploration, all situations I do not regret and probably won’t regret in the future.

I enjoyed falling off the wagon. Perhaps the key is falling off – and getting back on – well.

photocred: wagon by Conal Gallagher