It would be interesting to know for sure how many attempts to quit a habit are tied to the elementary detail of not choosing the right time. For instance, it is quite possible that going for the obvious — New Year’s Day — might be the worst possible choice.

Holiday season celebrations remind a person of how much fun it is to not quit. Waking up with a hangover on the first day of January is a blatant invitation from your worst self to decide on letting it go for another 24 hours or so. Or maybe until February 1st. Or what the hell, maybe until next year.

After all, nothing too bad has happened yet. You haven’t wrecked a car, and still have a job, and a spouse or romantic partner. So, what’s the hurry? Why get all bent out of shape and aim for something so extreme as quitting?

After all, you are an adult, perfectly capable of making a decision as rational as, for instance, slowing down instead of quitting. You made it through “the holidays” without torching anything or alienating your oldest friend or winding up in the hospital.

Following a certain amount of reflection along these lines, it is all too easy for the addiction to convince whatever remains of your sane mind that it really is not necessary (or cool) to get all bent out of shape about the thing.

Most of all, quitting on New Year’s Day is such an obvious cliché, not at all suitable to be taken seriously by such a sophisticated and knowledgeable person as yourself. Or even if it is the logically perfect day, next January 1 will do just as well…

It’s an easy date to remember, and such an obviously sensible goalpost. “Let’s be reasonable,” says the stubborn, sneaky addicted brain, whose goal is to convince you that a mere 12 months of mental rehearsal will really get you tuned up and superbly ready to take the plunge into sobriety… next year.

Or — and here comes the important part — you might devote some effort toward figuring out what the genuinely significant day is, the date that might actually work. There is a thing in psychology known as the anniversary effect, or anniversary reaction, or the most obvious term, anniversary grief:

Individuals might feel restless or on edge, experience symptoms of PTSD, have trouble sleeping, feel depressed, or even become physically ill. Various situations can trigger this response, such as a death, miscarriage, accident, or assault.

There are dozens of traumatic possibilities, and the sneaky thing about it is that a person might not even consciously remember that something bad happened. Our minds save up and catalogue a whole lot more than we ever realize, and unless a special effort (like hypnosis) is made to uncover a past event, it could stay buried forever, causing trouble on a schedule as regular as clockwork.

Another tricky factor is that, depending on what else is going on in life, the damaging memory might take a year off, or even, for reasons we will never know, shed its propensity for damage and go into retirement.

It could require some work to discover and really pin down a troublesome date. Once a date has been recognized, it might take even more work with a professional counselor to determine whether that day would be an absolutely terrible time to initiate a major change like going sober. It might be best to leave it alone.

Or, with the right kind of memory-wrangling and prep work, that date could be transformed into an auspicious one that inspires hope for unprecedented success.

No question, nine people out of ten might believe this brand of inner exploration sounds as crazy as reading tea leaves. On the other hand, it doesn’t require surgery or a half-million dollar investment. To undertake this sort of self-investigation needs only the help of a mental health professional, and if the patient is sensitive about other people’s opinions, nobody else needs to know about it.

Written by Pat Hartman. First published July 16, 2026.

Source:

“Anniversary Effect: What It Is & How to Cope,” ChoosingtTerapy.com, April 4, 2024.

Image Copyright: Megan_Rexazin_Conde and geralt/Pixabay.