Another damp, dark day in January, and at 5 p.m., like clockwork, I feel an insatiable need sweep through me: the urge for a glass of wine. I can picture the scene: I descend from my office to the kitchen, pull a bottle of Pinot Gris from the refrigerator and pour the pale yellow liquid into a large goblet, salivating as beads of moisture gather on the glass.
The first sips would slip down my throat in a cool stream of pleasure, and I would feel a physical release as the wine eased me from work to play. My shoulders would relax. A tingly sensation would rush through me.
But I couldn’t take those beloved first sips. And it wasn’t because I was participating in Dry January. If I had that glass of wine, I would have to lie to my bot.
Back in 2021, to cut back from my pandemic practice of drinking three glasses of white wine a day, I had signed up for an app called “Cutback Coach.” It was an accountability drinking app that, for $79 a year, promised to help me reduce my alcohol consumption. “Our members experience on average a 29% reduction in drinks,” it advertised. Each Sunday, I set daily drinking goals, and then the app texted me every morning, “Hey Frances, how’d it go yesterday?”
I’d signed up in the nick of time. The pandemic upended American drinking habits, including mine. It seemed like everyone was chugging wine or whiskey to cope with isolation and worry. A Rand study showed that women increased their drinking by 41% during the pandemic. The federal government had said for decades it was OK for Americans to drink moderately: one drink a day for women and two for men. However, more recent studies have concluded that even small amounts of alcohol are harmful. This month, the U.S. surgeon general stated that alcohol causes cancer and that no amount is safe. He is advocating warning labels on bottles, much like the warnings on packets of cigarettes.
When I started using my drinking app, I responded honestly to the bot’s daily quota questions. It was easy to do. Within a few months, I went from three to two to one glass of wine a day, all reported dutifully and correctly to Cutback Coach (which soon switched its name to “Sunnyside”).
The problems started when I tried to cut back even more.
When a Facebook friend said he was going to stay away from alcohol altogether, I decided to try my first Dry January in 2022.
I went cold turkey, switching my cherished wine for a mocktail. My new 5 p.m. ritual was seltzer, mint, ginger, a squeeze of lime and simple syrup in a highball glass. This booze-free elixir tasted great. While I had to white-knuckle the first weeks, my cravings eventually diminished. I slept better. Plus, I got a thrill when I recorded a “0” on my bot and heard back, “Keep up the awesome work.”
When February rolled around, though, I resumed drinking, and before long, I had settled on four drinks a week. I am no ascetic. I didn’t want to give up my Chablis or dry Riesling completely. Four drinks felt like a good compromise.
But in no time, I started fudging the numbers. When the bot asked me how many drinks I‘d had, my finger would hover over the number 2, but I would press 1. I was afraid of blowing past my weekly target.
Generally, I consider myself an honest person — too frank, some friends would say. But I had no trouble lying to the bot. What made it absurd was that there were no consequences. The bot didn’t judge. “Be patient with yourself and accept that positive change takes time,” were its harshest words.
I didn’t feel great about lying. Yet I couldn’t stop myself. It wasn’t like I was back to 21 drinks a week. I only ever exceeded my quota by one or two. Why couldn’t I admit those minor transgressions … to a machine?
I turned to the internet for answers. I typed “Why do people lie?” and found dozens of articles. “Lying allows a person to establish perceived control over a situation by manipulating it,” one British article stated. That makes sense when you lie to a person. But not when you lie to a bot, which is a preprogrammed automatic response.
When I narrowed my query to “lying to your bot,” a 2021 study by an assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Information surfaced. He studied 848 people and determined they were more than twice as likely to lie when communicating with an automated system as when talking to a person. “Human presence is key to mitigating dishonest behavior,” was his conclusion.
But the “why” remained elusive. I turned to my companion drinkers commenting on the Sunnyside app. “Does anyone else lie about the number of drinks they have?” I asked.
Responses from fellow fibbers flooded in. One admitted she was pouring extra-large servings of wine and counts it as one glass. Another said she didn’t want to acknowledge failing to stick to a plan. Others felt ashamed. One said she was a “bot-pleaser.”
Finding out I was not alone in lying to my bot was reassuring. But it didn’t explain my deception.
My best guess is that I lie to my bot because I am a rule follower. I like to think I have control over my circumstances. I want to be better than I am.
I now know, thanks to lying to my bot, how hard it is for me, or any of us, to be truthful about ourselves, how easy it is for us to fudge and move on.
In the meantime, four years after I signed up for Cutback Coach, I’m still trying to drink less. Why, the other night, I didn’t have any wine. At least, that’s what I told my bot.
Frances Dinkelspiel is an author, journalist and co-founder of the nonprofit news organization Cityside, with sites in Berkeley. Oakland and Richmond.
