Making decisions is actually exhausting.
Here is an amazing article about it:
individuals who had to regulate their attention—which requires executive control—made significantly different choices than people who did not. These different choices follow a very specific pattern: they become reliant on more a more simplistic, and often inferior, thought process, and can thus fall prey to perceptual decoys. For example, in one experiment participants who were asked to ignore interesting subtitles in an otherwise boring film clip were much more likely to choose an option that stood next to a clearly inferior "decoy"—an option that was similar to one of the good choices, but was obviously not quite as good—than participants who watched the same clip but were not asked to ignore anything. Presumably, trying to control one's attention and to ignore an interesting cue exhausted the limited resource of the executive functions, making it significantly more difficult to ignore the existence of the otherwise irrelevant inferior decoy. Subjects with overtaxed brains made worse decisions.
These experimental insights suggest that the brain works like a muscle: when depleted, it becomes less effective. Furthermore, we should take this knowledge into account when making decisions. If we've just spent lots of time focusing on a particular task, exercising self-control or even if we've just made lots of seemingly minor choices, then we probably shouldn't try to make a major decision. These deleterious carryover effects from a tired brain may have a strong shaping effect on our lives.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...es-how-making/
I was inspired to look into this more after hearing the author of NAKED MIND touching upon it briefly in a youtube video.
I havent much more to say about it at the moment, but just wanted to share some knowledge here.
I guess one thing that could be said is to do our best in early recovery to take big decision making events OFF THE TABLE COMPLETELY.
Any big decisions.
But obviously, also...
To not put ourselves in situations where we must ignore alcohol, at, say our own homes, or at parties, etc. So... to avoid situations where we might feel like we will be struggling to make decisions about whether to drink or not.