The Life Of Bryony - Why You Can’t Do Dry January, with Catherine Gray

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

Have you already “failed” at Dry January? If that’s the case, welcome to the club. In this episode, I’m joined by the brilliant Catherine Gray to unpick why you can’t just grit your teeth and get through a month off booze – and why resolutions in general are so hard to keep. We talk about what is really going on in your brain when you suddenly remove your usual drink, why your nervous system kicks off, and how shame and self‑loathing make you more likely to reach for the thing you’re trying to quit. From Dry January to doom‑scrolling, biscuits, vapes, porn, shopping and phone use, Catherine explains how our “stone age” brains are trying to survive in an ultra‑addictive modern world.​ We dig into dopamine, “little addictions”, friction, and tiny cogs of change – so you can feel informed and be a little bit kinder to yourself. If you’ve ever wondered “What’s wrong with me?” around addiction, this episode will help you realise: absolutely nothing. BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODECatherine’s new book, Little Addictions, is available to buy from the 29th January 2026.WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOUGot something to share? Message us on @lifeofbryonypod on Instagram.If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might need it – it really helps! Bryony xxCREDITS:Host: Bryony GordonGuest: Catherine GrayProducer: Laura Elwood-CraigAssistant Producer: Tippi WillardStudio Manager: Sam ChisholmEditor: Luke ShelleyExec Producer: Jamie East  A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Have you already broken your New Year's resolutions? If that's the case, welcome to the club. Today's episode of The Life of Briney is all about why you find it so hard to stop doing stuff that's bad for you or start doing stuff that's good for you. Catherine Gray is the incredible author of the unexpected joy of being sober. And her new book, Little Addictions, is all about thriving in a world that wants us addicted to food. food, booze, vapes, social media, anything really. By the end of this chat, you're going to feel a whole lot more informed in control

and like the absolute legend you already are, regardless of how good you are, at sticking to New Year's resolutions. When you feel guilty about doing something, you're more likely to do more of it, whether it's porn, gaming, shopping, whatever it is. And that is why I wrote the book, because I wanted to, educate people as to why we get hooked onto these things and how to forgive ourselves for it. My chat with Catherine, coming up right after this. I was reading Little Addictions and I thought to myself,

we're actually living in the age of addiction, aren't we? Oh yeah, absolutely. There's so many addictive things. We stand no chance. Everyone has some sort of little addiction or several like I do. Yeah. So what are your little addictions? Now that you don't drink anymore. Yeah. So what I found was once I'd conquered my big addictions, which for me were number one, alcohol, then it was love, then it was cigarette. So they were like my top three. Then I like moved down to the lower rung, like medium addictions, which were shopping into my overdraft. I loved a bit of overdraft shopping. Sex for validation, like sex that I didn't actually want to have. I was just doing it to please the other person and doom scrolling the news. What I was still left with, was like several little addictions, which they're just like addictions in their infancy. They're just like seeds of addiction. And they're at the point where you don't necessarily have to quit.

You just have to sort of regain mastery over them. So my little addictions are TV, I love a bit of peppermint tea, chewing gum. Chewing gum. Yeah. I love. I mean, I can laugh. I don't want to like little this little addiction. And if anyone listening or watching, it's like, that's mine too, Briney.

How dare you undermine my little addiction? I want you to know that I'm here for you. Thank you. Caffeine, ice cream, biscuits, bin shopping. So I don't shop beyond my means now, but I do still, when I go shopping, I'll spend at least a few hundred quid. So I wanted to, have you heard that saying? So I think it's Gretchen Rubin who says that when you write a book, it's me search rather than research. And so a lot of this was me like, I need to get a hold of these things.

And so I need to go and talk to all the experts. So I spoke to 24 experts in total and find out what I can do. Because I have no idea how to moderate. I know how to quit things now. But I really haven't got a clue when it comes to sort of, you know, moderation. But of course, we live, this is the whole point of the book. And what I think is really important and what I want to get through to people listening now is that what we do is we take. make a resolution and we go, I'm not going to drink for January.

I'm going to, I'm not going to shop. I'm not going to bin shop for January. I'm not going to do any online shopping or I'm not going to eat any ultra-processed food or whatever the thing is. And we do this, though, kind of forgetting that we live in a society, well, in a world where, you know, the finest minds are being paid to come up with ways to make us want to eat the UPFs. want to smoke the vape, you know, to want to vape, want to be on our phones, want to do the thing

that we're trying not to do. And I think that's the really interesting thing. What I want to kind of get across to people is that it's really hard to moderate now. Yeah. And despite all of the sort of the drink responsibly, gamble responsibly, you know, eat a healthy balanced diet, We live in a world where the greatest minds are being paid to stop us from being responsible. Yeah. They don't want us to be responsibly. They don't want us to use apps like gambling apps or game responsibility. They don't want us to.

They actually want us to use it more, which is why they create it to be as sticky as possible. And as sticky. So when we say sticky, we mean as addictive as possible. Yeah, absolutely. So like you said, we have geniuses. Absolutely. You know, some of those experts that you interviewed for the book were people whose job was to create, quote-unquote, habit-forming products. Exactly.

Yeah, so he's like from the dark side, but then he's also telling people how to unhook themselves. So he's like playing both sides. He's a bit of a diplomat. But he was really interesting to talk to because he designs products so that they are more moorish and hooky and we can't put them down. but also he's helping people to unhook themselves. Like himself, he's got addicted to some of these things. So it's just the system is rigged. It's a fix.

There's so many addictive things. It's absolutely no wonder if you find that you're doing things more than you intend to. It's actually a wonder if you're not. Like I don't know anyone that's not addicted to something in a small way. So what can we do? Because it's our responsibility ultimately. It's not all our fault because, you know, You know, that's society, that's marketing, that's food designers installing bliss point into food and, you know, marketing alcohol so that we think that we can't socialise without it and all of that noise.

But ultimately it's down to us to figure it out and find a way to use it in the way that we intend to or not use it at all. Like when you've got a medium or big addiction, that, you know, abstinence is the best option usually. but with these little addictions that you can maybe wrangle down, which I have done through the process of writing the book, apart from nicotine. Really? Yeah, nicotine lozenges. I'm the only weirdo that I know that's addicted to nicotine notches,

apart from one other person that I've met, everyone else vapes. Do you vape? No. Okay, so I am nearly three years cigarette-free. And I mean, I feel like I know enough about addiction now that I knew that I had to just go cold turkey with cigarettes and not do the vaping, because I knew I'll just transfer this addiction to another addiction.

So, no, I haven't ever vaped, actually. And I feel quite like there's a weirdness, there's a kind of sense of my mind of like, God, that's something that's really obviously very addictive, Brian. And my brain is so mental that it literally says, why do that's something you could get addicted to as if it's like a good thing. But I get it because I'm such a sticky person. I find that I just sort of walk around the world

and I'm like, where is this shopping bag come from? Where's the packet of harrowbeau come from? And I do think there are certain people. Now, addictive personality is a myth. They've loads of experts say that. Really? Yeah, there's no singular addictive personality. But what you do have is three things

that really predispose you to any sort of addiction. and those things are neurodivergence. Okay. Early pick up of the thing. So that can be anything. So I started drinking when I was 12. Yeah. Started smoking when I was 13.

If somebody starts gaming when they're 11, like they're much more likely to be addicted to it. Our brains are still developing until we're in our mid-20s. Yeah, 25, they say. Yeah. Although some, you know, some I expect to say earlier. But it's, and then the other one is like a rocky childhood. And a lot of people hear childhood trauma and think that's definitely not me.

But if you look at the, there's a thing called adverse childhood experiences test. Aces. Yes, exactly. It sounds like you might have done it. And if you do it, you'll find that some of the things are surprising and not as dramatic as you might think. Like being hit, like I'm Gen X. I was smacked. And yet you don't really class that as being hit as a child.

But a clip around the ear. Smacking was like it was very normal. It was completely normal. I don't think I know anyone of my sort of generation that wasn't smacked. So it's being hit. Mm-hmm. Or being sworn at or belittled, anything like that, or being adjacent to an adult with addiction.

So all of those things, those three things, neurodivergence, early pickup and any kind of like childhood trauma, really, really increase the chances if you're being addicted to something, whether it's gaming, gambling, porn, alcohol, nicotine, cannabis, whatever. It's something to do with dopamine and also the fact that you look for things to self-soothe. It's very complex, but they do know that those three things are linked. We're going to get on to dopamine later because I know it is, I mean, it's not a buzzword. It's a chemical, but it's spoken about a lot on social media and I want to come to that.

But what I really found fascinating is when you start to understand your brain, you start to understand that addiction can be rooted in evolutionary processes. So a lot of these things that become sticky to us, the things we're using maybe modern, so social media or vapes or whatever it is, but the urge for them is ancient. So we have Stone Age brains in modern bodies. And a lot of these things are sticky to us because of those ancient impulses. And I think when we start to understand, that, it does make it that bit easier to step away from them. Can we talk a bit about that?

Oh, yeah. So people pleasing, for instance, I know that you're people pleased. Me too. Reformed mostly. But that is just such an inbuilt ancestral urge to stay within the tribe. Because if you didn't, that could mean death. So that is something that we can't really deprogram ourselves from. We can change our behaviour, but the urge is always going to be there. And social media that taps into that because we want the likes, we want the followers, we want to put up a post in people to comment on it. And that's why we just check, check, check, check, check to see if our tribe, aka followers like what we're doing because we want to be included in belong.

And you can't turn that off. It's just, it's so deep in your neural pathways. There's nothing you can do about it. And by the way, I'm not asserting all of this myself. I spoke to evolutionary psychologists and neuroscientists and they backed up all of this. But when you look at almost any addiction, if it's behavioural, there is a reason for it, like shopping, hunting and gathering and hoarding.

Right. I mean, those things help to survive. You know, gambling, that's all to do with reward uncertainty, which is also something that is an evolutionary urge, where if something is less certain, like if a reward is uncertain, We're more interested in it, which basically explains my love life in my 20s. Right. Yeah, yeah.

So they text me back. Not so bothered. If they don't text me back every time, oh my God, I want to marry you. So we're actually hardwired to want the thing we can't have. Yeah. And it's because, so one of my experts said, so for instance, you have a tree that's fruit bearing and it's fruit bearing all year round. That's a certain reward.

Your brain becomes less interested in it. Whereas if it's something that sees something. and it only bears fruit a few months a year, say, you become very interested in that tree because you need to keep an eye on it. That's why a reward uncertainty, which is like gaming, gambling, porn, all sorts of addictions, that's why it really turns us on and gets us hooked.

Okay. I want to talk about alcohol and food addiction because they are, I think, big things that listeners of the life of briny care about. And I, you know, thinking that January is the time when people do try things like dry January, it's often a time when we try to kind of detox after a period of retoxing, I suppose. And when I think back to before I got properly sober and started having to do dry January, dry February, dry March and every month of the year.

But I remember I always, I would try dry January and I would get to like day five, day six. And I would feel like such a failure and such a fuck quit. And I realized like I had no chance of ever like succeeding at it really because I had no tools in my back pocket. And I was literally going in there with a brain that was hardwired to see alcohol as the reward. And there's a great bit in the book where you talk about our brains, if we're regular drinkers, our brains adapt to alcohol. And if we suddenly stop, our brains will get stressed, you know. And if we only know alcohol is the thing that calms the stress, we will, our brains will do anything they can to make us pick up a drink, you know. Yeah.

And so I look back at myself kind of going into those Januaries and then being so hard on myself when I couldn't do it. And it's the same with food, you know, like we're like, why can't I stick to the dial or whatever? And you explain in this book about how we're hardwired to eat and store calories. So we don't starve. That's how we survived on the savannahs and the planes. And if you suddenly stop eating as much, your brain is going to tell you to, it's going to make you want to eat, you know. And when I think about our brains and that evolution. aspect, it really helps me to be a bit kinder to myself about my ability to be good.

This ridiculous language we assign to behaviours. And I just kind of wanted to talk a bit about that with you because we are extraordinarily unkind to ourselves when we break resolutions. Absolutely. And one of the neuroscientists that I spoke to, he was like, our brains still have a honey axe in their hands. Okay, sorry, what is a honey axe? So a honey axe in the ancestral environment, like on the savannas or the woods or whatever, you would have, if you'd come across a honeycomb, you would have cracked it open with a honey axe and eaten as much of it as you possibly could. And that is just how our brains still operate, except that we have like endless aisles.

of, you know, primary coloured sweets and chocolate to gorge on... And the honey... Our apple pay or whatever on our phone. Exactly. Crack that open. And, you know, yeah, you can get treats like through whatever, get here within half an hour, 10 minutes sometimes. And we just stand no chance.

Our brains are always going to have that urge. But you just need to find those ways to sort of self-bind and pick up tools that make it easier. for yourself. The urge isn't ever going to go away when it comes to food because it's such a key aspect of survival that we gorge on high calorie, high salt, high fat, high sugar food. What would your words of advice be to someone who's already broken their New Year's resolution? Oh, I get it. I mean, my record for Dry January was the 7th. Oh, wow, that was really good, Catherine. I was quite proud of that.

It's like, yeah. That's incredible. Okay, just here's because we are confessional on the life of briny. I only did dry January once and the only way I managed to do it was by drinking on the 13th. It was my sister's birthday. And I'm like, no, you didn't do dry January at all. That's not doing dry January. I could never do it.

Yeah. It's just too hard. And yet I'm 12 years sober and you're like nearly that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it just, I think, I mean, but for big addictions, naming it is a big part of it. You know, I think you need to name the addiction and then you can start to find all the tools.

But it doesn't mean that even if you've got like a little addiction to alcohol, there's this really interesting study that I have to tell you about. So one of my experts told me, he was like, we took these social occasional drinkers, which actually very few people are occasional drinkers, many people drink habitually. And we showed them their favourite alcohol. And the part of the brain that lit up was called the nucleus accumbens, and that's to do with pleasure and fun. And then we showed the favourite alcohol to addicted drinkers. And the part of the brain that activated, there was no activity in the nucleus accumbens, which is to do with pleasure.

Part of the brain that activated was the dorsal striatum, which is to do with habit and automatoticity. So driving, typing, things that we do automatically without really thinking about it. And he's like, that's why it's so stressful when addicted drinkers don't drink because their brain has learnt that as a habit. And when they don't do it, they're like, oh, my God, I feel so stressed now. And that's why you fall off. So it could be anyone who is a habitual drink. You wouldn't have to necessarily define yourself as an alcoholic to have that bit of your brain lighting up.

It could be anyone who has a drink, you know, a glass of red wine when they get home after work. Yeah, the way that I see addiction is like a spectrum, like a one to ten spectrum. And I was an eight or a nine, probably a nine. Whereas you can be a two or a three and you still feel that slight discomfort when you go into a social situation. You don't drink because you normally drink in a social situation. And one of the things about alcohol is it's literally everywhere. Like it's at baby showers. It's being offered to you at supermarkets. Try this new bailey's whatever liqueur. You know, you are being offered it all the time. Also, I've always found it really fascinating when people I say, I don't drink. And it's like how just the word to, just the verb to drink, donates in the UK drinking alcohol. When actually I do drink. I drink water. We're drinking. I drink coffee. Do you know what I mean? But we are so drenched in booze in the UK that to drink just means alcohol. Yeah, absolutely. But it's just how our culture is. And, you know, we have one of the boozeiest culture. as in the world, along with some of the Nordic countries.

And it's just, it's such a battle. And when you think about it, so one of the things with dry January is people are often trying to do dry January in a house that still contains booze. Because we're so used to having alcohol in our houses. If you live with housemates, a partner, whatever, even if you live by yourself, you tend to just keep the alcohol in the house. And that doesn't make any sense because we would never try and quit cigarettes or any other thing, you know, heroin and cocaine. You wouldn't do that and keep it in the house.

Often in eyeline as well. There was a fascinating statistic that you quote in the book, which is it's to do with gambling. But it's like if you live within 50 miles of the casino, your chances of being hooked on gambling double. Yeah. It's that thing of like, if you, there's a great saying in sobriety, which is that if you keep going to, if you keep going to barbers, you're going to end up getting a haircut eventually. And it is like we make our lives so much harder for ourselves. If we're trying to do dry January, we're trying to be sober, whatever it is, you know, by having it there, present and around us. And also engaging our activities like going to the pub or something, you know, I'm going to do dry January, but I'm going to continue to be the sociable person I am because I don't want the world to change.

Let's go to, yeah, let's just meet. Let's go and do the pub quiz. Yeah, we don't. You're going to drink. Exactly. We don't do that with anything else. Like you wouldn't quit smoking and go to a smoking party. You just wouldn't.

So that's one of the things I think people, you know, it could help. Make it as easy for yourself as possible. Like make it as frictionless as possible to not drink. And if you need to avoid the pub for a month, then do that. That's fine. You know, that's what I did. in the first month. And I had an alcohol-free home for the first month. Eight years in, I still don't like really having who's in the house. I don't have it in the house. But at the time,

I moved back in with my parents and they hid it all in the garage and locked the garage. And then my stepdad like slowly reintroduced beer and I was okay around beer for some reason. Like wine or cider really would have triggered me. But it's just about knowing what your triggers are and removing them. because one of the things that I learned while writing little addictions is that we are so triggered by sight and smell. It's unbelievable. Smell in particular actually. So when you walk past a pub and you get that waft, that berry waft. It's gross now, but in the early days, that would have triggered a pull in me.

And smell is such a powerful urge creator. and also sites. So, I mean, even if you just put it away in a cupboard, that will help. Like, don't put the biscuit jar on the kitchen counter. Put it in a cupboard. That will help a lot. Or just don't keep them in the house. So that's one of the, that is what self-binding is ultimately.

It's just sort of making it easier for yourself not to do harm to yourself. And let's, can you talk to me a bit about how what I found really fascinating is reading about how the alcohol industry. funds so much of the actual tools that we use to get sober or to do dry January. So there's a lot where you call dark apps? Yeah. So the Institute of Alcohol Studies have called them dark apps. And they are apps that are funded by the likes of Drink Aware. Now, Drink Aware is an independent body, but it is funded mostly by the alcohol industry.

Just as Gamble Aware is funded by the gambling industry. Exactly. So they're sort of made to give money to these organisations to like offset the potential bad that these habits can do. They're like, we will make ourselves feel better by saying, but we are trying to help people to make sure that they drink responsibly by creating these apps, by funding these apps. Exactly. And the Institute of Alcohol Studies found that these dark apps actually nudge people to drink more. How is this?

By doing things like using social norming messages, I'm just literally quoting the study now. And also they don't have. So, you know, like a small glass of wine is 125 mil. I never drank a small glass of wine. I don't know about you. I drank a soup bowl. Yeah.

I was always 250. If somebody got me a 175, I was insulted and affronted. And I still remember all the line. I know exactly, I know exactly how much 250. Mill is. And so these are at, say for instance, they'll only have like the lower units on there. So a glass of wine will be one, two, five. Whereas most pubs in the UK don't even serve that.

So when you tick it, like a lot of them are like counting your units to keep on top of how much you're consuming. When you tick it and you think you've counted that glass of wine, you've actually counted half of what you've actually drunk, if you see what I mean. So there's an also 82% of clinical stuff. studies into alcohol over the past hundred years have been funded or authored by the alcohol industry. Right. And they're sort of telling us that actually some alcohol is good for us. Exactly. And what we had until recently, it's been completely dispelled now, but we had this

message that was threaded through the press and through our like social knowledge that a little bit of alcohol was better for you than no alcohol, that people who drink moderately live longer than people who are teetotalers, but what they didn't do was compare lifelong teetotelers to people who drink a little bit. So they were comparing people like you and me who drank the world. You used to drink the world. Yeah. I drank for 21 years like a sailor and smoked and, you know, took cocaine and all sorts of things. So of course a moderate drinker is going to be healthier than me. That makes sense. But when they cut out all the people that used to drink, like they used to have an addiction and actually compared moderate drinkers to lifelong teetotelers, that completely disappeared.

Wow. I mean, it's so incredible, isn't it, how much we are entwined in this system. Like, I'm not a conspiracy theorist or anything like that. But when you do sit down and look at kind of like, yeah, the sort of the way that big companies, you know, they want us to carry on drinking. You know, I always remember when I was still drinking, looking at those warnings, I guess, on bottles of beer, which were like, remember to drink responsibly.

And I'd look at them. And every time I looked at them, I'd be like, I'm a fuck-wit. Yeah. That's what I would see. I wouldn't see drink responsibly. I'd see briny is a fuck-wit. Yeah. Because briny can't drink responsibly.

Yeah. And it was my fault. And actually, alcohol is an incredibly addictive substance. Yeah. You know, and I think it's really important to remember that. And this brings me to this tendency we have to beat ourselves up for wanting things we shouldn't. And why that actually pushes us further into the shame cycle. So if we engage in self-flagellation, so if you are the person going, I don't understand.

why I can't drink responsibly. It must be because I'm a fuckwit. It must be because I'm an idiot. That actually makes us crave the thing more. Yeah, absolutely. So one of my experts called it the guilt paradox. Okay. So what happens is when you pile guilt on top of it, say you try not to eat biscuits and you eat biscuits and you feel guilty about eating biscuits. You get stressed because you feel like a failure. Then when you eat more biscuits, you're going to feel better. So the self-soothing cycle and the guilt, self-soothe, guilt, it amplifies. So actually when you feel guilty about doing something, you're more likely to do more of it. Wow. Whether it's porn, gaming, gamutely like shopping, whatever it is. Okay, but the answer isn't then to go,

oh, okay, well, I'm not going to feel guilty about watching porn. No, because if there is someone listening and they have, you know, the chances are if you're listening to this, you have a problem with a little addiction and you actually don't want to be doing it. So the answer isn't to go, oh, well, it's okay. It's fine. I'm doing it. It's to be kind to yourself. Yeah. And to go, well, actually, yeah, of course I'm doing this thing because it's incredibly sticky and I have a human brain. Yeah, exactly. And that is why I wrote the book, because I wanted to educate people as to why we all want to do these things and why we get hooked onto these things and how to forgive ourselves for it, but also tool ourselves up. Okay, so let's tool ourselves up. Okay,

Yeah. Let's get into the tooling ourselves up. What would be your biggest piece of advice to someone trying to unstick themselves from a little addiction, nicotine, caffeine, porn, gambling, alcohol, whatever it is, food? First thing is friction. So make it as frictionless as possible to not do the thing and install friction. to do the thing. So this can look like, for instance, you know, when I was trying, when I was in very early recovery and I was slip sliding all over the place, that's the other thing. It's never linear. It's always like cyclical when you're trying to quit something or moderate it down. I would get home from work and wash my hair and leave it wet on purpose so that I was less likely

to go out to the shop to get wine. So that's like a friction. So say, for instance, if you have an issue with gaming, delete all the games from your phone, because your phone's always with you, game on a console instead if you want to moderate your use down. It can look like anything that puts a block in between you and doing the thing and also makes it easier for you to not do the thing. So you could buy, you know, there's like cookie safes. I have friends. A cookie safe. Yeah, so they're called K-safes. That's the most famous brand. And a lot of people don't know that you can set them for days or weeks, things like that that just make it easier for yourself to do it in the way that you intend to. Wow. That sounds really hard to me still.

Like the thought of having it, knowing it's in the house, in a safe. Like, I mean, but this is what, I'm a person of big addictions and not little addictions because I would crack open the safe. But there are things that you can do. Also, in terms of phone use, because I know, you know, we haven't even got onto that about, you know, how addictive our phones are and everything is there, you know. And we can sort of lock them down a bit like they are, you know, we are children, can't we? Absolutely. I mean, there's tons of apps that you can get that install friction in between you in the app. There's one called Breeze or one sec where you have to take like three deep breaths, I think it is, before you open an app. And it shows that it, you know, drops your use of opening an app dramatically.

I use what's called a symbolic storehold where I use this rainbow seal of my daughters and I put my phone under it because I want to have family time. And because I have to remove – So like a cuddly toy. Yeah, like a cuddly toy. So because I have to remove one of her toys to get to my phone, it installs that friction where I'm like, okay, I'm choosing my phone over my daughter. Oh, that's really harsh.

I know. But it works. It's cut my phone use from like four hours to between. two and three. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry about this morning. I got my weekly update on my daily phone use. Yeah. And I'm just listening to you going, it's cut my daily phone use from four hours to do because my daily phone use last week, on average, was eight hours. Wow. And that's pretty normal. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the average is six, the national average is six. Fuck. Yeah. And some people check it through the night.

teenagers in particular pick up their phones through the night. In fact, most people sleep with it beside them. I do, yeah. I mean, it's my alarm. Yeah. So it's so hard to, but it's up to us to find these ways that work to, you know, cut it down. And if that means sometimes I will delete Instagram, if I'm using Instagram, which I'm not really at the minute, I'll delete it every day and then reinstall it the next day. And it always comes up with, you're going to lose some data, whatever, blah,

You never do. You just reinstall it. But that's my way of managing it so that I only spend 20 minutes a day or whatever. You just need to find the ways for you that work. But there's tons in the book. There's like 130. So, you know, you're going to find some way. So create friction.

Talk to me about activating the power of the prefrontal cortex. First of all, tell me what the fuck the prefrontal cortex is. And secondly, tell me what. like so important. Okay. The prefrontal cortex is a big chunk of cortex at the front of your brain. And I've spoken to several neuroscientists who describe it as like the adult of the brain. So this is the thing that we want to engage to stop us from engaging in the little diction. It's like it's the kind of responsible parent standing there going, no, Brianie, put your phone down or, you know, don't pick up a drink. It's, you don't want to do that. It's like the angel on your shoulder.

Absolutely. And so what happens in big addictions is the prefrontal cortex actually shrinks. I don't think I've got much of my prefrontal cortex. I think mine is very small. I think mine's the size of the key. And so, but good news is in recovery, it regains that lost volume. And actually, one study even showed that it gets bigger than your average prefrontal cortex because you are doing so much resisting. Yeah, exactly. So. It's the key. It really is the key when it comes to making any decision that is, you know, more in line with your long-term self than your short-term self. Okay. That is the prefrontal cortex. So how do we, how do we activate prefrontal cortex and stop it from shrinking to the size of a peak? So there's things that you can do. So installing the paws, which we've already talked about, because that allows it to come online.

So that's just stopping and taking a moment. Yeah. Like in 10 minutes I can. One of my behaviour. behavioral experts said that that's like their motto in their family, even their teenage daughter is like, in 10 minutes, I can watch TV or I can watch YouTube or whatever, you know, sticky things they want to do. That really helps because it brings in that like golden pause where you like, do I actually want to do that? Another thing that really helps is say, for instance, if you have a habit of sitting down and watching TV of an evening and cracking open a beer or smoking or whatever it is you do, then you can. could read instead because that activates the prefrontal cortex and it means that you're much more likely to dive into the harrowbow or whatever it is that you do in tandem with watching the TV. Vision boards? I've got vision boards written down. Yeah. I mean, listen, we have had other guests talk about the power of vision boards. Tell me why they work. They work because we are thinking about our long-term self. That is essentially what the prefrontal frontal cortex does. It thinks about the bigger picture and the person that you want to be, like, in a month or a year or five

years time. I don't make vision boards. I'm too lazy. I can't be asked to collage. I don't want to do glue whatever. I just write a letter to myself like this year I want to, and that sort of activates it. But when you're thinking in a week's time or a month's time or whatever, that is when you're activating your prefrontal cortex. Okay. So we've spoken about the prefrontal. frontal cortex. We're going to do one more sciencey thing. Because I hear about this all the time on the social media sites I shouldn't be spending so long on.

And this is dopamine. Yeah. As I said earlier, it's not a buzzword, but it is a buzzword. I mean, it's literally a word that describes a chemical in our brains, which makes us want things. It's not about liking. It's about wanting things. Exactly. You've got it. It's blamed for a lot of ills in society. you know, dopamine hunting. And there's also talk of doing things like dopamine fasting

to sort of make us, I don't know, happier, more grounded, more balanced. But we all need dopamine. A lot of these things that we are addicted to are things where we're finding fast dopamine. Yeah, exactly. And the key is actually to access slow dopamine, isn't it? How do we get off the dopamine roller coaster? so that we're accessing less fast, high-speed dopamine and more kind of calm, leveled-out dopamine.

Okay, so first of all, we'll talk about some activities that are fast dopamine. So in the book, I talk about the sticky eight, and these are the most addictive substances and activities, and those are alcohol, nicotine, cannabis, gaming, gambling, porn, our phones, and ultra-processed food. Those are the eight stickiest substances or activities. And they all give us to fuss dopamine. So what this means is that you want it, even if you don't necessarily like it anymore, you still want it. And you get a surge of dopamine, which is the wanting molecule.

And then what happens is you get dragged below baseline with your dopamine, your levels, and then you want it even more. So I'm sure all of us can relate to this. So a day that's full of fast dopamine might look like waking up, eating a sugary pastry, having a coffee, getting onto social media. This is my morning. And then just like ping ponging, like slaloming from fast opamine to fast dopamine, you know, just things that give you that quick fix of like woo.

And then you get into trouble because you're dragged below baseline the entire day. And then you're looking for something else. Yeah, you're looking for porn or a game or a gambling app or whatever it is or you want to buy something. With slow dopamine, it means that you never get dragged below baseline. Okay. So this is why in the book I talk about why dopamine fasting is a bad idea. It's actually been misunderstood. What is dopamine fasting?

Dopamine fasting is where you cut out all of those activities, everything, but you don't necessarily replace it with, slow dopamine, which doesn't make any sense to me. So I talk about dopamine shifting, which is, so things that provide slow dopamine are things like protein breakfast. So you might wake up and have a protein breakfast, you know, go and do some yoga, go for a cold water dip, like all of these things, you know, do some reading, do some work. Cold water dip strike me as being quite like fast dopamine. Do you know, I would have thought that too because it's like a short shot, shock. but it gives you like

so slow dopamine is like a steady supply that lasts for a long time it's not that big spiky fast phasic dopamine it lasts for a really long time and you never get dragged below and there's loads of studies that show that cold water therapy does that so Dr Anna Lemkeh writes about it

in Dopamine Nation her dopamine nation workbook's really good for dopamine shifting but it's it's all about it doesn't mean that you can like have to get rid of all the fast dopamine. But if you just plot in enough slow dopamine activities, like sitting down and doing your work rather than procrastinating and watching five episodes

of Bosch, which I like to do. Yeah. Okay, so television is fast dopamine? Yeah. Well, it's not as bad as TikTok. So nothing is as bad as TikTok. It's actually, so the experts that I spoke to, they told me that there's, there are some redeeming qualities to television. So it's not too bad. It's not as bad as like reels or YouTube. So we should be embracing more television? No. But like an hour or two, maybe I, so what I do with my television, I love TV. I could easily sit and watch three hours a night if I didn't have a kid.

But I now timebox it within nine to ten. And that really works for me because I've now gotten to, that's become my habit. I watch it between nine and ten. Yeah. And I love TV. I'm not going to start watching it. But so with TV, it can help you process emotions, which is really good. So things like grief, you know when you're watching something, you're like,

oh, that's really got me. And you start crying your eyes out. That's because it actually helps you move through emotions. So unlike Reels, which are like fast flashes, TV has actually got some redeeming qualities. But yeah, TikTok now, I'm afraid. So it's a no to TikTok this January. Well, I mean, you can use. use it, but maybe time box it. That's a really good strategy. So time boxing, explain what

time boxing is. So time boxing, if you give yourself a limit, say, so for instance, you hooked on YouTube, like my partner is, and you're like, I'm going to watch it between seven and eight. And that's it. That can really help. And once it becomes automatic, once you have that, once it's like in your dorsal striatum, then you're onto a winner. Because you can still use it, but you've got it timeboxed. Okay. There's some other. great phrases in the book, which I would like to kind of explore with you now. So there's things like temptation bundling. Yeah, this is really cool. Explain what that is. Okay, so 10 years ago, there was a study and it was called holding Hunger Games hostage at the gym or something like that.

Yeah. And it was only 10 years ago, but they took these iPods, put really Moorish audio books on them, like the Hunger Games, Twilight, John Grisham, all of that, and locked them at the gym and got these participants to go to the gym and they could only listen to the audiobook at the gym. And then they did a control group where they could listen to the audio book anytime they wanted. They found that the ones who had the audiobooks held hostage at the gym went to the gym twice as much. Wow. I know. Do you know what I do think this works in times of exercise because I mostly, I listen to my favorite like dopamine music and like really good audio books only when I'm running. There you go.

And so it becomes my thing where I'm like, I get to listen to Cho tunes or, you know, I get to listen to a woo woo audio book by Louise Hay. That's my time to do it. Yeah. So you're doing it naturally. So something that I do is because of my former propensity to drink two teapots of pepperminty a day. I'm not joking. Like, I was drinking so much. Such a bad habit.

Like, again, like in the grand scheme of bad habits. No, I mean, it's a little addiction. That's the thing. That's what the book's about. It's about things that, you know, it doesn't really matter if you stop. But you want to, like, minimize it. So what I found is when I go to the kettle, switch on the kettle to make some tea, I drink some water.

And just by hydrating myself more, I drink a lot less peppermint tea. Like, I've cut down to two or three cups a day. So it's pairing an activity that you're already doing that you're tempted to do with something that you want to do. Okay. So you could pair anything with anything, you know, that you just take something that you're already doing that you find tempting and you add in something that you want to do. Okay. So like, you can only go on TikTok when you're... Why are you doing lunges?

Lundges. Sounds awful. I know. Okay. Lundges. And what about reward baiting? That can be like say for instance with dry January it might look like okay when we do dry January we tend to just stay in and not doing anything fun right so you've saved all this money by not going out I would say even moderate drinkers are spending what 200 pound a month on alcohol it's so expensive now I've been told that a night out is like 50 quid used to be 25 back in the day we're going way back now so you bait that you bait the fact that you are doing that by spending the money. You don't have to spend all the money, but spend it on doing

something fun instead. Like make it fun. Put some rainbow sprinkles on it. Like dust it and glitter. You know, go and do something cool. Like go for a lovely sauna or go to immersive theater or do whatever you find to be fun. Because otherwise you're not going to have very much fun in January. Yeah. So you need to replace the reward with a different kind of reward. Yeah, exactly. Just, yeah, basically dust it and glitter. Make it more appealing by doing other things instead because otherwise you are going to be bored and you will drift back to the drinking

and find yourself drinking by the 14th which is I think when most people fall off the wagon. Is it? Yeah. Okay, so does this also chime in with the tiny cogs thing? So like putting lots of little tiny cogs into your day to help stop you from engaging in the big cog. Definitely.

So while I was researching the book, I slipped a disc and I lost my big cog in my reward system of running. And I love running. Like it's one of the things that I love to do the most. And so I was like, what am I going to do? And because this expert had told me about the tiny cogs method where you just replace a big cog with lots of little things that you like to do, usually their sources of slow dopamine. I was like, okay, so I'm going to replace it with things like. buying lovely shower. I mean, this sounds so lame, but just like gorgeous shower gel that I love using or taking half an hour each morning to read instead of go for a run. I love doing that.

And because I did that, I didn't feel miserable. So I went and spent 40 hours in a rehab as part of researching the book. And that's when I found out about the Tiny Cogs method. And the expert there, he was saying that when people come to rehab, they've often got two or or three big cogs in their reward system. So those could be alcohol, cocaine and shopping, or, you know, heroin, love and gambling. And what they need to do is find, say, 50 tiny cockhugs to go into their reward system, things that they find rewarding, but that aren't as sticky,

and place them in there instead. And that is so individual, it's hard to find. Well, it's like easing yourself off the addiction, isn't it? Yeah. I always remember, you know, I was lucky enough to go. to rehab and I remember very early on, one of the counsellors saying to me that right now, I remember him saying I was probably like 11 day sober. And he said, Brian, right now your brain is used to huge amounts of dopamine.

Yeah. Because you have been taking drugs and drinking for the last two decades at extraordinary levels, right? And your brain is craving. huge amounts of dopamine. And we need, and he also spoke about GABA. It's all these sort of chemicals that become completely out of whack when you have been drinking and drugging or whatever.

And he said, you know, actually most people, their dopamine will be relieved when they hear a bird tweeting in a tree or like at the smile of a child. Yeah. And he was like, one day, briny, that's, what will release dopamine in you, but right now it isn't. And I sat there thinking, that sounds fucking rubbish. I don't know if I want this day.

But we need to ease you so that your dopamine levels come back to normal. And it was true. And I do think there were lots of little things I remember being told like, go and get your nails done. And I was like, what the fuck? How is the fact, how is getting my nails done going to help with the fact that I'm like a rampant fucking cocaine? addict and alcoholic, you know.

But it's true, you introduce all these little pillars into your life to kind of just sort of, I guess it's like scaffolding to sort of hold you up while you're getting the foundations built properly. Absolutely. It's those tiny rewards that you plug into your day. And if you're taking something big out like a big cog, you need to replace it with other stuff. And it sounds so Pollyanna, like the whole birds tweeting.

and whatever, but now I'm genuinely, I love birds. Oh my God, Buzz tweeting and my child smiling at me absolutely do make me, they do, it does set my dopamine offer. And I don't know if people listening are like wanting to just give up alcohol for January or whether it's something that they want to look to for a more long-term solution. I don't know. Whatever reason that you've tuned into this podcast today is your reason. and you're on whatever path.

But what I wanted to say was I remember when I first got sober, in 12-step fellowships, they talk a lot to you about how you are going to be living a life beyond your wildest dreams. And I was like, what do you mean? And in my head, a life beyond my wildest dreams was all those fast dopamine things. It was like luxury holidays, a big house, you know, it was all those kind of winning the lottery times of, type of ideas of what a life beyond your wildest dreams is. And now eight years in to dry January.

So however many months of dry January and February and March and whatever later, the life beyond my wildest dreams is that I can plait my daughter's hair in the morning when she goes to school. Aw. It really is because there were days when I couldn't do that, like the simple things. You know, it's like having food in the fridge, you know, being able to mate. a dinner, you know, for my family. Going to the dentist, like attending to basic healthcare needs.

Yeah. Yeah. Rather than never doing that stuff, like that adulting stuff. I love that. And like waking up and just, you know, being in your comfortable bed and being alive. And I think that's how, you know, what I would say to anyone listening who feels like they're not like bossing it this January or that they've got this whole world that they need. to kind of like, you know, they need to be a world of things they need to be better at. Like, you're okay.

Yeah, absolutely. And it takes, it takes time as well for all of that to recalibrate. And nobody does it. Nobody just wakes up and it's like, okay, I'm going to quit, whatever it is and quits. They literally don't. Yeah. It's always cyclical. And it's all, it always takes ages.

You just put together like a day and then a couple of days and then, you know. And eventually you get there. But yeah, oh gosh, it's not linear at all, is it? No, but the key is to remember that underneath all these addictions, all these habits, there is your wonderful self. Yeah. You know, you are always there regardless of whether you can stick to resolutions or not. And I hope that everyone listening today remembers that.

Yeah, I love that. Thank you, Catherine. It's been a joy. Oh, I don't know about you guys, but I feel so much better about the new year after that chat with Catherine. The way she talks about self-compassion and tiny doable changes makes this whole topic feel a lot less overwhelming. If you want more from Catherine, her new book, Little Addictions, is out on the 29th of January. And she's going to be back on Friday for our special bonus episode, The Life of You, where she'll be showing. the things she leans on to stay grounded in this addictive and sticky world.

Don't forget to subscribe, follow, rate, rave about us to all of your friends, but most of all keep being you. I'll see you next time.