Online Alcoholism & Addiction Counselling

So you’ve come to the decision to stop drinking alcohol. Maybe you’ve tried a few times to just cut down, and drink more sensibly like others around you seem to.

But you’ve had limited success, perhaps you manage it for a week or so, then you’re drinking more again. Then the blackouts and awful hangovers start. Finally you decide its time to quit.

So how do you stop drinking? The first thing is to -

Consider your motivation for stopping

Weigh up the pros and cons of your drinking, the costs versus the benefits.
(write them down here)

• What are the good things about your drinking right now, what does it do for you? This is important to consider, because you need to find other ways to achieve this.
• Then what are the bad things about your drinking? Really dig deep with this - look at your relationships, your health, job, self-esteem, depression etc.
• Next what are the good things you expect to happen when you stop drinking, how will your life be better?
• Finally what are the negative bits about quitting? What is putting you off the idea? Again, this is important because you will have to find some way to solve these concerns.

You need to be reminding yourself about this list of your motivations every time you think about having a drink. The next stage is to find out -

Are you physically dependent on alcohol?

If you are, then you will need some sort of medical supervision to help you through the detox. You might have experienced D.T.s before (the shakes, or Delirium Tremens to be precise), but full scale alcohol withdrawal can be an unpleasant business. Hallucinations, seizures, it can even be fatal. So for the sake of safety, if you are drinking all day from the moment you wake up in order to avoid your hangovers, you should see your doctor before you plan to stop drinking alcohol. They can help you with medication, or even a short stay in hospital to get you over the first week. If the thought of that scares you to death, then you MUST try and cut down a bit before you stop completely.

So you’ve worked out why you want to stop, and if you can stop safely. Now what? You need to -

Develop a plan for how you can avoid those urges to drink.

Read our earlier article on coping with alcohol cravings first. It will give you a few techniques to help you. One thing’s for sure, will-power alone is not enough to stop you from drinking.

You need to work out what are your ‘high-risk’ situations, what are your ‘triggers’ that make you want to drink? Some of these can be avoided, so make plans as to how you can avoid them. For those that clearly can’t be avoided, you have to start thinking about how you can deal with them differently. Make your own relapse prevention strategy.

Now sit back and wait for sobriety.

Ok, so it might not be as easy as all that (of course not), you may well slip and have a drink, you might even relapse in dramatic fashion and wake up in a ditch somewhere. Don’t laugh, it might be you. You haven’t failed, you just let that old habit sneak up and catch you unawares.

This obviously isn’t going to change over night. And realistically, this is where you might need the help of a professional. You will need to replace all that drinking with other activities, which means you need to set yourself some achievable goals.

The same goes for your feelings, learning how can you cope with difficult feelings without alcohol will take some time. Alcohol has been your way of dealing with everything difficult in your life, so you are going to have to find some other ways to cope, basically.

You should regularly review what is working and what’s not, what things are still tripping you up and most importantly, what benefits you are seeing. Remind yourself of your original reasons for wanting to stop drinking alcohol. And of course, if you find that you need some help, try a counselling session.

Everyone knows that alcohol causes harm like brain damage and liver cirrhosis. What most people aren’t aware of is that alcohol consumption also causes cancer. Recent studies show an increased risk of colorectal and breast cancer, liver and larynx cancer from regular heavy drinking.

The Harvard Centre for Cancer Prevention found an average of two alcoholic drinks per day increases the risk of breast cancer by about 25 percent.

Swedish scientists have found this risk to be exacerbated by Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). And the more you drink, the higher the risk. If you combine this risk level with the other well-known risk factors, such as a young age for starting your period (12 years or less), or a close female relative who has had breast cancer, then you really should consider cutting down on your alcohol consumption.

Cornell University have an informative summary of the issues involved with alcohol and breast cancer.

Is there an alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous? Do the 12 steps really work? These are questions that most alcoholics or addicts will ask when they decide that they want to change.

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) originated in Akron, Ohio in the 1930’s from religious individuals grouping together to solve their alcoholism. The 12 steps soon emerged as a formula for all addicts to follow if they were to stay sober.

From the very beginning, complete abstinence was seen as the only answer. Of course this does work for some people, but clearly not for everyone.

Figures for how effective the 12 step recovery process is are impossible to find. Estimates suggest only about 5% of people who attend meetings regularly stay sober for more than a year. Not much more than the placebo effect really.

However, AA and NA (Narcotics Anonymous) do develop networks of community support, which is undoubtedly very positive. The support given is from other addicts or alcoholics of course, not trained professionals. And by their very nature the meetings are public access, anyone can attend, so they are clearly not anonymous (especially when you are required to state your name).

The main objection many people have to the philosophy is its rigidity and ‘cult’ overtones - there are many references to relinquishing personal responsibility. The reams of cheap slogans don’t help much either.

Ok, so anyone who hasn’t seen them before must be wondering, what are these 12 steps then? Here you are - (more…)

George W. Bush has very compassionately decided to declare that September is National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month, 2006.

That’s wonderful Mr. President, after thirty years of your ‘War on Drugs’, you’ve decided your country needs to focus on treatment and recovery too.

And for a whole month!

Because alcohol is highly neurotoxic, as we’ve said before, it leads to damage of the brain and nervous system. Over time it can cause cognitive deficits, or loss of mental abilities in areas such as memory, concentration, motor control and ability to learn.

However, there is some hope now that those precious brain-cells are not lost for ever. Researchers at Stanford University have found that after at least six months of sobriety, the brain damage caused by alcohol’s toxicity does in fact repair itself.

They concluded that the mental abilities of their study group of long-term alcoholics, who had all been sober for between six months and thirteen years, were now the same as their control group who had not been alcoholics. The only capability that had not been recovered was spatial awareness.

Surely this is information to further motivate anyone who’s alcohol consumption is out of control - if you keep drinking, you’ll gradually lose all your faculties. If you stop, you’ll be dazzling friends with your razor-sharp wit just like you used to, right?