Online Alcoholism & Addiction Counselling

We’ve now opened our free support forum for anyone with alcohol problems.

There are no expectations that you must be sober, it is just a community space where you can share your experiences and hopefully get some support from other people in a similar situation to yourself, whether you want to give up drinking completely, or if you just want to cut down.

You need only provide a valid email address to join - but this will never be displayed, so you can remain completely anonymous.

Join the forum or just have a look first.

Many people looking for help on this site do not consider themselves to be alcoholics. They are not drinking all day, every day. But they are regularly binge drinking alcohol to excess, such that they are damaging their health, their relationships and their self esteem.

It is easier to convince yourself that you haven’t got an alcohol problem if you can regularly have days where you don’t drink at all. You think you’ve got control of your drinking again, so you’re not so concerned any more.

Then it happens again - you binge, and wake up feeling awful. Maybe you carry on drinking heavily for a couple of days to deal with how guilty you feel about it all. But this type of binge drinking can have serious negative consequences which you need to do something about.

Are you an alcoholic or a binge drinker?

Take our test of alcoholism signs and symptoms.

The alcoholic head taster for a brewery in Brazil has been awarded financial damages by his employer after the courts agreed he had not been prevented from developing alcoholism.

How were they supposed to have done that?

He drank anywhere from 16 to 25 glasses of beer in an eight hour shift. The company argued that he was already an alcoholic before they employed him. The judge decided that in that case they were negligent in employing him in the first place.

Maybe he wasn’t spitting out enough of his tasting samples. But I’m sure there’s a few people out there who wouldn’t mind his job. If you’re looking for help with an alcohol problem, try our free consultation with no obligation, we’ll get back to you asap with some ideas about how our online treatment programme could help you.

Most people who are drinking too much, in whatever way, will occasionally ask themselves the question - am I an alcoholic?

It’s a scary question to ask yourself, but as with most things the answer will not be a black or white,

‘yes you’re an alcoholic’ or
‘no you’re not’,

but a shade of grey somewhere in between.

What sort of alcoholic are you?

Binge Drinker

• Irregular over-drinking,
• Monster hangovers,
• Doing embarrassing things you regret,
• Alienating your friends,
• Accidents,
• Days off work,
• Mood swings…

If this sounds like you, then get some help here.

Heavy Drinker

• Very difficult to have a day without alcohol,
• Can’t sleep without drink,
• Drinking alone,
• Guilt,
• Cravings,
• Can’t concentrate,
• Low energy,
• Depression…

Or if this sounds more like you, then contact us here.

Dependent Drinker

• Physical withdrawal,
• Drinking from early in the day, every day,
• Isolation,
• Poor health,
• Unstable work,
• Relationships failing,
• Feeling hopeless & ashamed…

If however, this is who you are, then to start with you’re going to need some medical help to detox your liver - go and see your Doctor, then get in touch with us.

You might be wondering, more simply, how can I stop drinking alcohol? But of course it’s never as simple as that. You’ll need plenty of support, and some clear goals, plus some in-depth understanding of how your own particular addiction works. That’s what online counselling will do for you. Try one session at least, and you’ll see how it can help.

If you do nothing about your problems, then nothing will change.

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.