Relapse Stopping drinking is a monumental task. It requires that I recognise specific unwanted behaviour of my mind as it occurs and then contradict it. I have to do this with force of will while my condition wields dopamine which […]
Make it Stop is written to help people to stop drinking and stay stopped. It is available to buy at Amazon and other sources and can be downloaded as an eBook (.epub format) for free on this page. Share this […]
Hope Alcohol isn’t magical. If you put a sealed, chilled, bottle of white wine in front of me then I will feel the urge to reach out and take and drink it. This urge is not imaginary; it is very […]
Necessary, Possible and Worthwhile I didn’t stop drinking because I wanted to; I stopped because I had to. If I could have carried on drinking without all the bad things happening then I would have, but this wasn’t the case. […]
Cravings and Triggers Addiction is not simply a habit, it is habit enforced by chemical compulsion. My brain has about 85 billion neurons (brain cells) in it and each of these connects to about 7,000 others. Signals are passed between […]
Managing Cravings Whether or not I will drink at any moment boils down to an incredibly simple equation: – If the urge to drink exceeds the will to resist it then I will drink. There are two components here: – […]
Managing Resolve Stopping drinking is a contest between my reward system demanding that I drink and my determination to stop, but it is not a fair fight. My reward system operates at a primal level that is invisible to me […]
Self-sabotage The reward system sits in the subconscious part of my brain and it operates entirely automatically and invisibly. There is no conscious thought involved in its operation and it is not even directly connected to the parts of my […]
Emotional Triggers If we drink frequently and heavily then our brain’s performance becomes routinely impaired, and it changes the way it operates to try and offset this. The principal action of alcohol on the brain is that it slows it […]
Abstinence and Recovery Abstinence and recovery are two completely different things. Abstinence is stopping the consumption of alcohol whereas recovery is achieving a state of well-being wherein the desire to drink no longer arises. Recovery is not possible while I […]
The Past There are so many appalling things I did while I was drinking that my mind was strewn with the litter of chaos and destruction. There were terrible things I did, things I should have done but did not, […]
New Ways The world is a chaotic place that is often grossly unfair. There will always be times when I am dissatisfied with life and upset by it and I have to work my way through these times just like […]
There was one thing about my drinking that I simply couldn’t understand. I was perfectly capable in every other aspect of my life but for some bizarre reason I could not control my drinking. I drank more than I wanted […]
The answer to this question isn’t either one or the other; the answer is “both”. Susceptibility to addiction is genetic, and activation of that susceptibility, where it exists, is environmental. Susceptibility to addiction is quite simple and specific. The adverse […]
Stopping drinking is really hard and anyone that says otherwise is talking out of their ass. But there are things we can do to help ourselves. Here are a bunch of things we can do that will help us get […]
