I stopped drinking about 7 months ago after getting so drunk, I almost got into a fist fight with someone over an illegal parking situation. Having said that, I am working Brooke’s model consistently as best I can. The other day, I had such a horrible day at work that I walked into BJ’s Sports bar and almost ordered a drink. Sitting there at the bar while waiting to be served, I desperately tried to apply the model to get myself to come to my senses and walk out of there. My inner voice kept saying “you deserve a drink, what harm will it cause you to just have one to calm down from all the stress at work”. Then as I started working the model, I came up with the following:
C: I am sitting here in a bar.
T: This bar is a good place to have a drink because they have all of my favorite drinks right here, right now.
F: Oh crap, if I drink then I might not be able to stop and I will go on a drinking rant again and then I will be doomed
and have to start sobriety all over again and I will feel like a total loser.
A: I better get the f—— out of here now before I decide to drink and blow it.
R: I ended up leaving and going home and taking some magnesium and taking a long hot bath which calmed me down.

It’s rare that I use the model to think something negative and have it lead to a positive result. I am wondering if it would be possible to do this for anything else that I may want to do but know in my mind, should NOT do like over-eating, eating sweets or indulging in caffeine because it makes me feel good an in control. Is using the model in this way advisable or ok?
It feels like I am anticipating the BAD to scare myself into NOT taking an action that may have negative consequences but as it turns out, I get the result I need because it seems that I don’t have enough strength to deal with really sitting with the pain and feeling it so instead I trick myself into adopting a belief system that leads to NOT doing something that may have a negative consequence. Was I buffering by taking the hot bath and magnesium?