Alcohol Abuse Advice

How to quit alcohol for good

You are not alone-a test

Want to quit alcohol for good? Here’s a little test for you to try.  Have you ever woken up the morning after partying a little too hard and felt like your head was going to explode? Maybe you tried to drink some water and immediately had to run to the bathroom and throw up? Maybe your hands were shaking and you had this sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach because you cannot readily remember details of what you did the night  before? If you can relate to any-or all-of these questions, you are not alone, even though it may feel like it right now! Many that have tried to quit drinking for good have gone throught these and similar “morning after” episodes, swearing to ourselves that we are NEVER going to do that again-that we are quitting drinking for good, only to find ourselves later that day headed for the liquor store or happy hour at our favorite bar, wondering why we felt the need to drink again? Alcoholism affects many people and it isn’t gender, age or race specific-it can strike anyone, at anytime.  Most people start out as what we call “normal” drinkers-those that can drink a few drinks here and there and get a nice buzz, or party it up a few nights a week, then stay away from it until the following week or weekend. This routine can go on for a long time, but if you are reading this article and questioning whether or not yon need to quit drinking for good, then you already have a drinking problem. It’s a very tough pill to swallow, so to speak, but you do’t have to go through it alone and there is a way to quit drinking for good, before you suffer legal or money problems or worse, as a result of your continued need to drink and drink too much when you do consume alcohol. If you’re still on the fence and not sure if you are truly ready to quit drinking for good, I have a few suggestions for you to try. When your weekend off of work arrives, rent these 3 movies:  “28 Days,” with Sandra Bullock, “When a Man Loves a Woman,” with Meg Ryan, and “Pay it Forward” with Helen Hunt.  Watch them alone and without any friends or alcohol. Try not to drink at all while watching these movies.  If you have a drinking problem, you will be able to relate to these movies and will most likely even become “triggered” during them, meaning that you are going to want to drink at certain times during them. If you have laready lost your job, rent these and watch them and try not to have any alcohol in the house at all. If you’re ready to quit drinking for good, at least be sobereven if you’re not alone when watching them. These are three very powerful stories of the wreckage that we cause due to our out of control drinking.  This is the first part of the test-the second part is to see if you can make it through an entire weekend (or your two days off) without drinking at all.  Becuase for some of us who have quit alcohol for good, drinking is so much more than a mere habit, going through a whole weekend without it seems impossible, even insane! But, if you are ready to quit alcohol for good, you can do it, withdrawals and all.

Taking that first step towards quitting alcohol for good-is detox right for me?

So, you’ve decided that you do have a drinking problem-great! You have just taken a HUGE first step towards quitting alcohol for good-solving your drinking problem and, probably getting some loved ones off your back! Okay, so you’ve admitted that you have a problem, now what do you do about it? Depending on how long, how much and how often you drink, you may want to consider detox and/or treatment when you actually start to quit alcohol for good. If you’ve tried to quit drinking for good before and wxperienced some nasty withdrawal symptoms like:  the shakes, sweating, insomnia, vomiting, loss of apetite, agoraphobia (fear of crowds/public places), being afraid to go out doors and feeling like you’re crawling out of your skin, then you may want to consider detox or a place other than your own home to “dry out” for a few days.  Detox is a “safe place” for you to begin your journey to quitting alcohol for good, because you have 24-hour supervision while you detoxify and, there is zero access to alcohol-you’re locked in and cannot get it. The reason I suggest detox is that, by the second or third day without any alcohol, many people experiencde such a heavy craving for it that they relapse-get drunk again and go right back into their destructive drinking patterns, thinking that they are weak or have no will power. This is simply not true. There are other factors involved. If you are ready to quit drinking for good and still not sure if you are an alcoholic or not, but definitely afraid you’re on the path to becoming one, going into detox for a weekend or a few days will at least give you a fighting chance towards quitting alcohol for good.  Detoxing can be a very scary and awful process. Your mind will play tricks on you-it will try to talk you out of it and tell you that you don’t drink that much, that it’s okay not to have some because you went for two or three days without anything to drink. Still, some prefer to detox off alcohol at home but, if you aren’t sure if you can trust yourself, then a safe place where you can be monitored is the way to go. A detox facility isn’t pleasant and, it’s not supposed to be, but you will often find others there that are just like you, people who want to quit drinking for good-going through the same thing that you are. I know for me, detox was awful that first day, but it got better, and I’ve even managed to stay in touch with someone I met there and went through treatment with who became one of my best friends-and he’s sober too because he was also ready to quit drinking for good as well.

Should I go to treatment? What about Alcoholics Anonymous?

Treatment is the way to go if you want to quit drinking for good and don’t understand why you drink or what caused you to abuse alcohol in the first place.  I went through a 21-day intensive residential treatment program located in Colorado where I live and, I learned a lot about my disease as well as the cause of what started my progression into full-blown alcoholism.  I was ready to quit drinking for good and detox followed by treatment really helped me.  Unfortunately, treatment programs can be very expensive, but there are a lot of treatment choices and some won’t cost you an arm and a leg.   The program I mentioned above helped me and many like me immensely, but I had to pay for it on my credit card.  At that time, I had tried to quit drinking alcohol for good on my own so many times and failed, that I was ready for treatment and gained a lot from it-mostly knowledge about myself and my condition.  There are also some programs that allow you to pay as you go-after you complete the first part of the program, usually inpatient, you can then continue on with the transitional part of the program, in which you get a job and pay rent, which includes your treatment, some meals and/or other living expenses while you are there. These programs usually range anywhere from 3 months up to 2 years, even more, for those who need extended treatment.  These programs most help those who have decided that they are ready to quit alcohol for good.  If you don’t have a way to pay for a treatment program, I also strongly suggest you attend AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) meetings-daily, at first. Alcoholics Anonymous has meeting everywhere now, and they don’t cost you anything but an hour of your time. You can even attend meetings online if there aren’t a lot of meetings where you live. AA has reached across the globe and those wanting to quit drinking for good can and will usually find meetings close to where they live, if they are willing to do whatever is necessary to quit alcohol for good. If you are serious about quitting drinking for good and have reached that point where you know in your gut that you don’t want to keep living the way you are living, then AA could be right for you too.  I won’t go into detail about the AA program here, because I want you to check it out for yourself if you haven’t already. Alcoholics Anonymous has done for me what I could not do for myself-it has not only allowed me to quit drinking alcohol for good, it has taught me how to live my life, one day at a time, without having to drink, without obsessing about alcohol or being miserable without it. It has, in a sense, saved me, and given me the life I have today-one that I would never have had if I had kept drinking. In fact, I’d most likely not even be alive today, at the rate I was going. Alcoholics Anonymous has a 12-step “program of action” to follow and it truly does teach people like me how to live, make amends to those I harmed due to my drinking and has given me what the program calls a “daily reprieve” from drinking and destroying myself. If you are ready to quit alcohol for good and can do the things suggested in this article, you just might learn something about yourself and quit drinking alcohol for good-once and for all.

More Friends Of Alcoholics Articles