Anyone who can rationalize the idea that herbal wine is healthy for them even though they are getting pulled over for drunk driving and then throwing up on a police officer’s shoes is a master of rationalization and justification. It is just like an alcoholic to see the positive in any situation that involves them getting drunk, and see the negative in any idea that pushes them to actually do something about their problem. This state of ninja mind-matter warping is a direct result of a little something called denial. Alcoholics are known for the stuff and are actually quite good at staying stuck in it for years. The next thing you know they are going to be claiming that loss of bowel control caused by alcohol poisoning is actually a nice laxative effect that has successfully cured their constipation. Again, it is all about perspective and if you can convince yourself of this kind of outrageous nonsense then you are ready to become a full fledged alcoholic.

Seriously, all joking aside, there are ways to climb out of this steep canyon of denial but it takes a hard knock to the head and a firm decision to do something different with your life. Most alcoholics are not quite ready to take this level of action until they have become so beat down with their disease that they finally run out of energy to maintain their denial. At this point they might drop their defenses and decide to take a look at doing something new in their life (like quitting drinking!).

Treatment centers are closing up shop due to a lack of funding. One of the biggest challenges for drug and alcoholism treatment is: how do you provide an expensive service to a population that generally has no money? It is an especially tough problem if the money from state and government funding dries up like it has just about now.

Alcoholics tend to lose their jobs and thus are usually without insurance. And, insurance companies are no longer really excited about throwing thousands of dollars at alcoholism treatments that do not have terribly impressive success rates to begin with.

Too many problems, not enough money. Thus, change.

First of all, get yourself to treatment. I recommend that you call up a local treatment center and get yourself checked into such a place as soon as possible. Sometimes funding will be an issue because treatment is not necessarily cheap but in many cases either insurance or the state you live in will pay for some or all of the cost. At any rate, treatment is usually a really good foundation for recovery because at least it gets you into a safe environment for getting sober.

Second of all, I would recommend that you try to form a support system while you are in treatment. They are going to be teaching you a new way to live your life, but in addition to this, you are going to be in there with a bunch of other people in recovery. These people can help you to stay sober if you connect with them in a meaningful way. You will probably also be introduced to 12 step meetings and such and these can also be a powerful tool for helping you to stay sober.

Third, I would suggest that you ask for help from other people. This is how recovery starts but it is also useful as you go along so that you can learn new things in recovery. When you think you have everything all figured out, something new will come along and show you who is boss. Therefore, we have to keep learning new things in order to recover.

Fourth, I recommend that you adopt a strategy of holistic growth in order to recover from your disease. Think about nutrition, exercise, quitting smoking, etc. For example, you would not believe the level of sugar cravings in recovering alcoholics!

This means that you need to keep pushing yourself to grow in new directions in order to recover properly. If you do not do this then you run the risk of getting lazy in your recovery and eventually relapsing. Those who continue to grow and learn new things are the ones who will do well in recovery.

Quitting alcohol can be very difficult for any alcoholic but it doesn’t have to cause migraine headaches. In fact the process can be very smooth if you get started out right with a solid foundation in early recovery. To do this I would suggest that you go to a professional treatment center in order to get started on the right foot.

Most people would think that it is fairly easy to spot the signs of alcohol addiction – just watch for someone who is drinking too much, right?

But the issue is more complicated than that, and we also have to differentiate between alcohol addiction and alcohol abuse. They are two different things and the procedures for treating them are completely different.

First, some definitions: “Alcohol abuse” versus “alcohol addiction” (alcoholism).

1) Alcohol abuse - is when someone is abusing alcohol, which could be daily or it could be every once in a while. Just because someone is abusing alcohol frequently does not necessarily make them an alcoholic. For example, many young people in college abuse alcohol fairly regularly but are not actually addicted to alcohol, nor do they become alcoholic.

2) Alcohol addiction – this is alcoholism (the terms can be used interchangeably). Alcoholism is a much bigger problem than alcohol abuse, though it can still be tricky to differentiate at times. Ultimately, the diagnosis for alcoholism must come from the individual in order for it to be meaningful, although there are still several symptoms of alcohol dependency that you should watch for. Alcoholism is characterized by:

* Craving for alcohol

* Withdrawal symptoms when not drinking

* Blackouts

And so on. Although it is still possible to get some of these things from alcohol abuse as well. So how to tell the difference? Alcohol addiction is a sustained pattern over time. With alcohol abuse, if you remove the drinking, the problem goes away.

With alcoholism, if you remove the drinking, the problems are just starting. The person will withdrawal and if they do not drink or start working any sort of program or make any life changes then they will become restless and irritable. This doesn’t happen with alcohol abuse.

Therefore, we can identify some of the signs of alcohol addiction as:

1) Physical dependency – the need to drink in order to function on a physical level.

2) Withdrawal symptoms – that occur when stopping drinking.

3) Obsession with drinking – the thoughts and mental energy spent thinking about drinking or being drunk when someone is sober.

4) Compulsive drinking - the inability to stop drinking once someone has started. The inability to have just one or two drinks.

However, do note that there are people with alcohol addiction who are definitely real alcoholics who never experience signs of physical dependency. It is not about how much we drank or how often we got drunk — it’s more about how alcohol made us feel and how we reacted to it when we did drink. Many alcoholics are binge drinkers and do not drink every single day, but they are still addicted to alcohol and they still have a deadly problem on their hands. Do not make the mistake of identifying such a person as merely an alcohol abuser. They are probably very real alcoholics who need alcoholism treatment in order to recover.

Admitting to alcohol addiction

No one has an easy time of admitting that they are addicted to alcohol. It is a crushing defeat to the ego to have to admit that you are out of control and that your life has become dominated by an inanimate object. But that is precisely what the alcoholic must admit in order to start the healing process and thus seek help for their condition.

Before an alcoholic arrives at this admission of their disease, they will usually go through a period of denial. This is where they attempt to rationalize their drinking. They might say things like “If you had my problems, you would drink too.”

Denial is an amazing mental device and can operate even in the face of massive consequences. If someone is in jail from drunk driving and has lost their car, their job, and their spouse to their drinking, they might still cling to the belief that the world has just dealt them a bad hand and that their drinking is but a minor side issue–something that has not really affected the flow of these events. This is denial. The person chalks it up to bad luck rather than to see how their addiction has created this chaos in their life.

Breaking through this level of denial when talking with the alcoholic is generally impossible. Imagine an alcoholic who has several different friends and family members, all of whom talk to them separately and express concern for their drinking. Such an alcoholic will believe their own opinion over the opinions of 20 other people, thinking that the 20 other people are all misled and “out of their minds,” not seeing that the majority usually has a collective wisdom that allows them to see something objectively. This is denial in it’s purest form, when the alcoholic believes their own rationalizations in the face of massive opposition.

Accepting alcohol addiction

So what has to happen in order to finally break through the denial, is that the alcoholic must accept their disease on a very deep level. They must make that crushing admission to their innermost self that they are truly an alcoholic and cannot drink successfully. It is only after they have reached this state of surrender that they can become open to a solution. It is only after reaching this breaking point that they can become teachable on how to live without drinking.

Some people refer to this state of being as hitting bottom.

So how does someone reach this state of surrender? There seems to be no magic formula for inducing it, no sure way to convince an alcoholic that they have reached this point. What you can do is to follow a set of guidelines that will allow you to use the best behavior possible in relation to the alcoholic, so as to move them closer to making the decision to get help. Here are some of those suggestions:

1) Do not drink or party with the alcoholic.

2) Do not enable them to drink. Never give them money or go out of your way to help them if they are still drinking.

3) Do not rescue them if they get into trouble due to their drinking. Don’t bail them out of jail.

4) Allow them to experience the natural consequences of their actions. Do not “put pillows under them” when they fall.

5) Don’t deny them their pain. It is the only motivator for change in this case.

If you look these over you will notice that these guidelines are set up to allow for the alcoholic in question to experience all of the pain that they create in their life. You do not have to punish them or add to this pain, but do allow them to experience it.

Pain is the only motivator for change in this case. Why would an alcoholic decide to change if everything is going good in their life? They wouldn’t. So if you try to “help” them by lessening their pain in some way then you are actually hurting them, because you are preventing them from reaching that breaking point of complete surrender.

Remember they have to reach bottom. This is the turning point. If you prevent them from reaching it then you prevent them from making a change in their life.

So this is not really a method to induce change on their part (there is no reliable method for that), but only a set of guidelines to keep you out of the way so that they might naturally come to the decision to start healing. As such, you should watch out for these signs of alcohol addiction and stick to these guidelines when you see this potential problem in someone.

According to conventional AA wisdom, you will relapse, of course. Or, to put it another way, you will drink and then you will die.

Is this true? Are AA meetings really the crucial lifeline that everyone seems to say they are? Or is there something else going on here? Let’s take a deeper look.

A fear based response

Recovering alcoholics who have found sobriety through AA have a very limited perspective. They see people who relapse in the program and some of them come back to the meetings and they always seem to have the same story: “I quit going to meetings and I relapsed.”

So people figure that if they were to quit going to meetings, they would relapse too. But this is faulty logic based on the idea of a self-selecting group. What is a self selecting group? This means that the only examples that they see are the people who come back to meetings. They don’t see the people who do not come back. The fact is that some people find alternative recovery solutions and actually find a life of sobriety outside of AA meetings. The people in AA do not consider this as even being possible and therefore assume that everyone who has left the meetings has relapsed.

This is a fear based response. If you really study this response you’ll start to understand that it is all about the individual’s self confidence and their own tendency to reassure themselves. They are not really fearful of you relapsing if you quit going to meetings….it is more about the idea that there might be another way; a different path.

Think about it. Those who have accepted AA as their solution have already been through a great deal. It took a great deal of courage and a great deal of action to start coming to AA and make the program work for themselves. Now if you say that you are going to walk away from it all and somehow make sobriety work out for you, this idea is very threatening to those who are in AA. It is a threat to the protected “path of sobriety” that they have carved out for themselves. To the dedicated AA member, the only way to get sober is through AA. Nothing else worked for them so why would anything else work for anyone else?

And so the response in leaving AA meetings is always the same: fear. You will relapse and die if you leave. AA is the only way.

Dependency

Now the truth of the matter is, most people will relapse if they quit going to AA meetings, but only because most people are dependent on them as a means of sobriety.

Understand that this is not how AA was originally intended. Dependency on meetings was never part of Bill Wilson’s plan. In the old days meetings were few and far between, maybe one or two a week. And the program of AA was about working the steps, not about daily group therapy through a continuous stream of meetings.

Today, people who attend meetings are almost abusive of the system. They use the meetings as daily group therapy, and maintain sobriety through a social dependency. This is not what AA was originally intended as.

Unfortunately, this is what makes up the bulk of AA today and so if you ask people what is the number one cause of relapse they will tell you that it is a lack of meetings. For them, they are absolutely right.  If you take people who are dependent on meetings and then take the meetings away then yes, they will relapse.

But who wants to be dependent on daily meetings? This is almost as tedious as drinking was.

So what is the solution? The solution is to break your dependency on meetings and transition into a real life of recovery that is fueled with passion and purpose.

Transition

The goal is to transition from early recovery where you are constantly learning about addiction and networking with others to a life of long term sobriety where you are actually living the solution on a daily basis. This is ultimately the goal of recovery and if you stay stuck in the meetings then typically you will not grow much further than a very low level of recovery.

The key is to push yourself to grow holistically. Why holistically? Because our alcohol addiction affected us in so many areas of our life–physically, mentally, spiritually, and so on. Many in recovery mistakenly think that the solution is spiritual. It’s not. The solution is much bigger than that. It is holistic.

This means that in long term recovery, you will push yourself to keep growing in new ways. Relationships, emotional balance, working with others–it’s all important stuff and the key is to find some balance in your life and stay involved with continuous growth.

Recovery is a learning process. You are learning how to live without alcohol. This takes a long time and even when you are quite good at it you still have to keep learning new things in order to avoid relapse.

Complacency is the number one cause of relapse and in fact it is the only true cause of relapse if you thoroughly analyze the situation. Ask anyone who relapsed after many years sober and they will always say the same thing: “I got complacent.” (They will also say that they quit going to meetings, which was discussed above already).

So how do you avoid complacency in your life? You have to push yourself. This is the only way to grow and sustain continuous growth. If you’re not going to push yourself to keep growing in recovery then who will? No one will. It is up to you. You must keep learning and growing or you risk relapse. Simple as that.

This idea of holistic growth is nothing new, but applying it to recovery seems to be. For our purposes I refer to this as The Creative Theory of Recovery.

Living the creative theory

Living the creative theory of recovery for me has meant that I had to find a way to reach out and help others in recovery. I currently do this in 2 ways, neither of which involves a 12 step program. One way is online and the other way is at a treatment center that I work at full time. Both have become very fulfilling parts of my recovery and both are easily replaceable if I choose to move on.

This brings up another key point: find a way to help others in recovery on a regular basis and you have huge insurance against relapse. As I just pointed out, helping others doesn’t have to happen in daily meetings or even within a 12 step program. There is nothing wrong with doing so but there are other avenues with which to connect with people.

If you are living the creative theory then you will find passion and purpose in your life and you will no longer be dependent on daily meetings as your solution. This is not a rant against AA but it should provide hope to those who do not seem to fit in well with the 12 step program. There is nothing wrong with AA and it does work for some but if you are seeking alternatives then the answer is to create your own life in recovery…..

There are a number of options out there for the recovering alcoholic but none of them are perfect, and none of them seem to work for everyone. In fact, most of them will fail for most people. So if you are serious about overcoming your alcohol addiction then you would do well to look at a couple of different strategies and decide what is the best fit for you.

Let’s take a look at some different recovery strategies and consider the pros and cons of each:

12 step programs

If you are exploring the possibility of getting sober then you will no doubt encounter the idea of attending Alcoholics Anonymous. If you pick a random treatment center or drug rehab there is about a 95 percent chance that you will be exposed to AA meetings if you attend there.

What does this mean for you? That AA and the 12 step model have essentially become the industry standard for treatment at this point. This is a double edged sword but you can take advantage of the situation if you know how to do it.

The reason it’s good is because there is a huge network of support out there at AA meetings – practically anywhere that you go. This can especially useful in early recovery when networking and support is so critical. The reason it’s not so good is because the success rates of 12 step recovery are very low, and there is also a tendency for people to get “stuck” in their own personal growth when working a 12 step program.

Now there are people who are working a dynamite program of recovery in AA and they are truly on a path of holistic growth but this is the exception rather than the rule. In fact, if you closely study the “winners” in AA then you will realize that they are supplementing their 12 step recovery with a holistic approach that goes beyond the boundaries of traditional recovery programs. This insight is a glimpse into the nature of successful recovery, showing that it goes beyond a mere spiritual solution.

Individual counseling can be useful but it is insufficient in early recovery

There are some who suffer from alcohol addiction that would prefer to avoid the crowds of AA and 12 step meetings. Perhaps they suffer from anxiety or simply decide that AA is not for them. In some cases these people might consider individual counseling or one-on-one therapy sessions.

Now I’m not saying that this cannot work as a recovery strategy, but at best it is a very small attack in a very big war. As your primary solution, counseling would be most insufficient in early recovery because that is when you really need the support and help of an entire network of peers.

The task in early recovery is not just to get enough support to stay sober but also that you must relearn how to live a sober life. This is too much for one person to handle and therefore you need peer support from a wide range of people. In recovery, all of our recovering peers become our teachers and we are constantly soaking up new information about how to live a sober life. Depending on a single therapist or counselor in this case is a mistake.

Remember the principle of overwhelming force and apply it to this idea and see if it works (it doesn’t). Overwhelming force means that you need to go way above and beyond what you think is necessary in order to overcome alcohol addiction. Simply trying to patch up the problem with half measures will not cut it. Examples of overwhelming force in recovery would be things such as:

1) Living in long term treatment for a year

2) Attending 90 meetings (or more) in 90 days

3) Leaving a long term but toxic relationship and starting over

Any recovery strategy that does not employ the idea of overwhelming force is likely to fail. This is because nearly everyone underestimates what it will take in order to stay clean and sober. So if you are considering your own recovery program then make sure you consider how powerful it is. If you honestly think that it will “just barely keep you sober” then there is no way you are going to make it. You have to go above and beyond (especially in early recovery) and crush your addiction with a strong program.

Medication and drug therapy is a complimentary strategy

There is a trend over the last few decades within the medical community to push for a pharmaceutical solution to the problem of addiction. There are anti craving drugs such as Campral and also medications to help people stay off of painkillers and opiates. In addition, there are currently several more pills in the works to help treat cocaine and meth addiction too.

Are these medications a magic bullet? Of course not. And that is the critical distinction to keep in mind if you attempt to supplement your recovery with these types of meds – that they are far from being a cure.

On the other hand, some people and their unique situation in recovery seem to call for medication, and yet no one pushes them towards this as a solution because of their own stance on drug therapy. For some people, drug therapy might be that extra bit of help that they need in order to make recovery work for them. It can be a vital part of a recovery strategy.

So it makes sense to seek out a doctor and get medical advice, preferably from a doctor who has experience in treating addictions. Doing so can be a vital part of your recovery strategy.

Spiritual solutions ignore the holistic approach and can turn some potential alcoholics away

As mentioned early, most traditional recovery programs focus on a spiritual solution and this is not the ideal recovery strategy. The reason for this is because our addiction was much more than just a spiritual malady–it affected us physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, and so on. Therefore the ideal recovery strategy needs to go beyond a spiritual solution and address all of these elements.

For example, physical health is a huge part of recovery that many of us have a tendency to overlook. I am amazed at the number of people I know in recovery who have got into trouble and eventually relapsed due to ailing health problems that seemingly “crept up on them.” It seems like as soon as a person’s health starts to go, it opens the door for relapse in many different ways–either through prescribed medication or simply due to depression.

A holistic approach to recovery treats this problem and addresses the overall health of the recovering alcoholic. This helps to guard us against relapse because many times relapse creeps into our life from an unexpected area, such as with relationship issues. If we are focusing on improving our relationships and maintaining emotional balance then our recovery will be that much stronger.

Some newcomers intuitively sense this when entering a traditional recovery program but find it difficult to put into words. The idea is sort of like “They are telling me the solution is spiritual….but addiction is clearly not just a spiritual problem. It is more complex than that. So shouldn’t the solution address these other areas of addiction?”

Holistic growth fights complacency and offers true recovery

So the best long term recovery solution is the push for holistic growth. Addiction is a multi-faceted problem so the solution must be multi-faceted as well. Thus holistic growth is the key to long term success.

Complacency is the real enemy in long term sobriety. Ask anyone in AA who has relapsed after several years sober and they will tell you that they got complacent. They will probably also tell you that they quit going to meetings and attribute the relapse to that even though that is incorrect. We actually relapse long before we pick up the drink or the drug, so those who quit going to meetings (who depend on meetings for their sobriety) have essentially already relapsed.

In other words, the lack of meetings did not cause a relapse….the relapse caused a lack of meetings. Anyone who is that dependent on daily meetings that they can relapse due to missing them is not working a good program of recovery. In long term recovery, meetings should be an added bonus; a way to give back. They should not become the pillar of your sobriety. If they do then you are depriving yourself of a life of creative potential. If drug and alcohol rehabilitation pushes you to dependency on meetings then something is wrong.

The key to this creative potential is to push yourself to grow holistically. This means that you seek growth outside the boundaries of traditional recovery.

The best treatment for alcohol addiction is the one that works for you. What I’ve shared above are the typical patterns of success that I have seen in myself and others around me in recovery. Holistic growth has been at least as important as the networking element of recovery, and probably more so.

There comes a point in most people’s drinking career when they realize that they genuinely do want to quit drinking. Up until this point they have basically been trying to figure out how to continue drinking as they like and somehow make everything work out. But at a certain point they realize that they would in fact be better off with complete abstinence and thus truly desire to be free from alcohol.

Now even when this point comes, the average alcoholic will still realize that there are several times throughout their day when they do, in fact, still want to drink. Even though they might have made a life changing decision to try and get help and stop drinking once and for all, they will notice that they still have a desire to drink at various times throughout the day.

This can be especially prevalent for younger people who may not have experienced as much pain and misery due to alcohol as others have. So the question becomes: “How can you stay sober even though you really want to drink? How can we overcome these cravings and stick to our recovery?”

The answer is: “Any way that you can.” Sometimes we have to claw, fight, and scrape our way to sobriety. Here are some ideas to help you fight off cravings:

Tactics for early recovery

1) Find a controlled environment - if you have the opportunity to go to a treatment center, by all means, take it. There you will gain peer support and be protected from the constant threat of relapse.

Of course any one of us can potentially walk out of the door and go buy some booze, so you might also consider the idea of long term treatment. Living in such a place adds another layer of accountability to your life. Not a magic bullet, but certainly helpful.

2) Focus on networking - peer support is huge in early recovery and that is why you hear so many push the idea of daily AA meetings. Most of us already proven to ourselves that we could not quit drinking alone, so consider “plugging yourself in” to the program so as to enjoy massive amounts of support from others.

3) Stay busy – by exploring new avenues of growth in your life. Examples would include 12 step meetings, going back to school, learning new skills, starting a daily exercise program, and so on. If you fill up your day with activities then you are less likely to focus on what you are not doing.

The long term solution: creative recovery

The above tactics might work great in early recovery, but are they going to carry us through to a lifetime of sobriety? Not necessarily. We have to grow, change, and progress as we stay sober if we are going to make it in the long run.

In early recovery the focus is on networking and learning. Particularly, you are learning how to live a sober life. This takes time and you might think that it requires an entire lifetime of relearning the basics of how to stay sober. This is not true. What needs to happen is that you must shift at some point from learning the basics and networking with others towards a push for holistic growth.

This is an important concept so let’s say that again: at some point, you need to progress in your recovery to where you start pushing yourself to grow holistically. This represents a shift away from the strong focus on networking in early recovery.

Why holistic growth? Because that is what will keep you sober in long term recovery. The real enemy in long term sobriety is complacency. Ask anyone who has relapsed after several years of sobriety and they will inevitably tell you: “I got complacent in my recovery.”

How can we avoid complacency? The key is in pushing ourselves to grow holistically. That means that we try to explore new areas of growth in our lives that might fall outside of the boundaries of traditional recovery.

Our alcohol addiction affected us physically, mentally, socially, spiritually, and emotionally. Therefore, we should treat our disease in each of those areas if we are to enjoy the benefits of long term sobriety. The way to treat each of those areas is through holistic growth.

Making the transition

How can we grow holistically? Start by looking for new growth opportunities in your life. Examples of this might include:

1) Committing to regular exercise.

2) Sponsoring newcomers in recovery.

3) Finding new and different ways to connect with others in recovery.

4) Going back to school to finish or start on a degree.

5) Learning a new skill or seeking a new job.

6) Exploring our spirituality.

And so on. Early recovery is about learning and networking, but lifelong sobriety is about persistent personal growth. If you want to learn how to fight off your cravings for good then you need to recognize the need for this transition and take steps to make it happen in your life. The tactics you use in early recovery will not serve you well at 5 or 10 years sober. You must grow beyond those solutions.

Alcohol addiction help is available to you if you are willing to honestly assess where you are at with your drinking and can take decisive action to make some changes.

If you think you have a drinking problem, you are in the right place. Read on and see if this article can help you.

Diagnosing yourself

No one can diagnose you as having alcohol addiction; only you can do that for yourself. Now most people think that the way this would be diagnosed would be to add up the quantity of alcohol that they consume, or consider how many days per week they drank, and so on. Now all of these factors are important but they are actually not a good predictor of alcohol addiction.

For example, many college students will drink very heavily and very frequently without being addicted to alcohol, simply because they are in a party environment. What could easily pass for real alcohol addiction is actually just alcohol abuse, and there is no real dependency involved.

So how can we tell the difference? There are a few methods you might use to prove it to yourself, but perhaps the most reliable one is to try a prolonged controlled drinking experiment. As ridiculous as it sounds, simply limit yourself to one drink per day for the next year. If that sounds preposterous or too harsh, then you might want to take a closer look at your drinking and if you might be addicted. If you attempt to stick to that schedule and fail to maintain control then you might have a problem. If you refuse the experiment then you might have a problem as well – most “normal” people have no problem sticking to a one drink limit per day.

The other thing you will want to gauge is when you experiment with abstinence. If you cut out the alcohol altogether, does this make you restless, irritable, or discontent? If so then you might have a real problem on your hands.

If everyone is telling you that you have a drinking problem, then you might have a drinking problem. Denial is when we trust our own judgment over that of dozens of our friends and family members. If they are all telling you the same thing then you might want to take a look at it. Remember you can only diagnose yourself with alcohol addiction; no one can do it for you.

The case for moderation

Now most of us who reach this point in our drinking career think to ourselves “gee, I really like drinking, so it would make sense to cut down so that I can still enjoy the benefits of alcohol. It would be really tough to have to abstain altogether and label myself as an alcoholic.” This type of thinking will arise naturally and it actually makes sense based on our experience with many other things in life. For example, we might have certain foods that we really like but we know that they are unhealthy for us. Do we swear them off forever? Of course not. We simply indulge every once in a while but try to be “good” and not overdo it.

So trying to approach an alcohol problem in this way is perfectly natural. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work well at all. Now there is no way that you can really tell anyone this and have them trust you on it and act accordingly, so we are all going to find this one out the hard way. It is inevitable. Anyone who is addicted to alcohol, that is starting to realize that the addiction is causing problems, will attempt to run some damage control and keep their drinking intact. Some people will do this for decades, constantly trying new schemes to allow themselves to control their drinking while still enjoying it.

Read that last sentence again and you will see the crux of the problem. If they try to control their drinking they will not enjoy it. If they let loose and allow themselves to really enjoy their drinking, then they cannot control it. This is what makes moderation such a lousy strategy for overcoming an alcohol addiction. You can certainly try to moderate, but the nature of being drunk prevents much success with it.

Now of course this is devious because we can fool ourselves in that, on many occasions, we actually can control our drinking. But if we continue to drink then eventually we will always go back where we lose control and our life will be a disaster again.

So pay special attention to these “episodes” where you are back to out-of-control drinking in spite of your best efforts to control it. Be aware that you cannot control it while you are enjoying it. This is the path to realizing that you are addicted, and it is also the mechanism by which you will learn that moderation cannot work for you. If you are truly addicted to alcohol then abstinence is the only way.

The benefits of complete abstinence

Complete abstinence sounds like a death threat and that is why we struggle so much against the idea. But there are actually a lot of benefits to this approach:

1) Abstinence works - If what you truly have is an alcohol addiction then you must break the cycle by not putting any more alcohol into your body. If you can do this for even a short period of time then very quickly the phenomenon of craving will disappear. There is still much work to be done as far as developing a lifetime of healthy sobriety but understand that the abstinence is a baseline for this new life. Without abstinence you will forever be caught up in the cycle of addiction.

2) Abstinence enables growth - When you maintain abstinence from alcohol then you have the opportunity to make growth in different areas of your life, such as with education, fitness, relationships, and so on. Without abstinence then you really won’t make growth in your life and any attempts to do so will result in superficial victories at best. Only when we are sober can we make genuine progress with personal development.

3) Abstinence promotes simplicity - Want to simplify your life? Eliminate stuff. That includes drinking, especially since having an addiction tends to complicate everything. If you can cut the alcohol out of your life entirely, it will free up a tremendous amount of mental energy with which you can pursue other things.

In the end you must eventually consider abstinence, no matter how unpleasant the idea might be. Try moderating if you must but after that continues to fail then consider the idea that you really are addicted to alcohol and the only way forward is to cut it out entirely.

How to actually stop drinking

I would recommend that you find a local treatment center that has a medical detox unit if you are serious about quitting. This is really the safest route as not drinking can actually be extremely dangerous and can be fatal. That’s right – not drinking can kill you. So I highly recommend that you get help in this case and detox under medical supervision.

If you are not at a point of physical dependence then of course you do not actually need the medical supervision, but I would still recommend residential inpatient treatment as the best way to quit drinking. In my opinion most people need the “clean break” that inpatient treatment provides in order to get a jump start on recovery. Checking into such a treatment center will at least give you a few weeks of sobriety on which to build on.

Strategies for early recovery

The first strategy is outlined above and that is to seek professional help and use a medical setting to help you through the detox stage. This is an empowering strategy because it gives you leverage, allowing you to draw on the strength of others to help you to get sober. You don’t have to do it yourself.

You can take this same idea a step further in terms of our next strategy: networking with others. This is especially important in early recovery and the idea is that you need others who are on the same path as you in order to support you in early recovery. These would be your peers in recovery. The easiest way to find a group of peers in recovery is to go to 12 step meetings such as Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Another way to meet recovering people is in treatment centers.

Another thing you will hear if you attend 12 step meetings is that you need to get a sponsor and if you decide to go with the 12 step route then that is probably a good suggestion. Finding someone who can guide you in early recovery can be very helpful.

Not everyone wants to go the 12 step route however and this guide is not necessarily pushing that. The program is a quick way to get support and the meetings are widespread, but there are other routes to recovery. Just know that you will likely need some form of peer support in early recovery, and some will possibly need some sort of coaching and/or sponsorship as well. Essentially we did not know how to live successfully while we were drinking so we need to relearn how to live properly. In most cases that cannot happen without the help of others so you need to reach out and ask for help in some way.

Transitioning to long term recovery

The strategy for early recovery is to network with other recovering alcoholics. However you are going to keep living your new life of sobriety and what got you clean and sober will not keep you sober forever. This is because we change and grow in recovery and thus our recovery strategy must grow with us. If you are still focused on the main strategy of early recovery (networking with others) at 10 years sober then you have created a new dependency for yourself, not a life of freedom.

So here are the strategies you should employ after you have a solid foundation of new sobriety:

1) Caring for self

2) Networking with others

3) Push for holistic growth

These 3 strategies are universal in that they apply to anyone and everyone in recovery. They are also fundamental in that they cannot be reduced further. They are also simple enough to apply in your everyday life.

Of course you should always “care for self” but this idea takes that idea further and encourages you to care for yourself in every way, not just physically. Based on this strategy you will eventually work on your relationships, start exercising, quit smoking, or work on the emotional balance in your life. It is a holistic approach to caring for yourself.

The third strategy that talks about holistic growth is very powerful in long term recovery. The idea is to fight complacency by pushing yourself to grow holistically. This means you will try to grow in all areas of your life. This strategy becomes more important the longer you stay sober because the biggest enemy in long term sobriety is complacency. The focus shifts slightly away from networking with others and towards a push for personal growth.

Gratitude

If you are following the strategies outlined above then you should also be adopting the critical mindset of gratitude. This is the attitude of appreciation for all things and it can help you to stay sober. Gratitude is also important because it is essentially a mindset of learning and opportunity. Instead of seeing things as being negative you will start to look for the silver lining in things which many times will be a lesson of sorts. You can take even the “bad” experiences in your life and learn something from them if you practice gratitude.

Gratitude is almost like a constant prayer. You are essentially giving thanks to your higher power for existence itself. Thus gratitude is a spiritual practice that can enhance your whole life.

Gratitude must be practiced of course; we will not be perfect with this attitude at all times. There are different things you can do to practice, such as writing out a gratitude list or incorporating gratitude into your daily prayers or meditations.

Service work

The idea behind service work is that if you can reach out and help other alcoholics to overcome their alcohol addiction, then by doing so you will strengthen your own recovery immeasurably. The reason for this is because we raise our own level of dedication and passion for staying sober when we try to help others do the same.

This is a natural phenomenon that occurs with all forms of teaching, not just recovery. Even if you only have a short time sober, helping someone who is “greener” than you can have a powerful effect on your own growth.

The feel-good karma we get from reaching out to the newcomer is like a secret sauce for staying sober. If you can find a way to do this consistently then it will help insure you against relapse. It is almost impossible to relapse if you are genuinely helping others with their recovery.

You can engage in service work in many different ways. Here are some examples to get you started:

1) Sponsorship – while I’m not a huge fan of sponsorship personally, it can be helpful to both get a sponsor and/or to sponsor a newcomer in recovery. If you are giving back by helping a newcomer then this will strengthen your recovery quite a bit. The danger of course is in getting your ego wrapped up in this in an unhealthy way. If you are going to sponsor others in recovery than it is imperative that you have a sponsor yourself.

2) H&I – H and I stands for “hospitals and institutions” and the idea here is that you would chair 12 step meetings in jails, treatment centers, and other places where folks cannot get out to go to regular meetings. Even if you are not big on 12 step recovery these are powerful opportunities for you because the value of carrying a message of hope to desperate alcoholics is very powerful indeed. When you take a message of recovery into a desperate situation like this the impact of the message is amplified. Your efforts can really make a big difference in this case because you are dealing with people who are facing a turning point in their lives.

3) Friends in recovery – This is absolutely huge and if all of your friends happen to be in recovery then you will have a strong support structure from that alone. I was lucky enough to attend long term treatment in early recovery and thus made a ton of new friends who were all recovering like I was. The younger you are the more important this is. Now simply having friends in recovery is not really “service work” but the idea of supporting each other in a healthy lifestyle still holds true.

So that is the alcohol addiction help guide and if you have any questions or would like to comment please do so below. I will answer every comment or question, usually within a day or two.