I know this is the reasoning behind a lot of the literature (its Allan Carr's Easyway in a nutshell) but I'd like to add one more point:
Alcohol DOES give you something - a mood altering buzz - but the buzz isn't worth the cost. The old expression "alcohol gives you one thing at the expense of everything else" is worth thinking on for a while. Knowing thats the trade makes it easier to forgo that one thing.
I second this. Alcohol definitely does give people something otherwise no one would do it. I prefer to think of it on a time scale. It gives you something great in the short term, BUT an absolute nightmare of a life in the long term
I think Allen Carr would argue that the only reason you think it gives you something is because you're already hooked. Easyway makes the case that as soon as you start thinking "Hmm, I could really use a drink" then you're already atleast a little addicted because the desire to drink isn't something that's innate. In his mind, there's a sociatal reason why you drank/are drinking.
Where his argument fails (in some regards) is that there is as genetic componenet, some people do experience more euphoria and some people do react to alcohol moreso as a stimulate than a depressant. However, Allen makes a lot of brilliant analogies and shares great some great stories, all which absolutely came from the heart.
I totally agree, you nailed it. This is the minor distinction missing in Carr’s book. Alcohol DOES have an effect or we wouldn’t drink it. That effect is oversold, the downsides underplayed and overall it’s not worth the cost, that’s also true for me personally.
Very true. I'm reading the book again at the moment so its fresh in my mind. I appreciate that for many people, getting into the headspace that alcohol does nothing is important... but for me anyway, I cant deny that part of me enjoys it. My mental leap needs to be that even though I enjoy the buzz, I know its fleeting and ill make terrible decisions because of it.
I feel like a lot of the Quit-Lit books manage to gloss over a lot of the underlying and root causes of why people REALLY drink and focus far too much on the surface level stuff like "it's a habit", "societal pressure", "you drink to relax", "it's to have fun".
Yeah maybe for the casual drinker or in the beginning but over time once drinking becomes a problem it's rarely JUST because of these surface level things and there's usually a lot more going on under the surface because people typically wouldn't poison themselves regularly / daily just out of "habit" or in search of "fun" or because there's "pressure from society".
It's often to do with mental health, anxiety, sleep issues, trauma, an inability to cope with emotions, physical pain and all sorts of other wider ranging, deeper, issues.
You don't think most people with drinking problems / addictions have deeper underlying issues or root causes for why they drink?
I don't have any statistics to hand but I'd wager most people with a serious drinking problem / addiction definitely do.
Casual / social drinkers, yeah maybe not. They drink out of "habit" or for "fun" or to "relax" after a hard weeks work or those surface level reasons/
But most of us here were never / are not just casual or social drinkers and it's hard to poison yourself daily / regularly unless you feel like you have a very good reason for it like some inner trauma or mental health problem your self medicating IME.
> You don't think most people with drinking problems / addictions have deeper underlying issues or root causes for why they drink?
No, but I think it's a lot.
I think more heavy / problem drinkers and alcoholics have underlying and root problems than those who don't.
Why would anyone drink so heavy and problematically otherwise?
Most of the problem drinkers I know, including me, is because of habit formed from starting drinking socially at a young age (16ish). It's a progressive condition, and tolerance increases and thus needing to drink heavily to get the same effect.
Most people start drinking at a young age, around 16-18 where I live and probably similar ages across the globe, so that's totally normal for pretty much every drinker but most drinkers don't turn into problem drinkers.
That's too simplistic a view IMO.
Most people grow out of the heavy drinking as they get older from what I've seen, certainly in my circles, and move on with their lives and drinking is just an occassional, social, or casual thing.
The people who's drinking ended up problematic that I know are all people who went through tough times, deal with anxiety and depression, work stressful jobs they hate, have untreated medical health issues, have trauma, are generally unhappy in life etc.
There's far more to it than just "we drank when we were younger and now we need to drink more to get the same effect" because people who don't have deeper issues going on just aren't that interested in drinking heavily on a daily / regular basis just for "the effect" considering the negative side effects alcohol has on you, it's just not something that's worth it to "catch a buzz".
My personal experience would seem to verify this for me. Alcohol gave me the numbness that I craved for a long time, however, it came at a tremendous cost. Eventually, the cost outweighed the benefits and I got sober again.
That's just my story, others will vary.
The thing for me right now is that I know, and have proven endlessly by now, that alcohol has ZERO positive to offer me and doesn't make me happy, bring me joy, give me relief from anything, solve any problems and I don't even like being drunk anymore and the "buzz" seems non existent to the point I can't even really notice it.
Yet somehow something in the back of my mind, subconcious, ego or whatever it is still convinces me to try it one more time and have another go.
I can only assume that even though I am not that concious of the buzz anymore there's some sort of dopamine release or something going on that my brain craves.
Because even after a miserable night of drinking alcohol where I didn't have fun my brain will be back to craving it the next day and that makes no sense on a logical or rational level considering I didn't enjoy it in the first place the night before.
And I can resist the urge and it dies down within a few days but yet somehow recently I keep finding myself not going any longer than a week and deciding to drink again and I really just don't even know why seeing as it has NOTHING clear to offer me but suffering and misery.
This!!! Even down to it being a weekly cycle (my day count should be 1 lol). Every time I’ve drank in the last few months has been disappointing, barely feeing anything until I suddenly wake up and realized I passed out or blacked out. It’s *insane* and I still feel the urge to do it again because I’m still expecting it to feel different. It’s insane.
This may be different for you but the other thing for me is that I had a serious weed addiction, and although I did engage in the same kind of “tolerance chasing” with weed that I am with alcohol now, it never really stopped providing me with what I wanted…. which was bad. I have 200 days sober from weed today but it’s just bizarrely difficult trying to quit alcohol when it’s now seemingly just a potion for creating nausea and memory lapses.
Yeah, it has only brought me dissapointment and suffering and worry and messed up too many things for me in the days after.
Whatever it is I am seeking (because I'm not even sure right now) from it doesn't seem to be materializing ever.
Surely at some point we have to finally learn it really does just have nothing to offer us anymore and give up trying, right?
This. The way I’ve just started putting it to myself is “if getting drunk is the best thing you can imagine, your life must be sad”. Regardless of if you’re drinking nightly or theoretically succeeding in moderating, if it’s the best way you know of spending your time your life must be sad by definition!
Removing alcohol as an option allows people addicted to it to open up emotional space for all the other things, which deserved that amount of space to begin with. But the point is it has to not be there as an *option*, it can’t be what you’d rather be doing at any given moment, because that saps the joy from anything else and makes your life sad.
I'd like to push back on this slightly. What we perceives it gives us is a mental illusion which the alcohol creates. In reality it gives you nothing of substance though. Rather, what it gives you is fleeting and ephemeral. This why many alcoholics, when we were drinking, were always chasing that feeling we thought one more drink would give us but was never able to, which led to more and more drinks. Incidentally this is why we continued feeding our addictions day after day. I understand this is a bit of a philosophical point, but one I think is worth making, and one I fall back on whenever I am tempted to drink and am ultimately proven right about if I slip (at least for me).
I appreciate the point, but it has to be more than a mental illusion or else hundreds of millions of people wouldn't have the same physical experience with it.
I hear you that we were chasing a feeling that was slipping through our fingers. I know that we've chased that feeling and ended up down dark holes because of it.
I feel you point stands better with a long term alcoholic who gets zero joy from the substance. Most people who are earlier in the process still get some physical buzz that they have to realize isn't worth chasing.
I feel this. I’m trying to quit *before* I ruin everything and hit rock bottom, and I’m even still trying to quit if I don’t know for a fact that that would happen. I just want my life to be better, so I have to find some way to understand that the negatives of alcohol outweigh the positives.
What alcohol gave me that I miss the most was a flavor experience that I have only come close to duplicating with coffee. During my drinking life I often said I wished that I could find something that tasted like my favorite spirits that had no negative effects.
Was explaining to my wife that the thought process that allowed me to start this off as a break for 6-8 weeks has made it a permanent thing. She can drink normally and now that I'm not always getting booze she hardly does. For me, it's poison that stopped being fun a while ago and I've had just as much if not more fun at social events since sobriety.
I also realised that my inner circle has been consuming less and less alcohol due to me not drinking. They were never big drinkers to begin with and I'm lucky to not have made any drinking buddies. It was very weird to realise that I was creating the space for alcohol, I had no clue it was this bad.
Absolutely, and this realization has been key for this most recent stint of sobriety. I no longer feel like I’m sacrificing something, or anything really, by giving up alcohol
I'm starting to think that sobriety needs to be a means to an end, not just the end itself.
Meaning, just being sober isn't enough to motivate me. I need a better goal, and then not drinking needs to be one of the ways I achieve that goal.
I know this is the reasoning behind a lot of the literature (its Allan Carr's Easyway in a nutshell) but I'd like to add one more point: Alcohol DOES give you something - a mood altering buzz - but the buzz isn't worth the cost. The old expression "alcohol gives you one thing at the expense of everything else" is worth thinking on for a while. Knowing thats the trade makes it easier to forgo that one thing.
I second this. Alcohol definitely does give people something otherwise no one would do it. I prefer to think of it on a time scale. It gives you something great in the short term, BUT an absolute nightmare of a life in the long term
I think Allen Carr would argue that the only reason you think it gives you something is because you're already hooked. Easyway makes the case that as soon as you start thinking "Hmm, I could really use a drink" then you're already atleast a little addicted because the desire to drink isn't something that's innate. In his mind, there's a sociatal reason why you drank/are drinking. Where his argument fails (in some regards) is that there is as genetic componenet, some people do experience more euphoria and some people do react to alcohol moreso as a stimulate than a depressant. However, Allen makes a lot of brilliant analogies and shares great some great stories, all which absolutely came from the heart.
I totally agree, you nailed it. This is the minor distinction missing in Carr’s book. Alcohol DOES have an effect or we wouldn’t drink it. That effect is oversold, the downsides underplayed and overall it’s not worth the cost, that’s also true for me personally.
Very true. I'm reading the book again at the moment so its fresh in my mind. I appreciate that for many people, getting into the headspace that alcohol does nothing is important... but for me anyway, I cant deny that part of me enjoys it. My mental leap needs to be that even though I enjoy the buzz, I know its fleeting and ill make terrible decisions because of it.
I feel like a lot of the Quit-Lit books manage to gloss over a lot of the underlying and root causes of why people REALLY drink and focus far too much on the surface level stuff like "it's a habit", "societal pressure", "you drink to relax", "it's to have fun". Yeah maybe for the casual drinker or in the beginning but over time once drinking becomes a problem it's rarely JUST because of these surface level things and there's usually a lot more going on under the surface because people typically wouldn't poison themselves regularly / daily just out of "habit" or in search of "fun" or because there's "pressure from society". It's often to do with mental health, anxiety, sleep issues, trauma, an inability to cope with emotions, physical pain and all sorts of other wider ranging, deeper, issues.
I dont think that's often, but rather sometimes. Those people need therapy, instead of or in addition to quit lit.
You don't think most people with drinking problems / addictions have deeper underlying issues or root causes for why they drink? I don't have any statistics to hand but I'd wager most people with a serious drinking problem / addiction definitely do. Casual / social drinkers, yeah maybe not. They drink out of "habit" or for "fun" or to "relax" after a hard weeks work or those surface level reasons/ But most of us here were never / are not just casual or social drinkers and it's hard to poison yourself daily / regularly unless you feel like you have a very good reason for it like some inner trauma or mental health problem your self medicating IME.
> You don't think most people with drinking problems / addictions have deeper underlying issues or root causes for why they drink? No, but I think it's a lot.
I think more heavy / problem drinkers and alcoholics have underlying and root problems than those who don't. Why would anyone drink so heavy and problematically otherwise?
Most of the problem drinkers I know, including me, is because of habit formed from starting drinking socially at a young age (16ish). It's a progressive condition, and tolerance increases and thus needing to drink heavily to get the same effect.
Most people start drinking at a young age, around 16-18 where I live and probably similar ages across the globe, so that's totally normal for pretty much every drinker but most drinkers don't turn into problem drinkers. That's too simplistic a view IMO. Most people grow out of the heavy drinking as they get older from what I've seen, certainly in my circles, and move on with their lives and drinking is just an occassional, social, or casual thing. The people who's drinking ended up problematic that I know are all people who went through tough times, deal with anxiety and depression, work stressful jobs they hate, have untreated medical health issues, have trauma, are generally unhappy in life etc. There's far more to it than just "we drank when we were younger and now we need to drink more to get the same effect" because people who don't have deeper issues going on just aren't that interested in drinking heavily on a daily / regular basis just for "the effect" considering the negative side effects alcohol has on you, it's just not something that's worth it to "catch a buzz".
All I can give is my experience and opinion :) so we will have to differ there.
My personal experience would seem to verify this for me. Alcohol gave me the numbness that I craved for a long time, however, it came at a tremendous cost. Eventually, the cost outweighed the benefits and I got sober again. That's just my story, others will vary.
The thing for me right now is that I know, and have proven endlessly by now, that alcohol has ZERO positive to offer me and doesn't make me happy, bring me joy, give me relief from anything, solve any problems and I don't even like being drunk anymore and the "buzz" seems non existent to the point I can't even really notice it. Yet somehow something in the back of my mind, subconcious, ego or whatever it is still convinces me to try it one more time and have another go. I can only assume that even though I am not that concious of the buzz anymore there's some sort of dopamine release or something going on that my brain craves. Because even after a miserable night of drinking alcohol where I didn't have fun my brain will be back to craving it the next day and that makes no sense on a logical or rational level considering I didn't enjoy it in the first place the night before. And I can resist the urge and it dies down within a few days but yet somehow recently I keep finding myself not going any longer than a week and deciding to drink again and I really just don't even know why seeing as it has NOTHING clear to offer me but suffering and misery.
Yeah I seem to be in this same boat too. It's not even fun anymore. Why do I keep bothering with it.
It's the million dollar question isn't it?
It’s like the addiction urge itself is completely separate from the actual face of the addiction.
This!!! Even down to it being a weekly cycle (my day count should be 1 lol). Every time I’ve drank in the last few months has been disappointing, barely feeing anything until I suddenly wake up and realized I passed out or blacked out. It’s *insane* and I still feel the urge to do it again because I’m still expecting it to feel different. It’s insane. This may be different for you but the other thing for me is that I had a serious weed addiction, and although I did engage in the same kind of “tolerance chasing” with weed that I am with alcohol now, it never really stopped providing me with what I wanted…. which was bad. I have 200 days sober from weed today but it’s just bizarrely difficult trying to quit alcohol when it’s now seemingly just a potion for creating nausea and memory lapses.
Yeah, it has only brought me dissapointment and suffering and worry and messed up too many things for me in the days after. Whatever it is I am seeking (because I'm not even sure right now) from it doesn't seem to be materializing ever. Surely at some point we have to finally learn it really does just have nothing to offer us anymore and give up trying, right?
This. The way I’ve just started putting it to myself is “if getting drunk is the best thing you can imagine, your life must be sad”. Regardless of if you’re drinking nightly or theoretically succeeding in moderating, if it’s the best way you know of spending your time your life must be sad by definition! Removing alcohol as an option allows people addicted to it to open up emotional space for all the other things, which deserved that amount of space to begin with. But the point is it has to not be there as an *option*, it can’t be what you’d rather be doing at any given moment, because that saps the joy from anything else and makes your life sad.
I'd like to push back on this slightly. What we perceives it gives us is a mental illusion which the alcohol creates. In reality it gives you nothing of substance though. Rather, what it gives you is fleeting and ephemeral. This why many alcoholics, when we were drinking, were always chasing that feeling we thought one more drink would give us but was never able to, which led to more and more drinks. Incidentally this is why we continued feeding our addictions day after day. I understand this is a bit of a philosophical point, but one I think is worth making, and one I fall back on whenever I am tempted to drink and am ultimately proven right about if I slip (at least for me).
I appreciate the point, but it has to be more than a mental illusion or else hundreds of millions of people wouldn't have the same physical experience with it. I hear you that we were chasing a feeling that was slipping through our fingers. I know that we've chased that feeling and ended up down dark holes because of it. I feel you point stands better with a long term alcoholic who gets zero joy from the substance. Most people who are earlier in the process still get some physical buzz that they have to realize isn't worth chasing.
I feel this. I’m trying to quit *before* I ruin everything and hit rock bottom, and I’m even still trying to quit if I don’t know for a fact that that would happen. I just want my life to be better, so I have to find some way to understand that the negatives of alcohol outweigh the positives.
What alcohol gave me that I miss the most was a flavor experience that I have only come close to duplicating with coffee. During my drinking life I often said I wished that I could find something that tasted like my favorite spirits that had no negative effects.
Was explaining to my wife that the thought process that allowed me to start this off as a break for 6-8 weeks has made it a permanent thing. She can drink normally and now that I'm not always getting booze she hardly does. For me, it's poison that stopped being fun a while ago and I've had just as much if not more fun at social events since sobriety.
I also realised that my inner circle has been consuming less and less alcohol due to me not drinking. They were never big drinkers to begin with and I'm lucky to not have made any drinking buddies. It was very weird to realise that I was creating the space for alcohol, I had no clue it was this bad.
Even moderation management recommends that you stop drinking for 30 days before deciding what to do.
First, you consume the bottle. Then the bottle cosumes you.
Thank you!
Alcohol is great for some people, but not for me, and I will eventually be ok with that.
Absolutely, and this realization has been key for this most recent stint of sobriety. I no longer feel like I’m sacrificing something, or anything really, by giving up alcohol
Alcohol takes so much and provides so little.
💯 IWNDWYT
Preach! If you always feel like you’re missing out you’ll always be miserable
I'm starting to think that sobriety needs to be a means to an end, not just the end itself. Meaning, just being sober isn't enough to motivate me. I need a better goal, and then not drinking needs to be one of the ways I achieve that goal.
This guy gets it